ESSA Berlin: Käthe Kollwitz

 

Käthe Schmidt, later Käthe Kollwitz by marriage, was born on the 8th of July in the year 1867 in

Königsberg, Prussia. She quickly gained skill and a reputation as an artist at the encouragement of her parents. In 1886, she was engaged to Karl Kollwitz. She took classes in art and was tutored by various artists between 1886 and 1889. Her son was killed in WWI, deeply affecting her and her art. Her art was removed from museums during the degenerate art campaign from 1933 to 1939. Her husband died in 1940 and she would die on the 22nd of April 1945, just months before the war ended.

She had a large influence in her local civic and artistic spheres. In 1893, she took part in her first art exhibition in Berlin. Here she would also teach at a school for women artists and join the Secessionist movement. In 1919, she became the first woman to become a full member of the Prussian Academy of Arts (where she was also later given honorary professor status). In 1929, she was the first woman to be decorated with the German Pour la Mérite award in the arts and sciences. She was invited to Moscow on the 10th anniversary of the October Revolution. She protested war throughout her life in both word and art pieces.

Her commemoration comprised things that happened in her lifetime as well as after she passed away. She received numerous honors and awards in her lifetime, like the Villa Romana Prize in 1907, the Pour la Mérite award, honorary professorship, and many others. In 1993, an enlarged version of her statue Mother with her Dead Son was placed in the Neue Wache in the monument to the Victims of War and Tyranny. Her pacifism was deeply rooted in her personal philosophy, so commemorations of what she did also, in a way, have commemorated who she was. This is the best kind of commemoration there is.