Footnotes

The table centrepiece "Die Geburt der Schönheit"

Paul Scheurich's final work in porcelain remained unfinished because he fell ill in 1940, but it is a testament to his artistic talent and imagination, as well as his enthusiasm and ambition for the material. The table centrepiece "Geburt der Schönheit" [The Birth of Beauty - probably not Scheurich's title] originated with the wish of the German Foreign Minister, Joachim von Ribbentrop, to commission a table service with centrepiece for the newly installed Foreign Ministry. Max Adolf Pfeiffer, who had become director of the Berlin manufactory in November 1938, entrusted the service design to Trude Petri and the table centrepiece to Paul Scheurich.

Scheurich ignored the suggested theme of Germanic myths and sagas and instead produced designs depicting sea creatures and gods from Greek mythology. Pfeiffer showed the designs to Annelies von Ribbentrop, an enthusiastic patron of Scheurich's work who exercised considerable influence over her husband; she commissioned the work despite it being completely different from what had originally been envisioned. Between April and the beginning of October 1940, 16 models for the centrepiece were listed in the Berlin manufactory's model book, as well as another two in April 1942. Pfeiffer published nine of the groups in June 1941 without naming the patron of the subject, though he did compare it in importance to the well-known commissions of Meissen porcelain by Count Brühl and Frederick the Great. In March 1942, the renowned porcelain specialist, Ludwig Schnorr von Carolsfeld, published an article on the centrepiece in which he noted that "the whole is a passionate homage to the perfect beauty of the female form".

Paul Scheurich's illness from 1940 meant that the table centrepiece remained unfinished, including the large (ca. 70cm high) figure of Venus standing on a rockwork base with putti that was to be the centre of the middle group of figures (known only in a design sketch by Scheurich in the manufactory archives (Johannes Rafael, Paul Scheurich. Porzellane für die Staatliche Porzellan-Manufaktur Berlin. Der Tafelschmuck Die Geburt der Schönheit, in Keramos 240, 2018, ill. 17/2), as well as a second group of Neptune that was to form a pendant to Venus, of which even less evidence has survived. Johannes Rafael listed 18 different models by Scheurich (Rafael, 2018, table 1), most of which are known in (post-War) porcelain examples and a handful only through archival references and sketches. Figures and groups from Die Geburt der Schönheit were only offered for sale after the Second World War; the models were returned to the Berlin manufactory only in 1955 and Emil Paul Börner, who has worked with Scheurich at Meissen before the war, was entrusted with their restoration.

Very little evidence has survived of how Scheurich intended to arrange figures and groups; he had not completed the two planned main groups when he fell ill, so Pfeiffer was obliged to contrive an arrangement with the existing figures and groups. Pfeiffer understood the combination of tradition and modern artistic vision in Scheurich's final great project better than anyone: "In an unimaginably short time Scheurich created the entire series, it was a work of awesome ambition, a self-outpouring of the ripest ability that is made possible by only a very great artistry [...] if the whole [centrepiece] was presented to the world it would prove that this is the greatest work of art produced by the art of porcelain in Germany in the last 150 years."

For a comprehensive discussion of the history, sources and interpretation of the centrepieces, see Rafael, 2018, pp. 3-56, and Christian Lechelt, Porzellan und Politik II Der Tafelaufsatz "Geburt der Schönheit" von Paul Scheurich, in Keramos 196, 2007, pp. 59-92.