BREAKING PORCELAIN: a Journey in the Curatorship of Inherited Meissen Shards
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. i BREAKING PORCELAIN: A Journey in the Curatorship of Inherited Meissen Shards by Michaela Howse 13436511 Thesis presented in fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Visual Arts in the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences at Stellenbosch University Supervisor: Dr Ernst van der Wal March 2017 . ii . iii DECLARATION By submitting this thesis/dissertation electronically, I declare that the entirety of the work contained therein is my own, original work, that I am the sole author thereof (save to the extent explicitly oth- erwise stated), that reproduction and publication thereof by Stellenbosch University will not infringe any third party rights and that I have not previously in its entirety or in part submitted it for obtain- ing any quali cation. Date: March 2017 . iv . v ABSTRACT Breaking Porcelain is a personal journey in the curatorship of inherited porcelain shards. A Meissen porcelain collection, once belonging to my great, great grandparents – German Jewish collectors in Dresden – was stolen by the Nazis, partly lost and partly bombed in the fi rebombing of Dresden, later in part recovered from the destruction, and then further held in East Germany until the remains of the collection, a great deal of it broken, were fi nally returned to the family. Broken and scarred, the porce- lain fragments I have inherited serve as memorials that bear the evidence of their complex pasts. At the heart of the curatorial project lies the intention to understand the value and relevance of these porcelain fragments today. This involves exploration into the contexts that informed them during their history as well as appreciation of the effects they have had on people’s lives in the recent past. vi . vii CONTENTS List of Figures viii PROLOGUE xi CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION 1 Breakdown of Chapters 12 Historical Overview of Literature 14 CHAPTER TWO: UNPACKING OBJECTS 23 A Brief History of Meissen Porcelain 32 A Brief History of the von Klemperer Collection 36 The Villa and the Garden Today 47 Meissen Today 68 The Catalogue of the von Klemperer Meissen Porcelain 74 CHAPTER THREE: WHY COLLECT? 83 The Significance of Collecting for the von Klemperers 93 Collecting in Nazi Germany 97 CHAPTER FOUR: NEGOTIATING INHERITANCES 109 A Memorial to Dresden’s Destruction 114 The Fragile Individual 120 Fragments 125 My Own Collection 130 CHAPTER FIVE: APPROACHING CONTRADICTION/TOWARD RECONCILIATION (CONCLUSION) 137 Toward Reconciliation 142 BIBLIOGRAPHY 147 . viii LIST OF FIGURES Fig. 1. Entrance leading to a courtyard in Innsbruck, Austria, Fig. 12. Graves in the grass of the Dresden Jewish Cemetry where violent events took place on the ‘night of broken glass’, Kristallnacht, November 1938 Fig. 13. The wild verges on the way to my great, great grandparents home Fig. 2. The main Residenzschloss courtyard under renova- tion, July 2016 Fig. 14. An overgrown plot along Wienerstraße where a villa most likely once stood Fig. 3. Life size sculpture, self-portrait, by anonymous Aus- trian artist at an address in nnsbruck of Kristallnacht violence. Fig. 15. An old driveway leading to makeshift sheds where villas would have previously existed Fig. 4. Detail Fig. 16. A dilapidated, damaged villa along Wienerstraße. Fig. 5. Some teenagers at the memorial of those who died in The railway line is visible in the background Innsbruck during Kristallnacht, November 1938, at the Land- hausplatz Fig. 17. The corner of Wienerstraße and Gellertstraße where the villa once stood Fig. 6. The famous Meissen signatures or backstamps, dat- ing from 1725 until today Fig. 18. Detail Fig.7. – Fig. 9. Interior views of the von Klemperer’s villa in Fig. 19 – 20. Views of the Großer Garten Dresden, showing the collection of Meissen porcelain Fig. 21. Two girls on the grass of the Großer Garten Fig. 10. The family von Klemperer photographed amongst their collection. Ralph, my grandmother’s father, is seated on Fig. 22. Unmarked ‘memorial’ the right Fig. 23 – 24. Pathways through the Großer Garten Fig. 11. Charlotte and Gustav’s graves, next to Gustav’s mother Henriette, in the Jewish cemetery of Dresden . ix Fig. 25. View of the empty grass in the Großer Garten Fig. 39. “Women and girls photographed before being shot. The murder squad consisted of a Latvian SD guard platoon, Fig. 26. and Fig. 29. Fragments like zen stones on the SS- und Polizeistandortfurer Dr Dietrich Schutzpolizei-Dien- stableilung and Latvian Police Battalion 21”, in The Good Old grass of the Volkswagen factory Days (Klee et al. 1991:131) Fig. 27. Refl ections inside the factory Fig. 40. “A group of women and children above the death trench, just before they were murdered”, near the Baltic in Fig. 28. Refl ections outside of the factory Latvia, in The Good Old Days (Klee et al. 1991:131) Fig. 30 – 33. Views over the Elbe of Dresden’s Altstadt to- Fig. 41. A photograph taken by a Gendarmerie Ober- day wachtmeister. “Those women still alive were fi nished off like wounded game (the coups de grâce)” reads the caption un- Fig. 34. The cover of the Bonhams catalogue accompany- der this picture in The Good Old Days (Klee et al. 1991:161) ing the 2010 auction Fig. 42. Detail of a well-known image taken by German Fig. 35. An assortment of fi gures from the von Klemperer photojournalist Richard Peter of the view from the Dresden collection City Hall tower toward the South in 1945. Available online at https://iconicphotos.wordpress.com/tag/richard-peter/ Fig. 36. Two twin vases made for Augustus the Strong pho- tographed for the von Klemperer catalogue in the 1920s Fig. 43 – 44. Views of Schoenmakerskop coastline in Port Elizabeth Fig. 37. The remains of one of the vases originally made for Augustus the Strong photographed for the Bonhams auction Fig. 45. My grandmother sleeping catalogue in 2010 Fig. 46. The Frauenkirche in 2016 Fig. 38. Brochure design by Herbert Bayer exemplifying ele- ments of pastiche, 1936 (in Marien 2006:270) . x . xi Break a vase, and the love that reassembles the fragments is stronger than that love which took its symmetry for granted when it was whole. Derek Walcott . xii . xiii Fig 1. Entrance leading to a courtyard in Innsbruck, Austria, where violent events took place on the on the ‘night of broken glass’, Kristallnacht, November 1938 . xiv . xv PROLOGUE Described by some as a war crime, a crime against tively undamaged, was auctioned in the same year humanity, the baroque German art city of Dres- through the auction house Christie’s, in London. den was bombed on the 13th of February 1945 by allied forces. A lorry packed with four crates A second, and much more surprising auction of pieces from a famous collection of Meissen took place in London in 2010. A box contain- porcelain that had been seized from the German ing badly damaged pieces of our porcelain that Jewish family von Klemperer, my family, was had not been sold at Christie’s was mysteriously bombed that night, while the lorry was parked in uncovered in a storeroom of the Dresden State the main courtyard of the Residenzschloss. Porcelain Museum. After the shards had been painstakingly pieced together, the porcelain was Almost ten years passed before the lorry and its returned to the family. It was a miracle to un- wares were excavated from the rubble, but the cover new evidence of our pre-WWII presence porcelain that was retrieved disappeared with- in Dresden. out a trace into the East German state’s porcelain museum, remaining irretrievable by my family The event of the auction of a few of the least for over forty years. It was fi nally returned to the damaged pieces from this uncovered box proved family in 1991. Three quarters were given back a great success for the auction house of Bonhams, to the Dresden Porcelain Museum as a donation, London. It was the fi rst time in its history that and a quarter of what had been recovered, rela- broken porcelain had been sold, and so success- . xvi fully. After the auction, the proceeds were shared of Stellenbosch. I remember that the ‘brokenness’ amongst the families of the twelve grandchil- of the landscape I moved through was striking. It dren of the von Klemperer collectors. My grand- felt war damaged, devastated by separatist poli- mother, Mika Abel, nee Ida Charlotte von Klem- tics, without a language in which differences were perer, one of these twelve grandchildren, divided communicable. Along the road it was clear that her share into a further eight parts, one for each the poor were not being heard. Their anger raged of her eight grandchildren. (My grandmother in fi res through the mediums of protest and was seventeen in 1937 when she left Dresden for burning tyres. I found myself pondering what an South Africa with her parents on a German boat, appropriate response to an historical inheritance never to return to live in Germany again. The en- of disadvantage and loss could be, a situation tire von Klemperer family ultimately had to fl ee wherein vital bonds and connections between Germany, to countries as far afi eld as South Af- people had been broken. This early question- rica, Zimbabwe, America and Australia, leaving ing of mine foreshadowed the theme that was to the Meissen collection and many other rare art come, handed down through the inherited Meis- collections behind them). sen shards. As an inheriting grandchild, I used my share, an Just before the 2010 auction at Bonhams, those eighth of a twelfth of the money from the sale pieces of porcelain that were so severely damaged of the broken pieces (still a substantial sum) to that they would be of no commercial value, were return to university in 2012 to pursue my art divided up into twelve lots and shipped off across studies.