Germany

Running up a total of over €2m on 600 lots, a smaller number than usual, the May 27 sale held by Ketterer Kunst (23/21% buyer’s premium) in Hamburg produced the book department’s best-ever results.

Cologne auction house Lempertz (24% buyer’s premium) held a recent sale devoted to the Schwarzach Collection of mortars, which is thought to be the most extensive of its type in Europe, if not worldwide.

Two astronomical works dating from the 17th century were among the more successful works in a recent German auction.

Berlin auction house Grisebach posted an auction record for the Swiss artist Karl Stauffer-Bern (1857-91) on May 29 when it sold a self-portrait which had been recently restituted to the family of its original Jewish owners.

Ceramics are a major focus of this report on sales from Germany. The selection of highlights and unusual pieces ranges from early 19th century products of the Vienna factory via Art Nouveau creations and 1920s Soviet-era porcelain to works by famed 20th century Studio potters.

Three potential highlights from German auctions at Van Ham in Cologne, Quittenbaum in Munich and Wendl in Rudolstadt.

Five oil paintings by the German artist Gabriele Münter, long-time companion and partner of Wassily Kandinsky, were very much at the centre of the action on May 8 in Stuttgart when Nagel (33% buyer’s premium) sold Modern and Contemporary art.

An example of the first commercially produced typewriter – one of only five in private hands – has sold for €100,000 at auction in Germany.

Codes are there to be broken, as the Second World War British team at Bletchley Park proved by cracking the German Enigma machines.

The pictorial spread and designer binding shown here feature in a work by the celebrated French-Swiss architect and designer, Le Corbusier.

Bought by a German collector for €115,000 (£99,140) at an auction in Cologne, a 15th century illustrated account of 'Leben der Heiligen Altväter', or ‘Lives of the Holy Fathers’, was a great rarity.

This highly elaborate chest of drawers decorated in boulle marquetry technique with a variety of different figural and foliate motifs featured in the furniture session of a sale at Hampel (29.5% buyer’s premium) in Munich on March 28.

The painter Franz Roubaud (1856-1928) was born in Odessa of French parents and studied painting at the local academy and for several years in Munich. He made a name for himself with huge panoramic paintings and battle scenes.

On May 17, Cologne auction house Lempertz is selling 115 bronze mortars from the 8th-18th centuries.

Short message to a ‘true friend’ after opera debut appearance sells at Berlin auction house.

It is thought that the prestigious Meissen designer Johann Joachim Kaendler drew the inspiration for his teapot in the form of a reclining cockerel from a Chinese model he found in the royal collection in Dresden.

The German artist Heinrich Zille (1858-1929) was known for his caricatures and humorous and sometimes very blunt portrayals of the lower classes and demi-monde in Berlin around the beginning of the 20th century: his so-called milieu-studies.

Russian works of art are coming up for sale at Dr Fischer in Heilbronn on May 17.

The chain of artistic influences that led to the decoration of a gold-enamel watch made by John Kenable of Frith Street in London in c.1800 can be traced back to 1766.

The inscription London on the barrels of this pair of 19th century, silver-mounted flintlock pistols is entirely spurious.