Originally from Galicia, Saul Juer lived in Vienna from 1885 at the latest. He married Helene Kanner, with whom he would later have two daughters, on 24 March 1904. In 1902 he joined, as a co-partner, the meat sales company which operated a market stall in the market hall in Vienna's 3rd district and had been run by his father Osias since 1886. From 1906 he was its sole owner. After the "Anschluss" in March 1938, Juer was persecuted as a Jew by the Nazi regime. Already at the beginning of April 1938, Juer lost the basis of his business due to the rapid "Aryanisation" of the stalls of the Vienna market halls. His debtors immediately stopped all payments and Juer was forced to dissolve his business in June 1938. In order to be able to service his own financial liabilities, Juer therefore felt compelled to sell the art collection he had built up over more than 30 years. According to his own information, it consisted of ceramics, Judaica, drawings, engravings and other pictures. Although Juer had announced his intention to have his collection auctioned off in autumn 1938, he offered the Heeresmuseum (Vienna Army Museum) works with a military connection for sale in August 1938. The Heeresmuseum eventually acquired 572 objects from Juer, with the art dealer Blasius Fornach handling the purchase at the museum's request. Apparently, this was not completed until January 1940. The collection consisted of lithographs, a few oil paintings and 18 ceramic figures. In June 1941, Juer also gave the Heeresmuseum another oil painting to view, which ultimately remained in the museum's holdings without being purchased. Since all the objects have military subjects and thus do not reflect the spectrum of objects that Juer himself described for his collection, it can be assumed that Juer sold further parts of his collection to other interested parties. There is evidence that Juer had sold several paintings and ceramics to the art dealer Friedrich Welz before March 1941. In addition, the Dorotheum had already taken over objects made of gold and silver from Saul Juer in November 1939 in accordance with § 14 of the "Ordinance on the Use of Jewish Property".

Probably due to their financial hardship, the Juer couple had already left the flat they had lived in for almost 25 years in July 1938 and moved into a house owned by members of the Juer family. One of Saul and Helene Juer's daughters fled from Karlsbad in Czechoslovakia to the USA in September 1938, and the other managed to escape to Great Britain in August 1939. After the death of his wife Helene on 4 December 1941, Saul Juer initially had to move into a collective flat in the 2nd district. On 14 July 1942, he was deported to Theresienstadt and subsequently transferred to the Auschwitz concentration camp on 15 May 1944. From this point on, there are no further references to Saul Juer's fate. He was declared dead on 6 July 1949.

Based on the results of the systematic provenance research at the Museum of Military History/Military History Institute, the Art Restitution Advisory Board recommended on 29 November 2022 that the objects of the Saul Juer Collection be returned to his legal successors.