Magdalene Kreßner supported herself as a freelance artist in Dresden between 1930 and 1945. On 13 February 1945 her studio was destroyed in the firestorm and bombing inflicted on the central part of the city by the English and the Americans. She also lost her home. Following the destruction she ended at which by this time had been subsumed - formally in 1934 - into Radebeul, a short distance down-river from Dresden, where she made her home at Eduard-Bilz-Straße 42, and where she lived for the rest of her life, in a home that was large enough to incorporate the little studio in which she now worked.