10 questions · Society & Everyday
Käthe Kollwitz is born in Königsberg in 1867 and is able (unusually for the time) to train as an artist, since women are still barred from the state academies and private art schools are the only way in. She marries the doctor for the poor Karl Kollwitz and moves with him to a working-class district of Berlin. What she sees there every day (hunger, illness, hardship) becomes the heartbeat of her art: she depicts not beauty but the lives of ordinary, suffering people. Instead of colourful paintings she chooses the black and white of the graphic arts: etchings, lithographs, woodcuts and later sculpture. Her early cycles 'A Weavers' Revolt' and 'Peasants' War' make her famous; for the Weavers' Revolt she was to receive a gold medal, but Kaiser Wilhelm II refused it to a woman who chose such "gutter" subjects. Then war strikes her own life to the core: in 1914 her younger son Peter is killed in the very first weeks of the First World War. The loss shapes her entire work from then on. For years she works on a memorial to the fallen soldiers, standing as the pair of sculptures 'The Grieving Parents' in a war cemetery in Flanders. Mourning mothers, sheltering hands, Pietà motifs recur again and again. In 1919 she becomes the first woman ever appointed to the Prussian Academy of Arts. But in 1933 the Nazis force her to resign and ban her from exhibiting. Her small sculpture of a mother enfolding her child sums up her lifelong theme. Käthe Kollwitz dies in 1945, shortly before the end of the war: an artist who gave the suffering of the nameless an unforgettable face.
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war, poverty and grief
Her art is considered socially critical and deeply compassionate.
💡 Did you know? Kollwitz gave the suffering of ordinary people a face: hungry children, grieving mothers and the victims of war.
printmaking and sculpture
Kollwitz worked mainly in printmaking (etching, woodcut, lithography) and in old age created powerful sculptures.
💡 Did you know? She almost entirely avoided colour: black and white heightened the intensity of her images.
A Weavers' Revolt
Another famous cycle is the 'Peasants' War'.
💡 Did you know? Her cycle on the Silesian weavers' uprising made Kollwitz famous: but the Kaiser personally blocked a planned award.
because of her socially critical subjects (as a woman)
Kaiser Wilhelm II denied Kollwitz a gold medal; her socially critical images, from a woman's hand, were distasteful to him.
💡 Did you know? The Kaiser dismissively spoke of "gutter art".
the death of her son in the war
The loss deepened her lifelong engagement with grief and war.
💡 Did you know? The death of her younger son Peter at the very start of the First World War filled Kollwitz's work with grief and anti-war motifs.
The Grieving Parents
The pair depicts herself and her husband in silent grief for their fallen son.
💡 Did you know? Her memorial „The Grieving Parents“ still stands in a war cemetery in Flanders near her son's grave.
first woman in the Prussian Academy of Arts
In 1919 Kollwitz became the first woman ever admitted to the Prussian Academy of Arts and made a professor.
💡 Did you know? With the appointment she also received the title of professor.
forced resignation, exhibition ban
She died in 1945, shortly before the end of the war.
💡 Did you know? The Nazis forced Kollwitz out of the academy and banned her works: but did not dare arrest the famous artist.
Foto: Hugo Erfurth · Public domain · Wikimedia Commons
Käthe Kollwitz
Käthe Kollwitz (1867 to 1945) was a German printmaker and sculptor, famous for her harrowing images of war, poverty and grief.
💡 Did you know? Her pietà „Mother with her Dead Son“ stands enlarged today in Berlin's Neue Wache as the central memorial to the victims of war and violence.
1867
Born: 8 July 1867 in Königsberg
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