Kathe Kollwitz

Kathe Kollwitz was a German expressionist who lived from 1867 to 1945, her humanitarian representations invoked intense compassion towards the suffering of those conventionally unseen and she utilised art to emphasize political issues which continue to be relevant. She was an artist who was gifted, yet simultaneously cursed, with a burdening empathy for humanity. This endowment led her, along side with a series of hardships, to a life that was saturated in sorrow. At a very young age she witnessed the death of a younger brother, then first handed experienced the rise of Hitler in the First World War and Second World War, and subsequently lost both her son and grandson to both wars. She was not unaware of her woeful perspective, even when she had attempted to turn herself towards joy with her life and work, she found joy to be unobtainable as her life was seemingly brimming with bad luck. As she wrote in her journal: “How can one cherish joy when there is really nothing that gives joy?”1 Although, her sorrow wrought life and work proved that they were not in vain; as her unabridged honesty in her work led to anti-war propaganda, the pioneering of women’s suffering being displayed in art, and her insatiable focus on the working class enlightened all amongst all classes of the gulfs which separate social status. She was a master at showcasing man in his darkest hours from the prospective of the sufferer, inspiring a worldly compassion deep into the veins of all humanity.

She began drawing at a young age and her father, Karl Schmitt, was a constant force in the development of her art. He recognised her talent from early on and encouraged the growth of her skills through lessons and moral support. He worked as a builder and Kathe would join him at work and draw his workmates, a practice that would echo throughout her life. Her father had strong political views as a social democrat, which were heavily transposed onto Kathe. She joined her father in his meetings in The Social Democrat Party political group that he was a member to. It was here where she made long lasting relationships, including meeting her future husband Karl Kollwitz. Through this group, and upon meeting Karl Kollwitz, she gained invaluable developments on her views of Man as an entity and solidified her political philosophies as a socialist. Her upbringing with socialist perspectives whilst within an authoritarian government under the reign of Otto Van Bismarck lead her to having a cynical outlook on social class structure2. Her cynical perspective on class indicates her yearning for a peaceful and
1

Kollwitz, Kathe Northwestern University Press, 1988. The Diaries and Letters of Kathe Kollwitz p. 87 Kerns, Martha, Feminist Press at CUNY Kathe Kollwitz: Woman and Artist, 1976 p.7

2

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egalitarian society, as she quotes Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe in her diary: “Then there arises the splendid feeling that true man is only humanity all together and that the individual can only be glad and happy if he has the courage to feel himself part of the whole.”3 Her parents both directly and indirectly played a large role in shaping her artistic interests. Her father’s socialistic sympathies manifested themselves throughout her life as she diligently made studies of the working class. She used this demographic as a tool to make an exposé of man, showing people in their most tragic form to illuminate the by-products of the late 19th and early 20th century social structure. Her mother, Katharina Schmidt, was said to be a sombre and stoic woman who rarely addressed her emotions. She had lost two children before Kathe, and then a boy when Kathe was young. Her coping mechanisms were inherited by Kathe, as her inability to express herself outside of her work would torture her to the point of having incapacitating stomach aches, panic attacks and days where she was rendered silent by dark thoughts.4 From the examination of Kollwitz’s parents alone, it is apparent on where the seeds to her obsessions of mortality and social injustice flourished from. A perfect illustration of her parent’s influences exhibiting themselves would be her set of works entitled The Revolt of the Weavers. The series was inspired after seeing a play titled The Weavers which dramatized an uprising of factory workers which ended disastrously as they failed to revolt. Kollwitz’s interpretation is a set of six works in lithographs and etchings, arranged in the form of a tragedy whereby there is no climax or conclusion, but rather a steady gaze into the reality of poverty. The Revolt of the Weavers tells the story of a child’s death as the result of detrimental poverty, this part is portrayed in the works “Poverty” and “Death,” then the intended avengement of the child’s death, directed upon the factory owner which is then portrayed in “Conspiracy,” “Weavers on the March,” and “Attack.” The result of the failed revolt and the consequences are in the sombre finale starkly named “The End.” The series is a unbridled exploration of the implications of poverty, and thus revealing the failures of a class structured society. It shows people attempting to reclaim their dignity by uprising against the bourgeois whom had ultimately robbed them of their greatest joy, and what all their efforts pay towards: a child. Yet even with the valour to uprise, they fail then die with no resolution. In principle, The Weavers is a heavy reminder of the importance of modesty, and the shameful power of greed.
3 4

Kollwitz, Kathe Northwestern University Press, 1988. The Diaries and Letters of Kathe Kollwitz p. 81 Kerns, Martha, Feminist Press at CUNY Kathe Kollwitz: Woman and Artist, 1976 P.189-190

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In the first piece titled “Poverty” it shows an emaciated child in a bed with a deeply wrinkled mother hunched over with her hands on her head.

I Kathe Kollwitz [1893] Poverty [etching and drypoint] The intensity of the image bellows from the shroud of darkness that surrounds the child, with the parent not comforting the child but instead approaching realisation that she can only wallow on the inevitability of the starvation of the newborn. The child’s bright face and peaceful repose is over-shadowed by its disproportionate diminutive body up against the surrounding pillow which it fails to even indent. The child’s unavoidable death, leads to the failed revolt which the outcome is depicted in “The End,” which is a juxtaposition to conventional story telling where there would typically be resolution, yet “The End” has an epic anti-climax of catastrophe.

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II Kathe Kollwitz [1897] The End [etching, aquatint] The image shows the weavers returning to the factory, but with fallen members. The man in the middle looking as though all the joy has been wiped from him as though a cold wind has taken the warmth out of his skin. The room is well lit to illustrate that nothing is hidden; the truth there is bluntly lit. The bodies of both the dead and living are accompanied by their life’s work: a loom; a grave reminder of their fate to work or to die as an idealist.

Kollwitz’s fixation with death was oppressive throughout her life, and after the birth of her two sons, she found herself with new feelings of compassion, an instinct that awakened from deep within her. After much protest, Peter her youngest son, joined to fight the war and sacrificed his life doing so, scarring Kollwitz deeply. After growing to know such an intense form of love, then having it taken from her, her views towards war darkened even more and she wished for nothing else but for it to cease. At her core she felt the worst tragedy in a life is to lose a child. In attempt to express these feelings, she created a work for a cemetery for WWI fallen. The work is two granite sculptures where a husband and wife, father and mother, kneel helplessly upon the side of the path towards the site of graves.

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III Kathe Kollwitz [1932] The Grieving Parents [granite] As she grew older, she feared the idea of dying before her husband, because she felt that he could not withstand the loneliness as well as she had grown to bear it, as she wrote in her journal, My wish is to die after Karl. I could endure living alone better than he could, I am also closer to the children… He loves the children enough to die for them, and yet there is alienation between them…I know no person who can love as he can with his whole soul. Often this love has oppressed me; I wanted to be free. But often too it has made me so terribly happy. I scarcely think I would ever leave him for very long.5 She in the end did outlive her husband, and these thoughts of consideration for her husband and children resemble the concepts that lie within her lithograph of “Death and the Woman”

5

Ibid pp.57

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IV Kathe Kollwitz, [1934] Death and the Woman [lithograph] Here you see a muscular woman bound by what is gleaned to be a representation of Death, and a child grasping onto her breast and chest. Her face is that of tranquillity, yet her body is contorted with all muscles working against Death’s bind, signifying her contrasting thoughts on death’s allure of everlasting peace, yet her consuming will as a body and more so of a woman, to care for her child and life’s overall perseverance. The last years of her life, her works were devoted to portraying death, where she made eight lithographs all with a timeless plain background and death preying upon the most vulnerable of victims: young women, children and then an old woman where death only needs to lend a helping hand.

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V Kathe Kollwitz [1934] Death Seizing a Woman [lithograph] “Death Seizing a Woman” has a woman holding her child out of terror, whilst death approaches from behind and his touch induces a harrowing chill through her. Her hand is over the child’s face out of an instinctual protectiveness, yet hope is not present in her eyes as there is revelation that she cannot protect the child from Death. The darkness near the touching of Death and the woman’s face shades to almost utter darkness, giving the impression that the touch is like a lightning strike through her. She feels the fear the inevitable event of her child’s death: something she cannot protect him from. The intensity of her grasp and the vulnerability in her face denote that this is not a fear of the woman’s death, but of the child’s and her powerlessness about it. This work is yet another reminder of Peter’s death, and the depiction of the deepest fears of lack of control of the inevitable.

Kathe Kollwitz endured a life abundant with tribulations, but in turn she used those events to enrich others with a compassionate perspective for humanity. For although her works are abrasive, they branch from her innate desires as a
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human for social equality and passivity. By using intense imagery, her work becomes a reminder of the common denominator amongst all humanity of the fear of death, care for life and the consequences of ignoring those intrinsic human qualities.

VI Kathe Kollwitz [1937] Call of Death [lithograph]

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