Käthe Kollwitz

"I am from the truth of the five senses" Commemoration of Käthe Kollwitz on her 150th birthday

Radical, unerringly realistic and yet poetic - this is how the style of Käthe Kollwitz can be described, which made her one of the most famous women artists of the 20th century. Her creative range encompassed graphic art, painting and sculpture. Over a period of more than 64 years, she produced a large number of lithographs, woodcuts, etchings, engravings and sculptures. Each motif is interwoven with his own areas of life and memories. However, trends such as the reduction of motifs in Expressionism or the objective appropriation of reality in Realism also found their way into her art.

She was born on 8 July 1867 in Königsberg (now Kaliningrad), where she lived until her 18th birthday. Her father Karl Schmidt (1825-1898) discovered her talent at an early age and consistently encouraged it. As he was a liberal advocate of freedom and took part in the 1848 revolution, he was denied employment as a trained lawyer with the Prussian state. Without further ado, he switched to the bricklaying trade and rose to the rank of master craftsman. He also worked as a vicar in a free religious community. Käthe learned to love modelling in her father's business. She found inspiration for this in the nearby iron foundry. Käthe probably inherited her penchant for drawing from her mother. Her parents were very intellectual and well-read, as well as artistically minded. She therefore began drawing lessons at the age of 14. Although she had free access to highly intellectual literature, philosophical texts and art books, she was denied access to academic studies as a woman. A compromise for the 17-year-old was enrolment in the Berlin Ladies' Academy, which was founded by the "Association of Berlin Women Artists and Art Lovers". In the capital, she also met well-known poets and artists who strongly influenced her both thematically and stylistically. Her artistic education was rounded off by lessons at the art academies in Munich and Königsberg. Here she married the physician Dr Karl Kollwitz (1863-1940) in 1891. Together they settled in a working-class district of Berlin (later Prenzlauer Berg), where he opened a general practice. He and his wife shared a social commitment and a focus on the working class, as he committed himself to working as a doctor for the poor. The first-born Hans Kollwitz (1892-1971) followed in his father's professional footsteps, while the other son Peter (*1896) died in 1914. This drastic loss reinforced Käthe Kollwitz' pacifist and socialist attitude to life. With her art, she was in favour of depicting real social circumstances.

A study visit to Paris in 1904 further moulded her creative skills. It became increasingly diverse and the artist more successful, which was reflected early on in awards. This also increased the prices for her works, which she did not necessarily like, however, as ordinary people and workers, who were her subject matter, could hardly afford them. With a watchful eye, she portrayed people in need with a big heart, dignity and touching affection. She never mocked individual suffering. She found motifs everywhere in the ambivalent life of the poor in Berlin, often drawing in homeless shelters, of which there were thousands, or in women's prisons. She herself knew the pain of a mother whose son had been left in the field. She later created a series of pictures on the subject of war ("Seeds must not be ground"). In 1898, her etching series "A Weavers' Revolt" won her considerable laurels at the Great Berlin Art Exhibition. She was now appointed as a teacher at the Ladies' Academy, where she had once studied and lectured for five years. At the same time, she was refused the award of an art medal by Kaiser Wilhelm II, who dismissed her modern style of expression as "gutter art". However, she was awarded the Villa Romana Prize in 1906. This is now the oldest German art prize. Many other honours followed: for example, in 1919 she was appointed the first female professor by the Prussian Academy of Arts, later becoming head of the master class, and in 1929 she was the first woman to be awarded the Prussian Order of Merit for Sciences and Arts. But despite all the accolades, she admits that the fuss she made about herself was always extremely unpopular.

The First World War had taken her son Peter, the Second the grandson named after him, as well as her own home. All her graphics, prints and printing plates fell victim to the bombing in 1943. She herself escaped, fled to a sculptor friend in Nordhausen and moved to Moritzburg with the help of art lover Prince Ernst Heinrich von Sachsen, where she moved into two rooms at the Rüdenhof. The two Countesses zu Münster took a personal risk in 1944, as Käthe Kollwitz had been shamefully ostracised by the Nazis in the meantime. However, in keeping with their Christian convictions, this was an imperative of humanity. In 1945, they were expropriated and forced to flee. Today, a museum commemorates the artist's creative life's work with a current special exhibition to mark the anniversary of her birth. Käthe Kollwitz spent several months there. The view of the castle gave her a brief glimpse of hope. She passed away on 22 April 1945 and found her eternal resting place next to her husband in the family grave in Berlin. The last entry in her diary read: "But one day a new ideal will arise and all war will be over I die with this conviction. You will have to work hard for it, but you will achieve it."

The serious topicality of these words sends shivers down your spine and you have to wonder whether some people have already turned their backs on this work.

Maren Gündel, City Archive

Published in: Radebeul Official Gazette, June 2017