Käthe Kollwitz

German, 1867–1945

BiographyKäthe Kollwitz was born on 8 July 1867, the daughter of Karl Schmidt, a master mason and preacher of the free-religious community in Königsberg.7 In 1881-82, Kollwitz received her first art lessons from the engraver Rudolf Maurer in Königsberg and attended the School for Women Artists in Berlin, where she studied with the Swiss artist Karl Stauffer-Bern from 1885 until 1886. Influenced by Max Klinger's prints, she abandoned painting and turned to graphic art. She married Karl Kollwitz, a medical student, in 1891, and lived with him in Berlin, where she had direct contact with the industrial working class, who were her husband's patients and the subject matter of much of her work.

Kollwitz was also concerned with the interrelated themes of death, war, and maternal loss. Major works include the Weavers' Revolt (1895-98), a cycle of prints based on Gerhart Hauptmann's 1893 drama The Weavers; The Peasants' War (1908), a large-format cycle of prints that established her reputation as one of Germany's most important printmakers; a steady series of drawings published in the satirical magazine Simplicissimus; and posters such as her well-known War--Never Again! (1924). Kollwitz's professional success--marked by exhibitions in honor of her fiftieth birthday in 1917, and her appointment as professor at the Preussische Akademie der Künste in 1919--did not undermine her sense of social calling, reflected in works entitled War, Departure and Death, and Proletariat.

This affinity with socialist causes and communist politics led to the loss of her position and studio at the Akademie when the National Socialists assumed power in 1933. She was prohibited from exhibiting her work, and both her husband Karl and her son Hans were prevented from practicing medicine. Some of Kollwitz's work was included in Hitler's Entartete Kunst (Degenerate Art) exhibition in Munich in 1937. During the same year she finished her monumental sculpture Mother with Twins. Kollwitz died on 22 April 1945, after the loss of her husband, her grandson, her home, and studio, and the destruction of most of her printing plates.