'Never again war': Käthe Kollwitz's masterpieces
The German graphic artist used her art to advocate against social injustice, war and inhumanity. As war rages again in Europe, her work remains tragically relevant.
A call for the arts
German artist Käthe Kollwitz was born on July 8, 1867 as the fifth child of Katharina and Carl Schmidt in Königsberg (today Kaliningrad). She already knew as a child that she wanted to be an artist, but being a girl, she was denied access to formal art education.
Encouraged by her father
Käthe Kollwitz's father discovered her talent for drawing, and supported her education. She received her first lessons in Königsberg from the painter Gustav Naujok and the copper engraver Rudolf Mauer. Later, she attended expensive private schools in Munich and Berlin, where she met like-minded people. Various female painters became important allies for the young artist.
Pursuing her work as an artist
In Berlin, she met the man who would become her husband, the doctor Karl Kollwitz. After marrying him in 1891, she didn't want to settle for a bourgeois housewife's life. Luckily, Karl didn't thwart her ambitions. She soon set up her first studio in the apartment they shared. Due to the lack of space, she first worked with prints. Above is a 1927 Ernst Barlach sculpture depicting Kollwitz.
A witness to the misery of her times
In countless drawings, Käthe Kollwitz captured the life of socially disadvantaged children and also described the fate of the proletariat in her diary and posters. She was particularly interested in the fate of women who were often alone to raise their children.
A taboo breaker
In early cycles such as "A Weaver's Revolt" and "Peasants' War," Käthe Kollwitz was a trailblazer in tackling drastic themes and didn't shy away from taboos. One drawing of the "Peasants' War" shows a rape. In the 1893/1894 etching "Need" (pictured above), a mother bends over her dead baby.
Finding meaning in black and white
Käthe Kollwitz was inspired by Max Klinger's art-theoretical text "Painting and Drawing," which asserts that prints and the graphic arts should take on a new and significant role in the arts, distinct from painting. She turned darkness into her own language, which she used to express suffering and sorrow.
Turning to sculpture
The quality of her work was thankfully recognized and appreciated during her lifetime. Supported by a letter of recommendation praising her as "one of the most important artists in Germany," she visited in 1904 her great role model, Auguste Rodin, in his studio in Paris. This picture shows one of her sculptures from 1937/38, "Pieta."
The death of a child
The year 1914 changed everything for Käthe Kollwitz. Her younger son Peter volunteered for World War I. He was only 18 years old when he died in Belgium on October 22, three weeks after the start of the war. The mother never recovered from this stroke of fate, feeling guilty that she had helped her son convince his father to let him join the combat.
Grief turned into a memorial
Kollwitz had a particularly close relationship with her son Peter, as she wrote in her diary. After he died in the war, she dealt with her grief in her art. She also decided to create a memorial for her beloved son, which she completed in 1932 — "The Mourning Parents."
Banned from painting under the Nazis
Even in the 1920s, Kollwitz dealt with Hitler's book "Mein Kampf." She had a premonition that there would be another war. Together with writer Heinrich Mann, she campaigned for the merger of the left-wing parties in the elections on March 5, 1933. From 1936 onward, she was not allowed to exhibit her works. On April 22, 1945, a short time before the end of the war, Kollwitz died in Moritzburg.