Losses

During the Second World War, along with objects from the Dresden Porcelain Collection, the Gustav von Klemperer Porcelain Collection – after being seized by the Gestapo in 1938 and in January 1943 transferred free of charge into the ownership of the state of Saxony – was evacuated for safe keeping to locations outside the city. Initially, the Klemperer Collection was taken to Schloss Rammenau between Dresden and Bautzen. In the first months of 1945, however, the advance of Soviet troops made it necessary for the objects to be moved once again.

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This was also true of the porcelain collection looted from the von Klemperer family in 1938. Objects from the collection that had survived the war and its ravages found their way – partially without their true provenance being recognized – into the holdings of the Dresden Porcelain Collection.

The reconstructed Gustav von Klemperer Collection consists of 929 items, amongst which are a number of tableware items consisting of two or more parts (chocolate beaker and saucer, for example, or cream pot with cover and stand).

In order to establish the number of lost pieces, the total number of 929 items was reduced by those restituted in 1991 and 2010 and those returned to the von Klemperer family by other parties. Furthermore, of the items consisting of two or more parts, those had to be identified that were not completely preserved, the typical case being that of one part being extant and the other lost.

Finally, a list emerged amounting to exactly 614 items lost, which were registered at the Lost Art Database in the name of the ‘Klemperer community of heirs’ (‘Erbengemeinschaft Klemperer’), with detailed information concerning the paths of loss.