Video, 16:9, 13 minutes, colour and black & white, sound — 2025.

             Trailer: A PROVENANCE

SYNOPSIS
The provenance of 32 chess figures exemplifies the broader tragedy of looted Jewish collections and their rightful owners. Through archival images, the resonant sounds of porcelain, and the ongoing search for these figures, the film uses an experimental cinematic language to illuminate the fate of the Gustav von Klemperer porcelain collection during the National Socialist era—a legacy of loss deeply entwined with the Dresden State Art Collections. A PROVENANCE is a silent film—without being silent.

FILM DESCRIPTION
The film is based on the real search notice ID 593554, which has been publicly accessible in the Lost Art Database since 2021. This database records cultural assets confiscated from victims of the Nazi regime—particularly Jewish owners—between 1933 and 1945. The text featured in the film appears as intertitles and closely follows the original wording of the search notice submitted by the heirs of the von Klemperer family. Supplemented with additional researched material, these intertitles reflect the sober and meticulous language of the database entries. Through the documented loss of the 32 chess pieces, the film reveals the tragic fate of their rightful owners while also drawing connections to the ongoing complex issues of provenance and institutional complicity during the Nazi era.

The film is structured in three parts:
The first part, entirely without images, meticulously describes the 32 chess pieces—their appearance and their association with Gustav von Klemperer’s porcelain collection—based on the original text of the search notice. This collection was once regarded as the largest and most significant private collection of 18th-century Meissen porcelain in Germany.

The middle section combines archival footage of the Porcelain Collection of the Dresden State Art Collections with photographs from the 1928 catalogue commissioned by Gustav von Klemperer. From simple white porcelain bowls to elaborately painted vases and animal figures, this section offers a visual journey culminating in human-shaped porcelain figures. Viewers gain a vivid impression of the sought-after 32 chess pieces without seeing them directly. This sole visual part of the film also reconstructs the post-1945 comparison between images from von Klemperer’s catalogue and display case photographs taken by Fritz Fichtner, the former director of the museum’s Porcelain Collection—who was a member of the NSDAP and SA during the Nazi era. This juxtaposition enabled the identification of objects from von Klemperer’s collection within the museum’s holdings.

The third and final part examines the 32 chess pieces through the lens of their provenance. Using the original bureaucratic wording from the Lost Art Database’s search notice, the film traces the stages of their loss. It exposes not only the systematic dispossession but also the shattered lives of the persecuted owners under National Socialism—an injustice whose effects persist to this day.

The soundtrack features transformed sounds of Meissen porcelain bells, specially recorded for the film in the bell tower of Schwarzenberg in the Ore Mountains. The film was created in close collaboration with the Porcelain Collection of the Dresden State Art Collections and with the generous support of the von Klemperer family.

CREDITS
Concept & research: Katharina Bayer
Montage: Katharina Bayer and Jyrgen Ueberschär
Script editing: Gegensatz Translation Collective
Sound design: Toni Schlesinger
Re-recording mix: Matthias Schwab
Colour and Typography: Jyrgen Ueberschär
Translation: Elise Schierbeek
Artistic Mentoring: Clemens von Wedemeyer, Mareike Bernien

In cooperation with the Dresden State Art Collections:
Dr. Julia Weber and Maria Geppert (Porcelain Collection)
Dr. Katja Lindenau and Dr. Thomas Rudert (Provenance Research)
Prof. Dr. Doreen Mende and Anna-Lisa Reith (Research Department)

IMAGE SOURCE
Dresden State Art Collections, Archive
Porcelain Collection Gustav von Klemperer, Collection Catalog, Dresden 1928

TEXT SOURCE
Lost Art — Database: Lost Art — ID 593554: www.lostart.de
Porcelain Collection Dresden State Art Collections: 
Research: Gustav von Klemperer Porcelain Collection: Anette Loesch and Kathrin Iselt 2019-2021
Gustav von Klemperer porcelain collection, collection catalog, Dresden 1928

WITH SUPPORT FROM
Szloma Albam Foundation Berlin
Dresden State Art Collections

SCREENINGS

3 May 2025, 5:00 PM: Lichtburg Kino, Oberhausen
World premiere of A PROVENANCE at the German Competition
71.International Short Film Festival Oberhausen, Germany