This lithograph
was created by Kollwitz to express solidarity with the Soviet
People, who were being demonized by the Nazi Party. Kollwitz's
call for solidarity between German and Soviet workers was an extremely
courageous stance for her to take considering the fanatical anti-communism
of the German right. Kollwitz never fled Germany, and by some
miracle the Nazis did not throw her into a concentration camp
to suffer the fate of other artists.
In 1935 the
fascists had her thrown out of her teaching position at the Berlin
Academy of Art in retribution for her having signed an "Urgent
Appeal" against Nazism. She suffered other restrictions such
as being forbidden to exhibit or sell her works, but otherwise
the Nazis ignored her. Kollwitz
became a socially conscious artist after she lost her son Peter
in the first World War. From that point on she began to create
works that were not only against war, but were against those who
advocated and planned for war.
As a pacifist,
Kollwitz was a passionate advocate of the working class, and there
are few artists in history that have shown such a tender, authentic
concern for the poor. Käthe Kollwitz worked primarily as a Graphic
artist who was deeply engaged in printmaking, and her works appeared
in many leftist publications in pre-Nazi Germany. In a terrible
irony, it was not the Nazis who destroyed Kollwitz's art, it was
the Allies.
The artist's
home was hit by an Allied bomb in the waning days of the war and
the great majority of her print works and drawings were destroyed
in the explosion. Only a small portfolio Kollwitz carried with
her survived. The artist died in Moritzburg Germany in 1945. Today
the definitive collection of Kollwitz's work is housed in Germany
at the Käthe Kollwitz Museum Koln (located in the City of Cologne).
I had the immense pleasure of visiting the museum in the late
1990's, and if you ever visit that city the Kollwitz Museum should
definitely be on your travel agenda. The museum has a web page
that unfortunately is in German only, but the site provides some
essential information nevertheless: www.kollwitz.de
