Friendship was of great meaning for Käthe Kollwitz. Despite different personal struggles and political changes, she maintained many friendships throughout her life.
Käthe Kollwitz’s political commitment was deeply influenced by her family. Her older brother Konrad and her husband Karl were members of the Social Democratic Party (SPD). The artist herself was involved in many social and women’s rights initiatives while also being involved in Berlin’s multifaceted art scene.
Käthe Kollwitz met the poet, and eventually her friend, Gerhart Hauptmann as a young woman. She quickly became personally acquainted with her colleagues Max Klinger and Auguste Rodin, whom she initially valued as artistic role models. She was closely associated with the painter Max Liebermann from their first Berlin exhibition participation in 1893. They remained friends through their joint membership in the Berlin Secession and their forced removal from the Prussian Academy of Arts after the National Socialists came to power in 1933.
Gerhart Haupmann – The poet
Käthe remembered meeting Gerhardt Hauptmann very clearly as stated in her “Look Back at Earlier Times”. Perhaps somewhat inaccurately portraying her own age, she painted a vivid picture of the evening they spent together in Erkner:
“We stopped by in Berlin to meet the young Gerhart Hauptmann. (…) He wasn’t famous yet, having only written the Promethidenlos. He lived in Erkner in a house situated in a large garden. I remember that we sat together in a large room (…) festively (…). It was an evening that had a lasting effect on us. (…) We all wore rose crowns and drank wine, and Hauptmann read from Julius Caesar. All of us, young as we were, felt enraptured. It was a wonderful prelude to the life that then gradually but inexorably opened up to me.”
Käthe Kollwitz, Looking back on earlier times (1941) In: The Diaries 1908-1943, Munich 2007
Hauptmann’s play “The Weavers” inspired Käthe Kollwitz in 1892 to create her artistic series the Weavers Cycle, which marked her artistic breakthrough as an artist.
Max Liebermann – The well known artist
Max Liebermann (1847-1935) was one of the young artist’s earliest supporters. Her cycle A Weavers’ Revolt in 1898 impressed him so much that he proposed it be commended by the Kaiser. But the Kaiser, Wilhelm II, found the socially critical approach of The Weavers’ Revolt outrageous and labeled the works as suitable only for sewage. The Dresden Kupferstichkabinett (Museum of Prints and Drawings) under the direction of Max Lehrs, however, shared Liebermann’s perspective and purchased Kollwitz’s first works in 1898. Max Lehrs wrote an article about Käthe Kollwitz in 1901, to which Liebermann commented to Lehrs:
“(…) best thanks for kindly sending me your article. It was all the more interesting to me as I have been working hard for Mrs. Kollwitz for years. I was the one who won the medal for her in the jury and it was hardly 8 days ago that the Socialistische Monatshefte (Socialist Monthly News) asked me to speak about her. I would have liked to do it very much; but I find the artistic writings too difficult, also it would have taken too long until I would have scribbled together a few pages. Therefore, I have asked our mutual friend Loeser to write the article.”
Käthe Kollwitz and her friends, published by Käthe Kollwitz Museum Berlin, Berlin 2017, p.55
Marianne Fiedler – a college friend
Marianne Fiedler (1864-1904) came from an upper middle-class background and grew up in Dresden-Blasewitz. Art played a central role in her family and Marianne’s talent for drawing was recognized and encouraged from an early age. In 1888, she began studying art at the Ladies Academy in Munich, where, like Käthe Kollwitz, she was a member of Ludwig Herterich’s painting class. Today we can only speculate about how close the two artists were. In the diaries and later records of Käthe Kollwitz, Marianne is mentioned only rarely. Beate Bonus-Jeep was able to narrate more detailed incidents in her book “60 years of friendship with Käthe Kollwitz”, amongst other things, about their joint trip to Venice at Easter 1890.
“Marianne was equipped with the necessary fullness from top to bottom in a beautifully measured way. She carried her head free and high and had a mouth in her well-formed features that opened and closed with such grace that even the hint of Saxon speech suited her. We painters found the fiddler beautiful and enjoyed the impression with pride when she came along in Venice through the halls in the Doge’s Palace, dark blond, curly, full of grace … as if the same master had thought her and the rooms out for each other.”
Beate Bonus-Jeep: Sixty Years of Friendship with Käthe Kollwitz. Boppard 1948, p.28-37
After their studies, the lives of the two artists diverged. While Käthe went to Berlin as the wife of Karl Kollwitz and tried to harmonize family life and art, Marianne Fiedler continued her independent life. She travelled to Florence and Rome, was in London for a long time and finally returned to Dresden. From 1893 she participated in collective exhibitions in Dresden, Munich, Berlin and Vienna. A year later, the Dresden Kupferstichkabinett even presented a solo exhibition of her works. Director Max Lehrs promoted the young artist and acquired, among other things, her multicolored lithographs for the graphic collection. In 1900 Marianne married Johannes Müller, a theologian of the same age, and the marriage was quickly followed by three children. Art “was not a job for her, but an indispensable expression of life,” Johannes Müller later commented, but the premarital, lively exhibition activity was now a thing of the past. Marianne Fiedler died in 1904, one week after the birth of her third child.
Julius Elias – The art critic
The art critic and publicist Julius Elias (1861-1927) commented on Käthe Kollwitz several times, especially in the magazine Die Nation. As early as 1893, the artist’s first works caught his eye. He mentioned her for the first time in his article about the Free Berlin Art Exhibition:
“Almost all viewers, however, have missed the decided talent of a woman who will be able to bear the opprobrium of initial rejection all the more easily because she can be sure of a successful future.”
In March 1894, Julius Elias again addressed Käthe Kollwitz in Die Nation, p. 386:
“I would like, as far as space allows me, to bring forth, in a few words, some women whose lively aspirations to rise well deserve to participate. Fortunately, Käthe Kollwitz, a scion of the school of the Munich Herterich, developed; last summer I discovered her to be exceedingly remarkable among the group of artists rejected by the great exhibition. Her masters have since become Raffaelli and Liebermann. She depicts the state and life of the suburbs, wistfully, but without tendency. A strong sense of painterly effects, especially lighting problems.”
In her diaries, Käthe Kollwitz mentions Julius Elias only once. But there must have been a certain relationship of trust between them, because asking for his opinion, the young artist was one of the first to show him her cycle A Weavers’ Revolt.
Albert Einstein – A friendship in spirit
Albert Einstein’s (1879-1955) interest was aroused by an appeal from Kollwitz’s pen that appeared in the Social Democratic Vorwärts shortly before the end of the First World War. In it, she called for an end to the fighting and concluded with a quote from Goethe that she was to call her legacy toward the end of her life: “Seeds shall not be ground!”
There was a kinship in spirit between the artist and the physicist. They were active together in various political associations, signed the same manifestos, and spoke out together for certain goals. In the 1920s, both were at the height of their social standing and were considered credible figures of identification. Einstein, who was regarded by his admirers as the “political conscience of the world,” and Kollwitz, who was preceded by the reputation of the “social artist.”
Not all contacts between them were political. Kollwitz’s prints impressed Einstein so much that he once said of them “that he could not sleep just thinking about them.”
His personal esteem is evident in his support for the installation of the memorial to the fallen for her son Peter. Einstein had seen the presentation of the sculptures in the National Gallery with his stepdaughter Margot in the summer of 1932. Through his daughter, Einstein learned that Belgium had little sympathy for the installation of the parents’ monument in the military cemetery in Flanders, so he turned directly to the Belgian queen, who was on friendly terms with him, and as early as July 1932 the monument could be erected in Belgium.
As their last joint action, both signed the Urgent Appeal in 1932. In the same year, Einstein did not return to Germany from a lecture tour in the USA.
