Kollwitz, Käthe (1867–1945)

Käthe Kollwitz is considered one of the greatest printmakers of all time. She produced technically masterful, emotionally powerful, etchings, woodcuts, and lithographs, typically in black and white. A staunch socialist, her work featured passionate calls supportive of workers' solidarity and against war and poverty.

Käthe Schmidt was born into a politically progressive family in Königsberg, East Prussia. Her parents encouraged her talent and sent her to an art school for women in Berlin. Though a feminist, she knew that, as a single woman in the late 1800s, the opportunities for her to support herself as an artist were nonexistent. As a married woman, she reasoned, she would have more independence than she would have otherwise. In 1891, with the understanding that she would not give up her work, she agreed to marry Karl Kollwitz, her suitor of 7 years. A physician, he worked in a poor district of Berlin, where the couple also lived. Marriage offered her the economic and emotional security she needed to pursue her art.

Although herself middle-class, Käthe Kollwitz never romanticized the harsh realities of the working-class women who populated her husband's office and her work. Kollwitz's portraits of women, including herself, depict physical, not sexual, beings with strength, intelligence, dignity, courage, determination, and compassion. Maternity is a central subject throughout Kollwitz's work but became especially poignant when Peter, one of her two sons, was killed in World War I. Over the next several years, between bouts of serious depression, Kollwitz illustrated the impact of war on mothers in works including Widows and Orphans, Killed in Action, and The Survivors. These were followed by Mourning Parents, a memorial to her dead son.

Kollwitz wanted her work to make a difference and hoped it would inspire people to action. Her work was popular, but also controversial. Yet, despite suffering ramifications from the Kaiser and the Nazis, she never faltered in her convictions.

In 1920, Kollwitz joined Albert Einstein, George Grosz, Upton Sinclair, and others to form International Workers Aid (IAH). She produced several posters for IAH including Vienna Is Dying! Save her Children!

In 1932, Kollwitz added her signature to a socialist, anti-Nazi appeal of unity. In 1933, the Nazis forced her to resign her position as the first female professor at the Prussian Academy, a post she had held since 1919. Subsequently her artwork was banned. Kollwitz was otherwise ignored by the Nazis and miraculously did not suffer the fate of many other artists and “subversives” who were sent to concentration camps.

During her final years, Kollwitz produced bronze and stone sculpture, embodying the themes evident throughout her printed work. Much of her art was destroyed in a Berlin air raid in 1943 when a bomb hit her home. Shortly afterward, Kollwitz was evacuated to Dresden, where she died in 1945, days before the war ended.