Kollwitz’s works for the magazine Simplicissimus were distinguished by their ability to depict complex social problems in simple and vivid images and testify to her ongoing preoccupation with the problems and hardships of the proletarian urban population.
“Been to Mrs. Becker’s. The three-month-old child lies in the carriage, haggard and covered with flies. Trudchen still cannot walk, pale and friendly. Mrs. Becker is not accepted at the pulmonary sanatorium. The husband has work, but makes a bitter impression. Mrs. Becker always with the same kindness and gentleness.
I write to the Simplicissimus and ask if it could use a series of drawings of proletarian life.”
Käthe Kollwitz, August 26, 1909, The Diaries 1908-1943, p. 48
In her depictions, Käthe Kollwitz addresses phenomena such as poverty, unemployment and alcoholism.
“The longer the more I understand the typical unhappiness in blue-collar families. As soon as the husband drinks or is ill and unemployed, always the same phenomena. Either he hangs on to his family like a dead weight and lets himself be fed (…), or he becomes melancholy (…) or goes mad (…) or takes his own life.”
Käthe Kollwitz, September 19, 1908, The Diaries 1908-1943, p. 42
The charcoal drawing “Christmas” from 1909 shows a heavily pregnant woman with two children. It is a drawing for the sixth sheet of the series “Bilder vom Elend” (Pictures of Misery) which was published in “Simplicissimus” on the 24th of January 1910. Kollwitz wrote in her diary on September 19, 1909:
“Today I did the Christmas drawing again and will probably leave it in this way. The woman in labor leans in profile against the fence, her body casts a large shadow on it.”
Käthe Kollwitz, Diaries 1908-1943, p. 52
