Käthe Kollwitz Museum - Berlin |
The art of Käthe Kollwitz has been a part of my life as far
back as I can remember. She produced works that touched my parents on an
emotional level unlike most others. Some of her work lived with them until they
died. So, there was no way that I would miss a chance to visit the Käthe Kollwitz Museum on a trip to Berlin.
The Käthe Kollwitz Museum is housed in a villa built in 1867
in the Charlottenburg neighborhood of Berlin. It houses over 200 pieces by Mrs.
Kollwitz and has a wonderful comprehensive display of her life’s work.
Käthe Kollwitz (nee Schmidt) was born in Königsberg, Prussia (today Kaliningrad, Russia) in 1867. Her father was a
socialist and her mother’s father was a Lutheran
reverend who was expelled from
the state church for being too radical. At sixteen, she moved to Berlin to
attend art school. She concentrated on drawing instead of painting, and her
subjects were often workers, farmers and other oppressed members of German
society. In 1891 she married Karl Kollwitz, whom she had met and started dating
seven years earlier when they both were students. He was now a doctor treating
the poor, and, together a bought a house in a working class neighborhood.
Self-Portait in Bronze |
Kollwitz found that the lives of the working class inspired
her art. She found that their struggles touched her and that creating art that
portrayed their lives gave her art meaning. She looked to both the personal and
political aspects of their lives, something that she did not see a dividing
line between.
Her first major work was a series of lithographs and etchings
called “The Weavers Uprising” (1898). Here she illustrated the failed Rebellion of Weavers in the Silisea section of Prussia.
The rebellion was against the poor wages and oppression suffered by the workers
in the mills. In the end, the Prussian army killed 35 workers in putting down
the rebellion. Kollwitz saw their struggle as connected to lives of the workers
that she lived amongst. The collection was a great success. She followed this
by creating the “Peasant War” series
between 1902 and 1908. Again taking
inspiration from the past, she created a series of etchings to represent the Great Peasant’s War in Germany in the early 1500’s.
March of the Weavers |
Uprising |
Kollowitz was a socialist. She saw workers struggles as being
connected through history. And she saw inspiration in those struggles. But she
was especially inspired by the plight of women. The Peasant Way series put
women front an foremost, in a way that other artists had not done. Her work is
the life of the poor, presented through the eyes of working class women. This
was especially true as she moved into the period between the World Wars.
Memorial Sheet for Karl Liebknect |
In 1920 Kollwitz was elected to the Prussian Academy of the
Arts, the first woman to receive such an honor. However, this era also
represented a time of crisis in Germany. The Weimar republic suffered from
massive inflation, with the U.S. dollar going from around 15 marks at the end
of WW I to literally over 4 trillion marks by November 1923. The working class
of Germany was literally starving in the streets. Kollwitz used her art to
create posters and fliers to call attention to this and demand that the
government take steps to fix the problem.
Never Again War |
Kollwitz was active in many socialist political causes during
the 1920’s, and when the Nazi’s came to power in 1933, she was banned from
exhibiting her work. In 1936, the Gestapo threatened to deport her and her
husband to a concentration camp. Karl
Kollwitz died in 1940, and in 1943 Käthe moved out of Berlin for safety. Her
house was destroyed in an allied bombing raid in 1943. By1945 Kollwitz was
living in the town of Moritzberg, near Dresden, and that is where she died,
just two weeks before V-E day.
Mother and son |
While several institutions in East Berlin supported and
remembered the life and work of Mrs. Kollwitz, residents of West Berlin had
tried for years to achieve official recognition. It wasn’t until the 1980’s
that they achieved it. The museum is part of the “Wintergarden Ensemble” along
with the Literaturhaus and Villa Greisbach Auction House. They reside together on
the grounds of a villa that was slated to be torn down to make way for a new
road. The Käthe Kollwitz museum opened in 1986. A large part of its collection
came from Hans Pels-Leusden, a Berlin painter, who started collecting her work
in 1950. Its exhibits are organized over 4 floors. The ground floor give the
historical context for the life and work Käthe Kollwitz. As you move upstairs,
her works are presented in chronological order on the first and second floors.
Finally, the top floor is given to a recasting of a statue of Mrs. Kollwitz by
artist Gustav Seitz. The original is situated in Käthe-Kollwitz-Platz in
Berlin.
Käthe Kollwitz memorial by Gustav Seitz |
Walking through the museum was tremendously moving. Her work
is not “pretty,” but neither were the lives lived by her subjects. However, in
my opinion, Kollwitz has found the beauty in their struggle. She used her art
to make their struggle and suffering palpable. I always find it hard to pull my
eyes away from her work. It holds me. It makes me yearn for a world their pain,
and the system that causes it no longer exists.
Self-portrait at Table |
Getting There:
The museum is at Fasenenstrasse 24 in Berlin. Entrance is 7
Euros for adults and free for under 18.
Take the U9 subway to Kurfurstendamm station, the U1 to
Uhlandstrasse or the S3 to the Zoologisher Garten. There are also many busses
in the area.
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