The reaction to drought events was shown to depend on the timing and duration of the drought event. Differences between provenances in resistance were modest, but more pronounced for recovery and especially for resilience and relative resilience. The results indicate a better adaptation to drought of the provenance from Bosnia Herzegovina and of local German provenances compared to other provenances. We summarized the findings by aligning the eleven provenances between two multivariately defined archetypes, one of which represented best general performance defined by good overall growth, low climate sensitivity and high resilience to drought. This approach confirmed the superior performance of the local German populations. Provenances from France and Poland were ranked above average whereas northern provenances and that from Bosnia Herzegovina were found to be least suitable at the sites under investigation. Our results clearly demonstrate the importance of considering provenance in the discussion about future adaptedness and adaptability of tree species under climate change scenarios.