Maximilian Kellner, a merchant born in Moravia, lived from 1932 with his wife Katharina, called Käthe (née Pollatschek, born 1884), at Praterstraße 17 in Vienna's 2nd district. This was also the address of the branch founded in 1912 of David Kellner's company headquartered in Rossitz (Rosice) near Brünn (Brno), in which Maximilian and his brothers Arnold (1864–1939) and Heinrich Kellner (born c. 1862) were partners. In May 1930, before Maximilian moved there with his family, the Vienna office was closed. Maximilian had an extensive art collection focusing on seventeenth-century Dutch painters such as Aelbert Cuyp, Dirck Hals, Jacob Ochtervelt, Adriaen van Ostade, Jan Steen and Gerard Terborch, together with miniatures and some works by Austrian artists including Hugo Darnaut, Johann Michael Neder and Olga Wisinger-Florian. Some of the collection – the paintings, a few pieces of furniture, sculptures and applied art works – were auctioned in early December 1929 by Auktionshaus Rudolf Lepke in Berlin. The sale was probably connected with the closure of the company's office in early 1930. After the annexation of Austria to the German Reich in March 1938, Maximilian and Käthe Kellner had to declare their assets to the Nazi authorities on account of their Jewish origins. Käthe Kellner's asset declaration included a list of art objects. Maximilian Kellner died in December 1940 in Vienna. His wife lived until May 1942 in Praterstraße, from where she was deported on the 20th Gestapo transport to the ghetto in Izbica. She did not survive. Her assets became the property of the German Reich pursuant to the provisions of the Eleventh Regulation on the Reich Citizenship Law of 25 November 1941.

One of the miniatures listed in Käthe Kellner's asset declaration by Philippe Berger, which had been loaned by her husband in 1924 for the International Miniature Exhibition, was acquired in 1954 by the Albertina from the Viennese antique dealer Melanie Penizek. In July 2014, the Art Restitution Advisory Board recommended the restitution of this miniature.