Stuttgart anchors two sides of Reinhold von Rumpel’s life: the second-story shop where he built his career as a gemologist, and the domestic world of his wife and daughters, from whom the war keeps him absent.

The Appraiser’s Shop

Before the war, von Rumpel ran an appraisal business from a second-story shop behind Stuttgart’s old chancellery. Clients brought him stones to value; he sometimes recut diamonds or advised on elaborate faceting projects. His work joined trained expertise to opportunism: when he cheated a customer, he regarded it as part of the game. The shop represents a settled professional life that the war would transform, expanding his duties from private appraisals to the handling of confiscated treasures.

Family Life and Wartime Absence

Stuttgart is also associated with the family life von Rumpel has left at a distance. His wife tolerates his absences without complaint and arranges porcelain kittens by color, from lightest to darkest, on two shelves in their drawing room. Their two daughters have gone unseen by their father for nine months; the eldest, Veronika, writes him letters filled with earnest language about resolve and accomplishment. These domestic details stand against von Rumpel’s wartime work: while his family sustains an ordered home life, his professional world has widened into the seizure and guarded transport of valuables. The city thus marks both the career he had before the war and the private ties his new duties leave behind.