A short introduction to Kathe Kollwitz and her work, both as an artist, educator and an activist. She experienced two world wars, and her work, although dark and uncomfortable, is telling of the psychological traumas of war. Looking at her work, they truly parallel the emotions generated when looking at the photos of the recent atrocities in Gaza.
Kathe Kollwitz was born in Königsberg, Province of Prussia (now Kaliningrad, Russia), the fifth child in her family. Her father, Karl Schmidt, was a radical Social democrat who became a mason and house builder. Her mother, Katherina Schmidt, was the daughter of Julius Rupp, a Lutheran pastor who was expelled from the official State Church and founded an independent congregation. Her education was greatly influenced by her grandfather’s lessons in religion and socialism. The early death of her younger brother Benjamin also left an impression; in childhood Kollwitz was afflicted with anxiety. She developed a strong interest in art and in 1884 enrolled at the School for Women Artists in Berlin.
In 1889 Kathe married Karl Kollwitz, a doctor who worked in one of the poor districts of Berlin. Inspired by Gerhart Hauptmann’s play, The Weavers, Kollwitz began work on a series of six prints, A Weavers’ Uprising (1893-97). In 1898 Kollwitz began teaching in the School for Women Artists. The following year A Weavers’ Uprising was exhibited in Dresden and purchased by a local museum.
After the success of a Weavers’ Uprising, Kollwitz began work on the Peasants’ War (1902-08). During this period she taught at the Academie Julien in Paris and spent several months in Italy. When she returned to Germany in 1909, Kollwitz began contributing work to the journal, Simplicissimus. Now a committed socialist, Kollwitz produced drawings such as Homeless, Waiting for the Drunkard, Down to the River and Unemployment, that illustrated the poverty of working class people living in Germany.
Soon after the start of the First World War her son, Peter Kollwitz, joined the German Army. He was killed on 22nd October, 1914 at Diksmuide on the Western Front. Over the next few years Kollwitz produced a series of drawings illustrating the impact that war had on women. This included Widows and Orphans (1919), Killed in Action (1921) and the Survivors (1923).
In 1920 Kollwitz joined Albert Einstein, George Grosz, Henri Barbusse and Upton Sinclair to form the International Workers Aid (IAH). She produced several posters for the organisation including Help Russia and Vienna is Dying! Save her Children!
Kollwitz also began work on a series of seven woodcuts called War. This was followed by Mourning Parents, a memorial to her dead son, and a collection of lithographs entitled Death.
In 1933, after the establishment of the National-Socialist regime, the Nazi Party authorities forced her to resign her place on the faculty of the Akademie der Künste. Her work was removed from museums. Although she was banned from exhibiting, some of her work was used by the Nazis for propaganda.
In July 1936 she and her husband were visited by the Gestapo, who threatened her with arrest and deportation to a concentration camp; they resolved to commit suicide if such a prospect became inevitable. However, Kollwitz was by now a figure of international note, and no further actions were taken. On her seventieth birthday she “received over one hundred and fifty telegrams from leading personalities of the art world”, as well as offers to house her in the United States, which she declined for fear of provoking reprisals against her family.
During the Second World War, her grandson, Peter Kollwitz, was killed while fighting for the German Army on the Eastern Front. Kathe Kollwitz died at Moritzburg on 22nd April, 1945.
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