What kind of city was it?
Berlin became the capital of the German Empire in 1871. Industrialization was in full swing, many factories and companies had settled outside the city walls, and suburbs such as Moabit and Wedding were incorporated in the city. In 1905, more than two million people lived in the Berlin metropolitan area. Precarious living and working conditions often led to illness, which Karl Kollwitz treated in his medical practice in Prenzlauer Berg. His wife thus became acquainted with such living conditions, which she made visible to a bourgeois public through her art.
In 1920, with a single law passed after the First World War, Berlin became the third-largest metropolis in the world overnight. The city and surrounding affluent areas such as Charlottenburg were merged into “Greater Berlin” in an effort to control social grievances. However, political unrest and severe economic crises during the Weimar Republic again exacerbated the situation with hyperinflation and high unemployment.
Initial plans for a “Greater Berlin” had already been created in 1910. The housing shortage and misery in tenements were to be remedied by a sensible urban planning policy. Werner Hegemann, the curator of the successful urban planning exhibition, had Käthe Kollwitz design a poster for his initiative that was intended to rouse Berliners with the following facts:
“600,000 Greater Berliners live in apartments in which every room is occupied by 5 or more people. Hundreds of thousands of children are without playgrounds.”
