Kathe Schmidt was born in Konigsberg, East Prussia, in 1867

ALLIANCE 38
December 2000

1) Notes on Käthe Kollwitz (1867-1945)

Contents:
The Cover: Memorial to Karl Liebnicht
Early Family Life
Artistic Training and Early Influences
Married Life And The Mirror of Working Class Miseries
The Print Cycles of "The Weavers" and the "Peasant Wars"
Kollwitz’s Relationship To Communism
Relationship of Her Work to Bourgeois Artistic Movements – "Der Blaue Reiter", "Die Brucke", German Expressionism
Official Recognition
Hitler And the Final Years
BIBLIOGRAPHY AND RECOMMENDED FURTHER READING/VIEWING
[NOTE: For additional web sources on Kollwitz, including illustrations: Through the text, are also placed links to view some of her work. These other Web-sites are not connected to Alliance).

The Cover: Memorial to Karl Liebnicht.
"Die Lebenden den Toten. Errinerung an den 15 Januar 1919" or,
"The Living to the Dead. In Memory of January 15 1919".

After the end of the First world War, German militarism was crumbling. The influence of the Russian revolution had fired the German workers. A mutiny broke out in Kiel in the navy, and this unleashed a storm over Germany of strikes, mutinies and rebellions. Soldiers and Workers Councils were proclaimed. Käthe Kollwitz attended meetings of the Workers and Artists Councils enthusiastically. But the Socialist Party (SPD) social-revisionists were storing up counter-revolution. The SPD Government rejected the demands put by the First Congress of the Workers and Soldiers Councils of 1918, to forward socialization of the means of production and of a purge of the army. Instead it proclaimed elections in a month, on January 9th 1919.

So Karl Liebnicht and Rosa Luxemburg formed the Communist Party of Germany (KPD). Karl had been the son of Wilhelm Liebnicht – the old editor of "Vorwarts" [Forwards], the socialist paper until his death in 1900. Under the leadership of Karl and Rosa, the Spartacus League had previously attacked, from outside, and within the Parliament (Karl Liebnicht was an elected Deputy for the Socialists) the war credits of the SPD to the German imperialists. Now, in a revolutionary environment with the example of Russia before the population, Liebnicht and Luxemburg threatened the post-war capitalist order even more directly. They were therefore murdered by the so called Freikorps ("Free Corps"), under the direction of the German social revisionist leaders of the SPD.

After the murder, Käthe Kollwitz went to the home of Karl Liebnicht – who had been a personal friend. Karl’s family asked Kollwitz – by then a famous proponent in prints (etchings and lithographs) and drawings of the working class – to sketch his death mask and body. She took on this task, creating a vivid memorial of grieving workers by Liebenicht’s bier. It was her first major wood-cut. It’s sharp lines, formed a testament to both the strength of the fallen, and the strength of those left behind to fight for the same cause in which Karl Liebnicht had died. She showed a strength suffused with a human dignity, that took the time needed, to grieve for their own.

Stylistically, her wood-cut showed traditional influences of German art going back to medieval ages with Albrecht Durer, and it showed the context in which she viewed Karl Liebnicht - as a part of the German tradition:

"The title & the dedication became the bottom frame - also the side – of Liebenicht’s coffin in the manner in which a medieval artisan .. would include a notation of the event… As an artist she also inherited the tradition of the old Germanic woodblock which Albrecht Durer had worked, and which in her immediate artistic environment had influenced such contemporaries as Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Karl Schmidt-Rottluff, Max Pechstein and other member of Die Brucke."
Martha Kearns: "Käthe Kollwitz: Woman & Artist"; 1976; New York; pp. 161-162.

But in her hands, the tradition took a different direction than the one taken by the members of "Die Brucke" or the Bridge. Her direction was both to, and from the workers.

Early Family Life:

Käthe Kollwitz was born under the maiden name, Käthe Schmidt in the year 1867, in Koengisberg, East Prussia – now Kallingrad in the former Soviet Union. Kollwitz was raised in a progressive family, many generations of whom had been rebels. Her grandfather actively opposed the state-supported church, and became the first "free" pastor of a non-conformist religion – the Free Religious Congregation. Her father, Karl Schmidt, trained as a lawyer, and actively supported the defeated revolution of 1848. Karl Schmidt never gave give up his socialist views, and knew that his support of the 1948 revolution meant he would never get a job as a lawyer. So he became a stone-mason, progressing to a master mason-house builder. Her mother was also a socialist. The parents raised the children to be socially aware and to fulfill their potential as far as possible.

Käthe herself was later to recall:

"In recent years I feel the influence of two generations in me: my father in close proximity, because he served to introduce me to socialism, socialism understood as the much desired Brotherhood of Man. Behind him stood Rupp, a being not linked to man, but to God the religious man."
"Tagebuchblatter und Briefe [Diary & Letters]"; Ed Hans Kollwitz; Berlin; Gebruder Mann Verlag; 1948.p.163-164.

The family home encouraged progressive literature, identifying with the people. Her brother, Konrad, became an active member of the Communist Party Germany (KPD). She would later marry his socialist friend – Karl Kollowitz. Karl was a medical student. Käthe was fond of Goethe, Tolstoy, Freiligrath and Heine, whom she recited from memory for all her life. Another family favorite was Freiligrath’s German translation of Thomas Hood‘s poem: The "Song of the Shirt":

"With fingers weary and worn,
With eyelids heavy and red,
A Woman sat in unwomanly rags,
Plying her needle and thread –
Stitch! Stitch! Stitch!
In poverty hunger and dirt,
And still with a voice of dolorous pitch,
She sang the "Song of the Shirt"!

Work-work-work-
Till the brain begins to swim,
Work-work-work
Till the eyes are heavy and dim!
Seam and gusset, and band,
And band and gusset and seam,
Till over the buttons I fall asleep
And sew them on in dream".

Artistic Training and Early Influences

But more than literature, it was the visual arts that held her. She later recalled the effect upon her, when as a child she saw William Hogarth's etchings. Her family, encouraged her proficiency and interest in art. Her father agreed with August Bebel’s views expressed in his pioneering book, ‘Woman and Socialism" – that socialists should enable women across all barriers. The earliest pictures Käthe drew were of the Polish dock-workers in the harbor. Her father arranged for special lessons in Koenigsberg, and then sent her to The Berlin Academy of Art, the Women’s School, for training in 1884. Her early pictures aroused her teacher’s interest, who said she was "Just like a Max Klinger!"

Klinger was an exponent of "naturalism" – concentrating on a vivid detailed style. But he also included a heavy element of symbolism, which wove a mysterious element into life’s reality:

"Symbolism: A loosely organised movement in literature and the visual arts flourishing c 1885-1910, characterised by a rejection of direct, literal representation in favour of evocation and suggestion. It was part of a broad anti-materialist anti-rationalist tend in arts and ideas towards the end of the 19 th century, and marked a reaction against the naturalistic aims of the Impressionists. Symbolist painters tried to give visual expression to emotional experiences, or as the poet Jean Moreas put it into a Symbolist Manifesto published in le Figaro on 18 September 1886: ‘To clothe the idea in sensuous form’. Just as Symbolist poets thought that there was close correspondence between the sound and rhythm of words, so Symbolist painters thought that colour and line in themselves could express ideas….. Religious feeling of an intense mystical kind was a feature of the movement but so was an interest in the erotic and the perverse-death, disease and sin were favorite subjects. Stylistically, Symbolist artists varied greatly, form a love exotic detail to an almost primitive simplicity … A general tendency was towards flattened forms and broad areas of colour – in tune with Post-Impressionism in general. By freeing painting from what Paul Gaughin called ‘the shackles of probability’ the movement helped to create the aesthetic premise of 20 th century art. "
"The Oxford Dictionary of Art"; Editors Ian Chilvers & Harold Osborne; Oxford; 1997; p. 546.

    Of course freeing from "the shackles of probability", means freeing from the real and natural world. As such it is moving towards abstractionism. As such it is moving towards anti-materialist art, anti-realist art.

    Kollwitz quickly purged this distracting element from her work. She now went to Munich for further training, already engaged to Karl Kollwitz. She was tormented about deciding between Art and Marriage. For women then more than now, such false choices were a symptom of their societal oppression. Her father argued that if she were to be an artist, she could not marry anyone. Luckily, he did not prevent the marriage to Karl, but he failed to see that Käthe’s determination could achieve both a great career in art and a marriage with Karl. In Munich she began forging her path to a vivid bond with workers the world over. This was a vision of the power of line over a potential distraction of colour. In the place of riotous colour, she would substitute masses and accents, suggesting colour using gradations of black on white in a series of semi-tones.

    She focused on drawing, woodcuts and lithography, all narratives of black-on-white – to depict the real world. She had received some training in etching – but this was largely rudimentary. She in reality taught herself. By the year 1893, she had experimented to the point where she delineated line with an almost infinite degree of shading from black to white. Even at a later stage she continued to experiment – with tusche, crayon, scraping and transfer etc. Still later, she would move under the influence of Ernst Barlach, into wood-cuts – achieving a stark, engrossing clarity. All her artistic life, she drew – again developing a clarity of line. Still later she finally moved into a completely different medium – into sculpture.

    It was these technical skills that would lead to her supremacy as an artist – she would in her early artistic years, slowly move to master her form. She had long ago found her content – working people. Her new life, seeing Dr Karl Kollwitz's working class patients day and night - at their most vulnerable, while confiding in Karl - would give her ample opportunity to see real people close-up. In a perceptive critical comment, Carl Zigrosser describes her as a master of "studies in social drama":

"Kollwitz was, I believe, fundamentally, a dramatic artist who dealt in human emotions and who evoked them with great subtlety through gesture and facial expression. She had the power of rendering feelings corporeal. Her conception often overflowed the bounds of a single print into a cycle of related prints unfolding a dramatic sequence."
Introduction to "Prints & Drawings of Käthe Kollwitz"; Dover Publications; New York; 1969; p.ix,

It is not surprising that with all her formative influences, there was one other non-artistic reason why Kollwitz focused her art on the etching, lithograph and wood-cuts: they were possible to distribute in print runs of at least hundreds, to the people. A single print cost the equivalent of 2-6 dollars in today’s currency. Obviously, a logical extension of this, was into poster art. Kollwitz’s posters were famous and very important in mobilising popular opinion.

Married Life And The Mirror of Working Class Miseries

When Karl obtained a job in Berlin in a working-class district, as a "Krnakenkasse Arzt" physician (A doctor working for the Health insurance fund established by Bismarck, who tried to under-cut the appeal of the Social Democratic party) she went to Berlin as his wife. Karl’s patients were the working poor of Berlin – and especially the wives and children of that class. It is not surprising that much of Kollwitz’s most moving work is of children and mothers. As she wrote in her journal:

"Much later on when I became acquainted with the difficulties and tragedies underlying proletarian life, when I met the women who came to my husband for help and so, incidentally came to me, I was gripped by the full force of the proletarian’s fate. Unsolved problems such as prostitution and unemployment grieved and tormented me, and contributed to my feeling that I must keep on with my studies of the lower classes. And portraying them again and again, opened a safety valve for me; it made life bearable";
Martha Kearns, " Käthe Kollwitz: Woman & Artist"; Cited p.107; from Kollwitz Diary & Letters; p, 43.

And in the detail with which she viewed the life of the workers, she naturally saw the terrible fate of many of them. In some of the most poignant of her work, Death is a constant figure of menace, gloom, and most sadly – in extremes – Death is depicted as a potential friend and liberator from misery:

"The more I see of it, the more I realize that this is the typical misfortune of workers’ families. As soon as the man drinks or is sick & unemployed, it is always the same story. Either he hangs on his family like a dead weight and lets them feed him – cursed by the other members of the family (like the Schwarzenaus or Franks), or he goes mad (likewise Frank) or he takes his own life. For the woman the misery is always the same. She keeps the children whom she must feed, scolds and complains about the husband. She sees only what has become of him, and not how he became that way."
Kollwitz; "Diary & Letters" p. 2. Cited Kearns Ibid; p. 116.

In all this, she saw beauty in the workers. Her aesthetic was different from that of the bourgeoisie:

"My real motive for choosing my subjects almost exclusively from the life of the workers was that only such subjects gave me in a simple & unqualified way what I felt to be beautiful. For me the Koenigsberg longshoremen had beauty… the broad freedom of movement in the gestures of the common people had beauty. Middle class people had no appeal for me at all. Bourgeois life as a whole seemed to me pedantic. The proletariat on the other hand, had a grandness of manner, a breadth to their lives… I have never been able to see beauty in the upper class educated person; he’s superficial; he’s not natural or true; he’s not honest, and he’s not human being in every sense of the word."
From Kollwitz; "Diary & Letters"; p. 43; & interview with Agnes Smedley; "Germany’s Artist of the Masses"; Industrial Pioneers September 1925 p. 9; Cited Kearns; Ibid; p.81.

It was this that led her to a repetitive theme of Death. And death is viewed as a terroriser and reaper, but at times a relief. The relief of the old poverty stricken mother who hears the call of death as a friend. Or the desperate relief of the old man who prepares his own noose in the "Last Resort". This was a recognition of the grim reality of everyday life – and death – of the workers. (Two of her prints-drawings depicting death are at this web-site http://www.uwrf.edu/history/prints/women/kollwitz.html )

Her own personal life undoubtedly reinforced her repetition of themes involving Death. She had two children, Hans and Peter. Both wanted to join the First World War as soldiers. Her eldest, Peter, despite the father and mother’s beliefs, had illusions about the "concept of death for the Fatherland’ and "sacrifice", and joined up. At the same time, Kollowitz was recording in her diary:

"Nothing is real but the frightfulness of this state, which we almost grow used to. In such times, it seems so stupid that the boys must go to war. The whole thing is so ghastly and insane.. How can they possibly take part in such madness?.. All is leveled by death; down with the Youth! Then one is ready to despair";
Kollwitz; "Diary & Letters" p. 63; Cited Kearns Ibid; p. 134

The inevitable happened, and Peter died in October 1914. Kollwitz’s personal tragedy was transmuted into art under the general slogan drawn from Goethe –

"Saatfruchte sollen nicht vermahlen werden"
["Seed for the planting must not be ground"].

The "seed", were the children of course. Perhaps her greatest sculptures are the figures at the cemetery at Roggevelde in Belgium, where her son Peter lay with so many other dead of the inter-imperialist war of 1914-18. (See the sculptures at this site: NOTE: It takes a while to download this site: http://www.liv-coll.ac.uk/europetrip/brussels/kollwitz.htm )

The commemoration figures only took final shape, after eighteen years of hard artistic work and searching, for the best way to express both her own feelings – and those of parents the world over. The two figures are of herself and her husband Karl. She wrote of her last visit to her son’s grave with her husband:

"We went from the figures to Peter's grave, and everything was alive and wholly felt. I stood before: the woman, looked at her - my own face - and I wept and stroked her cheeks. Karl stood close behind me - I did not even realize it. I heard him whhisper, "Yes, yes. How close we were to one another then!"
Kollwitz, "Diary & Letters"; Ibid; pp. 121-122; Cited by Kearns; Ibid; p.201;

Perhaps her currently most famous sculptural work, is the moving sculpture that now stands in Berlin, as a memorial to the dead of all wars, with the name "La Pieta". It depicts a modern woman holding her dead son in her lap and arms. It is perhaps the only one of her works to bear major resemblance to other schools of art than the German realists, as it does remind the viewer of the "Pieta" of Michaelangelo. His was the only art with she fully resonated when she went to Italy to study.

The Print Cycles of "The Weavers" and the "Peasant Wars"

After her marriage, she continued to teach herself, and to refine her techniques of drawing and etching, with experiments in her cramped home-studio next to Karl’s practice. But in 1893, she went to see a play that was to have an immense influence on her art and works. The socialist playwright, Gerhart Hauptmann, showed the misery of handicraft workers, in "The Weavers", depicting the 1840 plight and revolt of the Silesian weavers. Karl Marx commented of the significance of this revolt, using the Song of the Weavers as an example of the new proletarian consciousness:

"Not one of the French and English workers’ uprisings had such a theoretical and conscious character as the uprising of the Silesian weavers. First of all recall the Song of the Weavers, that bold call to struggle, in which there is not even a mention of hearth and home, factory or district, but in which th proletariat at once, in a striking, sharp, unrestrained and powerful manner proclaims its opposition to the society of private property. The Silesian uprising begins precisely with what the French and British workers uprisings end, with conciousness of the nature of the proletariat."
"Critical Marginal Notes on the Article, "The King of Prussia and Social Reform. By a Prussian"; From Collected Works Volume 3; Moscow; 1975; p. 201. Cited in: "Marx & Engels On Literature And Art"; Moscow; 1976; p. 433.

Käthe Kollowitz called the play a "milestone" in her work. She produced six prints (three lithographs and 3 etchings) known as the "Weavers Uprising", over the four years of 1893-1897. She repeatedly tackled the themes, recalling that "My work on this series was slow and painful… a child of sorrow." (cited Kearns; Ibid; p.70). But the result was as Carl Zigrosser puts it, a:

"Landmark of class-conscious art".
"Prints & Drawing of Käthe Kollwitz"; New York; Dover Publications; 1969; Introduction; p.ix.

When shown at the Great Berlin Exhibit of 1898, the series caused a sensation. The Artists Jury was presided over by the renowned bourgeois realists Max Libermann and Adolf Menzel. The series was awarded the Artists’ Jury of Award Gold Medal, but Kaiser Wilhelm II vetoed this decision. The Kaiser called all socially conscious art "Rinnsteinkunst" (gutter art). One year later, after a showing the Dresden museum brought the prints, and the King of Saxony agreed with the Museum Director Max Lehrs – that she be awarded a Gold Medal. As a woman of thirty-two, Kollwitz described the effect:

"From then on, at one blow, I was counted among the foremost artists of the country";
Cited by Kearns Ibid; p.76.

The sequence of pictures in the Weavers Series is: "poverty"; "death"; "conspiracy" (See this at http://www.csulb.edu/library/arts/ - Use side bar menu to go to Kolwitz); "weavers on the march"; "attack" (see this at: http://www.uwrf.edu/history/prints/women/kollwitz.html ); "the end".

Women are seen in this series as direct participants of battle, as Kearns notes:

"They grieve, march, fight bravely-and it is they who stand stalwart in loss. Finally, and perhaps most significantly, Kollwitz’ "child of sorrow’ presented the death of a child is the force that drove a community of workers to revolt".
Kearns; Ibid; p. 75.

Kollwitz continued on with the theme of women as revolutionaries, within the people's movement. Her etching with acquaint "der Aufruhr"["Uprising" finished 1899] showed peasants in revolt over whom a woman hovers with a flame (See this at http://www.csulb.edu/library/arts/ - Use side bar menu to go to Kolwitz). But it was in her later series about the German Peasant War, that she depicted most vividly the woman revolutionary – as a direct comrade-in-arms and participant – with men in revolution. She had begun reading Charles Dickens’ "A Tale of Two Cities", about the French Revolution. She came across his description of the band of women singing "La Carmagnole" ("O, let us dance the Carmagnole, Long Live the sound of the Cannon!"). According to Sheila Rowbotham, women revolutionaries formed their own battle battalions. As Dickens puts it in A Tale of Two Cities:

"There was no music other than their own singing. They danced to the popular revolution song, keeping a ferocious time that was like a gnashing of teeth in unison."
Cited Kearns; p. 84.

    Kollwitz’s print (etching with acquatint) of the Carmagnole, with revolutionary women dancing around a guillotine, became popular. She read Zimmerman’s "The Great German Peasant’s War", describing how peasants rose against their serf oppressions. This print series took her six years to complete from 1902-08. Kollowitz turned to an incident of 1525, in which a woman, "Black Anna," inspired peasants to revolt against injustice. The series begins with "Losbruch" [Outbreak], where peasants rise, incited by Black Anna’s signal.

    This single piece led the Association for Historical Art to commission her to do a full series. A further six etchings showed the progress from describing the brutal deprivation and misery of the serfs (In "Die Pfluger" [The Ploughman - See this at this web-site:      http://itech.dickinson.edu/gallery/Sect13.html ) and "Vergewaltigt" [Raped]) See this at http://www.csulb.edu/library/arts/ Go to Kathe Kollwtiz on the side bar menu)], to the preparations for revolt ("Beim Dengeln" [Sharpening the Scythe] and "Bewaffnung in Einem Gewolbe" [Distribution of Weapons in a Vault]); through to the aftermath where the mother searches for the body of her son in "Schlachtfeld" [Battlefield] and the final "Gefangnis" [prisoners]. (Some related prints to these series are also at the web-site noted above: http://www.csulb.edu/library/arts/ Go to Kathe Kollwtiz on the side bar menu).

    Through all this, peasants and proletarians – are depicted – whether men or women as active, not helpless victims. They are fighting their oppressions.

    She was now asked to teach at the same Berlin School of Art for Women from which she had graduated. She also did some further study in Paris and , on a scholarship she won the Villa Romana Prize from Max Klinger in 1907, allowing her to go to Italy.

    On her return to Germany, she resumed her work as a committed artist, working for the Left wing satirical journal Simplicissimus. This period saw exceptionally fine, simple charcoal drawings such as "Homeless " – all were published in a series known as "Bilder vom Elend". [Portraits of Misery]. She now had a sufficiently mature technique to allow self-expression, without needing a model. She enjoyed this work for the journal as it:

"Gives me opportunities…to express.. what always moves me again and again, and has not been said enough: the many quiet and loud tragedies of city life".
Bonus-Jeep: "Sechzig Jahre Freundshaft mit Käthe Kollwitz (Sixty Years of Friendship with Käthe Kollwitz")"; Berlin; Boppard, Karl Rauch Verlag, 1948; p.101; Cited by Kearns; Ibid; p.108.

Kollwitz’s Relationship To Communism

So Kollwitz depicted the life of the workers, with its human pleasures - enjoying companionship and children - but she also saw its bitternesses and misery. It is these double-edged tones of Kollwitz that both touches Communists, and alarms them. For Kollwitz did at times, undoubtedly draw life from only one perspective – that of the here and now. This no doubt was the reason the German KPD communist workers party was restrained in their appreciation of her. In fact they criticized her work. They also objected to her doing the memorial of Liebnitz – on the extraordinary grounds that she was not a member of the KPD. Regrettably, such sectarianism was a characteristic strand, within sections of the KPD.

Kollwitz wrote in her diary of this rebuke from the KPD:

".. I simply should have been left alone, in tranquillity. An artist.. cannot be expected to unravel these crazily complicated relationships. As an artist I have the right to extract the emotional content out of everything, to let things work upon me and then give them outward form. And so I have the right to portray the working class’s farewell to Liebnicht, and even dedicate it to the workers, without following Liebnicht politically. Or isn’t that so? "
Kollwitz "Diary & Letters"; Ibid; p. 98; Cited by Kearns Ibid; p. 163.

In contrast to these sectarian attitudes of the KPD, the non-sectarian attitudes of Marx and Engels to the non-party poet Heinrich Heine whose art they admired and published, and likewise Lenin’s to the non-party writer Tolstoy, should be cited.

She herself openly stated that she was not a communist.

"In the meantime I have been through a revolution, and I am convinced that I am no revolutionist. My childhood dream of dying on the barricades will hardly be fulfilled, because I should hardly mount a barricade now that I know what they are like in reality. And so I know now what an illusion I lived in for so many years. I thought I was a revolutionary and was only an evolutionary. Yes sometimes I do not know whether I am a socialist at all, whether I am not rather a democrat instead. How good it is when reality tests you to the guts…Konrad & I too would have probably been capable of acting in a revolutionary manner if the real revolution had had the aspect we expected. But since its reality was highly un-ideal and full of earthly dross-as probably every revolution must be - we have had enough of it. But when an artist like Hauptmann comes along and shows us revolution transfigured by art, we again feel ourselves revolutionaries, again fall for the old deception. June 28th, 1921".
"Diary & Letters of Käthe Kollwitz"; Edited Hans Kollwitz; Translated R & C Winston; Henry Regnery Co; Chicago; 1955; ; p.100

She knew that her artistic contents, had led many people to protest that she was only dwelling on the gloomy side of things. She viewed this as necessary, since it was life, and besides - it was true:

"May 1917:
My Hans – .. this issue of the Montsheft … there is an essay on my show in it. An essay by Liese which I like very much. …. She makes a point, which is for the most part ignored when people assert that my one subject is always the lot of the unfortunate, Sorrow isn’t confined to social misery. All my work hides within it life itself. And it is with life that I contend through my work. It is difficult to express oneself clearly about one’s work. At any rate I feel that Lise’s conception is very close to mine…"
"Diary & Letters of Käthe Kollwitz"; Edited Hans Kollwitz; Translated R & C Winston; Henry Regnery Co; Chicago; 1955; p. 157.

But there can be absolutely no doubt whose side she was on. She was a clear and open supporter of the workers and their cause. She believed in the Soviet Union:

"This is not the place for us to discuss why I am not a Communist. But it is the place for me to state, that, as far as I am concerned, what has happened in Russia during the last ten years seems to be an event which both in stature and significance is comparable only with that of the great French revolution. An old world, sapped by four years of war and undermined by the work of revolutionaries fell to pieces in November 1917. The broad outline of a new world was hammered together. In an essay written during the early years of the Soviet Republic, Maksim Gorki speaks of "flying with one’s soles turned upwards". I believe that I too can sense such flying in the gale inside Russia. For this flying of theirs, for the fervor of their beliefs, I have often envied the Communists."
Written 1927, for Arbeiters International Zeitung ("The Workers International Paper): Cited in Kearns Ibid; p. 194.

This was written, on the occasion of a visit to Russia sponsored and paid for by the Soviet Union, as part of the exhibitions of her work held in Soviet Russia. These were held, during the 10th anniversary celebrations of the October Revolution. Her work was very popular in the Soviet Union. That visit inspired her later art as well. In the mass rally in Red Square, she had seen a scene of men and women crossing arms and singing the "Propeller song." Later, at the request of Soviet artists, she translated a sketch of this, into a statement on the imperialist war on the Soviet Union – in the print "Wir Schutzen die Sowejetunion (Das Propellerlied)"; [Solidarity-We Protect the Soviet Union – The Propeller Song]. (An earlier print, made into a famous poster, called "Hilfe Russe!" ["Help Russia"] - was made to gather solidarity for the Soviet Union, at the time of the imperialist encirclement following the October Revolution; and it can be seen at this web site: http://www.csulb.edu/library/arts/ ). She also drew at the same mass rally, a sketch of a man with his two children listening to a political speech at the same rally of the 10th anniversary, which later became the print "Zuhorende" [Listening].

Moreover, she did not accept the state of affairs, as a fate simply to be given and to be accepted for ever and ever. She wrote to her remaining son Hans, about the example of the Soviet Union:

"My Dear Hans!…. You know how at the beginning of the war you all said: Social democracy ahs failed. We said that the idea of internationalism must be aside right now but back of everything national the international spirit remains. Later on this concept of mine was almost entirely buried; now it has sprung to life again. The development of the national spirit in its present form leads into blind alleys. Some condition must be found which preserves the life of the nation, but rules out the fatal rivalry among nations. The social democrats in Russia are speaking the language of truth. That is internationalism. Even though, God knows, they love their homeland. It seems to me that behind all the convulsions the world is undergoing, a new creation is clearly in the making. And the beloved millions who have died have shed their blood to raise humanity higher than humanity has been. That is my politics, my boy. It comes from faith. April 2, 1917. "
Käthe Kollwitz; "The Diary & letters of Kaethe Kollwitz"; Edited Hans Kollwitz; Chicago 1955; Published by Henry Regnery Company; p. 156

But, she was no sentimentalist either, and she painted and drew life as it really was. Her view of art and art’s mission was explicit. She was asked by several Humans Rights Aid groups (Including that set up by the Comintern leader Willi Munzenberg), to do posters on aid for Vienna. In this united front she worked with Albert Einstein, Upton Sinclair and others. In connection with the wood-cut she did: "Wien Stirbt! Rettet Seine kindern!" [Vienna is dying! Save her children!], she said:

"I have again agreed to make a poster for large-scale aid program for Vienna. I hope I can make it… it has to be done quickly…. I want to show Death.. swing(ing) the lash of famine… I really feel the burden I am bearing, I have no right to withdraw from the reasonability of being an advocate. It is my duty to voice the suffering of men, the never-ending sufferings heaped mountain high….. January 4th 1920" .
"Diary & Letters of Käthe Kollwitz"; Edited Hans Kollwitz; Translated R & C Winston; Henry Regnery Co; Chicago; 1955; ; p.100

"At such moments, when I know I am working with an international society opposed to war, I am filled with a warm sense of contentment. I know, of course, that I do not achieve a pure art in the sense of Schmidt-Rottluff’s, for example. But still, it is art. Everyone works the way one can. I am content that my art should have purpose outside of itself. I would like to exert influence in these times when human beings are so perplexed and in need of help. Many people feel the obligation to help and exert influence but my course is clear an unequivocal; November 1922."
"Diary & Letters of Käthe Kollwitz"; Edited Hans Kollwitz; Translated R & C Winston; Henry Regnery Co; Chicago; 1955; ; p.104.

On a series of woodcuts that took her years to summarise the 1914-1918 war, a series called War, she wrote:

"This series of woodcuts is more human; it attempts to grasp and express that time. … I have received a commission from the International Trade Union Congress to make a poster against war. That is a task that makes me happy. Some may say a thousand times, that is not pure art, which has a purpose. But as long, as I can work, I want to be effective with my art";
Briefe der Freundschaft und Begegungen (Letters of Friendship & Acquaintance"; Ed Hans Kollwitz; Munich; List Verlag, 1966. p.95; Cited in Kearns Ibid, p.172;

It is no surprise that organizations like the Trade Union Congress in Amsterdam, and the International Workers Relief Organisation asked her to do posters for them. She was invariably able to hit the graphic messages that were needed - whether for homes and against miserable housing as in 1912 "fur Gross Berlin –"Spielen Verboten" [For a Greater Berlin! ‘Playing In the Yard Is Forbidden!’]; food: "Deutschlands Kinder Hungern! [Germany’s children are Starving] in 1924; or anti-war work: Die Ubelrlebenden [The Survivors] in 1920; or internationalism in 1924: Verbruderung [Brotherhood].

Relationship of Her Work to Bourgeois Artistic Movements – Der Blaue Reiter, Die Brucke, German Expressionism

By now it should be obvious to the reader, that her work bore little relationship to officially sponsored art. Of course the best representatives of bourgeois realism had recognized her work from its first blasts - artists of the caliber of Max Liebermann and Adolf Menzel, and even Max Klinger. But, her work focused more steadily and unflinchingly on the need for change. It did not simply record the life of the workers, even though with sympathy, as Liebermann and Menzel had done in their bourgeois realist manner. She went beyond sympathy. Even if the KPD did not quite see this, it was true. As such the attempt by some non-Communist art commentators to classify her with three bourgeois art movements must be considered. All three in one form or another, were reactionary movements, that were set against the realist art known as Impressionism.

One was Der Blaue Reiter ["The Blue Rider] formed in 1911 by Franz Marc. It was named after a painting by Marc. This movement was characterised by the view that art should discard:

"External realties in favour of the expression of the artists inner-spiritual psychological or emotional - truths."
Martha Kearns Ibid; p. 139.

"Their bond was a general desire to embody symbolically in their painting spiritual realities, which it was thought had been neglected by the Impressionists."
"Oxford Dictionary of Art"; Ibid; p.66.

Die Brucke ["The bridge"] formed in 1905 by Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Erich Heckel and Karl Schmidt-Rottlufff. It was named from a desire to serves as a bridge to the art of the future. It ist rue that they were moved by an "impulse of revolt", and wished to battle "established older forces". But they were anti-realists:

"In practice they turned against realism and Impressionism and under the influence of Munch and Hodler created an intense and sometimes angst-ridden version of the Expressionism which stemmed from Van Gogh, Gaughin, the Nabis etc….. forms were often harshly distorted…. Violence was exploited for its own sake; forms and colours were tortured in the attempt to give psychological and symbolic vent to a vaguely conceived creative urge and a sense and a sense of revolt… In 1913 Kirchner wrote: "We accept all the colours which, directly or indirectly, reproduce the pure creative impulse".
"Oxford Dictionary of Art"; Ibid; p. 87; p.192

One could reply to Kirchner, which colours are not part of the "pure" creative impulse? This movement believed in a "pure art" and an art imbued with the artist’s "inner life".

By 1916, both the two schools had dissolved into the broader school of German Expressionism. They brought with them a common belief in the primacy of ‘inner life’. The Editors of the Oxford Dictionary of Art, define Expressionism as being that:

"Term…, in which traditional ideas of naturalism are abandoned in favour of distortions and exaggerations of shape or colours that urgently express the artists emotion. … art that elevates intense subjective reactions above the observation of the external world.. The principles of Symbolism .. became of importance for Expressionism proper as a vehicle of communication".
"Oxford Dictionary of Art"; Ibid; p.191.

It should be obvious from both Kollwitz’s work alone – and her own descriptions of her absorption with the life and concerns and struggles of the workers and peasants – that she could not possibly ally herself with these types of artistic philosophy. Thsoe that turned away form the world.

By definition that inward turning – away from the world external and denying its’ reality – served the interests of the bourgeoisie. This is irrespective of the objective desires of the artists in that movement. It is objectively, Idealism in art. It came to its pinnacles in the various art movements such as Surrealism, and Art Dada. Even though some of its exponents were attempting to turn away from the capitalist values that had brought the First World War, its sterility, elitism and 'intellectualism' was to condemn its exponents to an alienation from the masses. The best artists managed to break through this barrier, recognizing that this was no solution to the problem. These included Helmut Herzfeld or John Heartfield, as previously discussed by Alliance. But Kollwtiz was never distracted by these ephemeral movements.

The editors of the Oxford Dictionary of Art mistakenly state:

"In its elimination of the accidental instinctive gasp of the tragic essential, and its poignant concern for human suffering Kollwitz’s work represents one of the highpoints of German Expressionism and of 20th century art";
"Oxford Dictionary Art"; Ibid; p. 303.

But clearly, Kollwitz was the antithesis of these various German movements, culminating in German Expressionism. She described it herself, describing her work as unlike the "pure art of Schmidt-Rottluff" – as cited above. But her journal entry for 1916 is even blunter:

"E.Von Keyserling …. Opposes expressionism and says that after the war the German people will need eccentric studio art less than ever before, What they need is realistic art. I quite agree - if by realistic art, Keyserling means the same thing I do…
It is true that my sculptural work is rejected by the public. Why? It is not at all popular. Art for the average spectator need not be shallow. Of course he has no objection to the trite - but it is also true that he would accept art if it were simple enough. I thoroughly agree that there must be understanding between the artist and the people. In the best ages of art that has always been the case. Genius can probably run on ahead and seek out new ways. But the good artists who follow after genius - and I count myself amongst these - have to restore the lost connection once more. A pure studio art is unfruitful and frail, for anything that does not form living roots - why should it exist at all?
Now as for myself. The fact that I am getting too far away form the average spectator is a danger to me. I am losing touch with him. I am groping in my art….. I vowed to myself and Peter that I would be more scrupulous than ever in "giving the honor to God, that is, in being wholly genuine and sincere". Not that I felt myself drifting away from sincerity. But in groping for the precious truth one falls easily into artistic over-subtleties and ingenuities - into precocity. I… must watch out. Perhaps the work on (Peter’s) memorial will bring me back to simplicity".
"Diary & Letters of Käthe Kollwitz"; Edited Hans Kollwitz; Translated R & C Winston; Henry Regnery Co; Chicago; 1955; pp.68-69.

Official Recognition

As she became more actively sought after for commissions, she also became recognized by the official art establishment for her achievements. A large retrospective of her work was held on her 50th birthday at the Paul Casssier Gallery in 1917. Already by 1919, she was elected to the Berlin Academy of Art as a titled Professor – she was the first woman to be so honoured in the history of that academy. By 1928, Käthe Kollwitz was promoted to become the first woman department head at the Prussian Academy of Arts. She was teaching the graphic arts course.

Hitler And the Final Years

    In 1932 Kollwitz joined with other socialists in signing an appeal of unity against the Nazi Party. In 1933, when Hitler came to power, she was forced to resign from the Academy, along with Heinrich Mann – a co-signatory of the appeal of unity against the fascists. In 1936 she was barred by the Nazis from exhibiting, her art was not formally labelled as classified as 'degenerate', but her works were removed from galleries. Following an interview with her that appeared in the Russian Izvestia (1936), she was threatened by the Nazis. They did not actually follow through their threats to imprison her, probably because of her fame, and the popularity of both herself and her husband in the working class neighborhoods of Berlin.
    Even though she was offered safe passage to New York by artists there (Erich Cohn) she refused them. Instead she and her husband made a pact not to be taken by the Nazis – they carried to their ends, a vial of cyanide with which they would poison themselves if needed to avoid Nazi imprisonment.
    She became even more obsessed with the themes of death, in what little work she could do. However the vigorous late print of 1942, reverted to her resistance with the old theme of "The Seed Corn Must Not be Ground" , that she had drawn from Goethe's phrase. That print was completed at the age of seventy-four, during the war itself. Her neighborhood was in the middle of the Allied bombing zones, and the work was completed in that intense period. After this, she received the news that her grand-son – also named Peter – having been drafted into the army, had fallen in Russia. She also in this period commemorated the death of Ernst Barlach with a death bed drawing. Barlach had also been treated as an enemy artist by the Nazis.
    In 1943, she evacuated Berlin for Mortizburg and died days before the end of the war hidden in a castle belonging to Prince Heinrich - a sympathiser of her art.
    In the spring of 1945, Kollwitz knew she was dying.
    "War', she wrote in her last letter, 'accompanies me to the end.'

She died on 22 April 1945, two weeks before the end of World War II.

BIBLIOGRAPHY AND RECOMMENDED FURTHER READING
NB: The best illustrations are to be found in Zigrosser’s compilation.

Kollwitz, Kathe: "Tageubuchblatter und Briefe [Diary & Letters]"; Ed Hans Kollwitz; Berlin; Gebruder Mann Verlag; 1948

Kollwitz, Kathe: "Diary & Letters of Käthe Kollwitz"; Edited Hans Kollwitz; Translated R & C Winston; Henry Regnery Co; Chicago; 1955

Kearns, Martha: "Käthe Kollowitz: Woman and Artist"; New York: The Feminist Press, 1976

"Marx & Engels On Literature And Art"; Moscow; 1976

Mina C. Klein and H. Arthur: "Käthe Kollwitz: Life and Art"; New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1972

"The Oxford Dictionary of Art"; Editors Ian Chilvers & Harold Osborne; Oxford; 1997

Zigrosser, Carl: "Prints & Drawings of Käthe Kollwitz"; Dover Publications; New York; 1969

For additional web sources on Kollowitz, including illustrations see:

This web-site has some 29 of her works, including drawings and posters. It is the best of the web-resources that we have found thus far: At the site: go to Kathe Kollwitz on the side menu-bar- there are three seperate sub-menus showing her work. http://www.csulb.edu/library/arts/

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/ARTkollwitz.htm http://www.uwrf.edu/history/prints/women/kollwitz.html http://www.liv-coll.ac.uk/europetrip/brussels/kollwitz.htm http://itech.dickinson.edu/gallery/Sect13.html

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