In this personal essay, Michaela Howse weaves together the threads that connect her own home country of South Africa with Dresden as the home of her great-great-grandparents, Gustav and Charlotte von Klemperer. At the centre: her grandmother Ida Charlotte and the remains of a once world-famous collection. Michaela Howse interprets restitution in the context of memory and as a trusting encounter of people.
Michaela Howse wrote her Master’s dissertation on the porcelain collection of her great-great-grandparents Gustav and Charlotte von Klemperer and on the loss of this collection. The porcelain shards that were restituted to the family by the Dresden State Art Collections in 2010 take on historic importance as items that establish a link between past times and the present day.
In 2017, Michaela Howse curated the exhibition Breaking Porcelain at the Cape Town Holocaust & Genocide Centre, focusing on the fate of her family and the history of the porcelain collection built up by her great-great-grandparents Gustav and Charlotte von Klemperer. Michaela Howse had acquired special insights into her family history through long conversations with her grandmother Ida Charlotte Abel, née von Klemperer (1919–2015), which she recorded.
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