Page 38 - Studio International - December 1967

Käthe Kollwitz

Frank Whitford

1867 8 July, Kathe Kollwitz It is of course not difficult to find artists of standing who pay. In Berlin they did not live in a fashionable district,
born in Konigsberg (East had nothing to do with the National Socialists: virtually but among the workers, and they both took a personal
Prussia); 1885-6, studies in every artist with claims to consequence was declared interest in his patients. It was 'particularly through my
Berlin; 1888-9, studies in
Munich; 1891, marries Dr `decadent' and forbidden to exhibit. But the number of husband that I got to know the darker side, the tragedy
Karl Kollwitz and moves to artists found wanting by the Nazis and who also worked of the proletarian way of life. I became acquainted with
Berlin; 1895-8, The Weavers in a Realist idiom are few and far between; moreover, it women patients of my husband who would also pay me
(etching series); 1902-8, The is often precisely those artists branded by the Nazis who visits at the same time . . . unsolved problems like
Peasants' Revolt (etching exhibit tendencies distant from the classic Marxist- prostitution and unemployment disturbed, tortured me
series); 1904, trip to Paris;
1907, trip to Italy; 1914, son Leninist line. and it was one of the reasons why, as an artist, I felt
Peter falls at the front; 1923, Kathe Kollwitz is different. Condemned by the Nazis, drawn to treating the working class . . . as Zola once
The War (woodcut series); she was responsible for a body of work which exalted the said: "le beau c'est le laid".'
1927, extended travels in
Humble, the Meek and the Working Class without being The use of the word 'proletarian' is significant, as is
Russia; 1933, asked to resign
drab, sentimental, falsely monumental, or exhibiting any the reference to Zola. That any sensitive person should
from the Academy of Art;
1934-5, Concerning Death of those other qualities normally associated with Socia- have been tortured and disturbed is no wonder; they
(lithographic series); 1940, list Realism. She was pro-Soviet, anti-Nazi, and an ideal were disturbing times, and Kollwitz suffered more at the
Karl Kollwitz dies; 1942, wife and mother. And the hundredth anniversary of her hand of political events than most. In the First War she
grandson Peter falls in the birth was celebrated more conspicuously in East than lost a son, in the Second, a grandson. In Berlin she saw
war; 1943, evacuated to West Germany. the collapse of the Monarchy, the violence of the
Nordhausen; 1943, Berlin
appartment destroyed by For someone of her education and upbringing Kollwitz November Revolution, lost everything she had in the
bombing; 1944, moves to was unusually in touch with the problems and conditions Deflation, watched the Weimar Republic decline.
Moritzburg; 1945 April 22, of the poor and the socially inferior. Both her father, Political assassination, street fighting, were daily occur-
dies in Moritzburg.
brother and husband had leftward leanings, and her rences until the Nazis assumed power, and then the
husband, who was a doctor, put his beliefs into practice solutions they found were not only personally repugnant
by taking many more poor patients than those who could but brought an art policy which branded her.