[1][2][3] Magdalene "Ebbi" Kreßner was born in Schweizerthal (now part of Burgstädt) in the Kingdom of Saxony.

[1][2] She then switched to the Academy of Fine Arts in Dresden where between 1927 and 1930 she was a "Meisterschülerin" (loosely, "master student") of Karl Albiker.

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.

Following the destruction she ended at Oberlößnitz 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.

[4] Kreßner also produced illustrations for various children's books and, notably, for an early edition of Thomas Mann's vast four-part novel, Joseph and His Brothers.