Nuremberg, catalogues of the Hans Albrecht von Derschau collection
The Royal Prussian Captain Hans Albrecht von Derschau (1755–1824) assembled an extensive and diverse art collection during his lifetime, which was auctioned in Nuremberg by Johann Lorenz Schmidmer in 1825 (link to the auction catalogue). Derschau was able to significantly expand his collection, which consisted of paintings, drawings, stained glass, majolica, metalwork, scientific instruments, manuscripts and books, during the secularisation. Ultimately, it was the quantity and quality of the private collection that meant that, after the collector's death, it could not be sold as a whole, but was auctioned off gradually and by category to the highest bidders. As a result, individual pieces of all genres found their way into other renowned private collections and the holdings of art museums and cultural institutions. With the exception of the auction catalogue, there is no complete list of the collection, but handwritten inventories describing parts of the Derschau collection were compiled in various contexts.
Several of these have been preserved through Joseph Heller (1798-1849), a Bamberg collector and friend who distributed the 1825 auction catalogue and accepted postage-free orders for the auction. They were added to the holdings of the Royal Library, now the Bamberg State Library, along with his estate. One example is a copy of a catalogue of wooden printing plates printed in Gotha between 1808 and 1816, which Derschau gave to Rudolf Zacharias Becker (1752-1822) during his lifetime in order to publicise the existence of the blocks to interested parties. They initially remained in the family of the publisher, but were acquired in 1844 by King Frederick William IV of Prussia (1795-1861) and have been in the Berlin Kupferstichkabinett ever since. There they form the foundation of the printing block collection.
Furthermore, a ‘transcript of the catalogue of hand drawings which [still in 1821] were in the Derschau collection in Nuremberg’ has been preserved. These are said to come from a sketchbook which the Nuremberg patrician family Pfinzing von und zu Henfenfeld und Gründlach was able to acquire shortly after Dürer's death. Some of the contoured charcoal drawings with names of people attached, which are now attributed to Hans Schwarz, were acquired by Joseph Heller (cf. Heller's copperplate engraving catalogue) and passed into the Royal Library (now the Bamberg State Library) with his estate.
