The theme of motherhood also played an important role in the life and work of Käthe Kollwitz. She processed this fundamental experience in a number of representations of mothers and children, in the 1920s especially influenced by her grandchildren.
Sculpture Mother with two children
Depicted is a naked mother crouching on the floor, who protectively embraces her two children in a grand gesture. Together they formally merge into one unit. Kollwitz wrestled with the form for a long time until she finally completed the group of figures in 1937.
Initially planned as a mother figure with one child, the birth of her granddaughters, the twins Jördis and Jutta, in 1923 inspired Kollwitz to add another child to the group. In a letter to her daughter-in-law Ottilie on July 15, 1937, she wrote:
“(…) Because in the meantime the twins had come into the world and since I had seen you then – in each arm a child – it was clear to me that I also had to extend the work by a child. And so everything has slowly grown and grown – until now, when it is finally finished. And so you know how closely you have grown with her – you mother!”
The period from 1923, the year of the twins’ birth, to the completion of the sculpture in 1937 held a number of obstacles, especially in view of the Nazi dictatorship that began in 1933. First of all, work on the sculpture was delayed by the change of studio in 1928 from the studio Siegmunds Hof to the workrooms of the Prussian Academy of Arts in Berlin. In 1933 Käthe Kollwitz was forced to leave the Academy and had to vacate her studio space in 1934.
A short time later she was able to rent a workroom in the Klosterstraße studio community and completed the group there in 1936. Kollwitz initially had the work transferred into cast stone, but thanks to the financial support of the painter Leo von König, she was then able to have the work hewn out in shell limestone in 1937.
Intimidated by the violent Nazi policies, the Nierendorf Gallery did not dare to exhibit her work on the occasion of her 70th birthday. The gallery owner Karl Buchholz took over the birthday exhibition, but it was closed due to an official order. Photographs exist from the exhibition shown in secret, showing the plaster version of Mother with Two Children there. The stone casting and stone setting of the work were lost during the Second World War.
Fortunately, the original plaster model was preserved and is now loaned permanently to the Käthe-Kollwitz-Museum in Berlin. In the 1950s, a model of the work had been taken from it, after which another stone setting was made, which today stands in Fröbelstraße in Prenzlauer Berg.
The bronze casts, which were produced posthumously, also originate from this work model.
