Käthe Kollwitz’s last chalk lithograph was created at the end of 1941 and should be understood as a call for peace.
Kollwitz first wrote the quote from Goethe that she used as the title of the picture in her diary in February 1915, barely four months after the death of her son Peter (1896-1914) in the war. In 1918, she publicly spoke out against the call for more war volunteers, using Goethe’s words.
“Only a part of art can be taught, but the artist needs to make it whole. He who knows only a part is constantly mistaken while talking much; he who possesses art wholly may only create while speaking seldom or late. Those who only know a part have no secrets and no power, their teaching is, like baked bread, tasty and filling for just a day; flour cannot be sown, and seeds of labor shall not be ground.”
Wilhelm Meister’s apprenticeship [erstveröffentlicht 1795/96], Lesson of the 7th book
The artist writes about this in her diary:
The Second World War
As Käthe Kollwitz grew older, she increasingly had to say goodbye to loved ones. Her older brother Konrad had already died in 1932. Her husband Karl died in 1940, and in September 1942 she received the news that her first-born grandson — who bore the name of his deceased uncle Peter — had been killed as a soldier in Russia.
In August 1943, at the urging of her family, Käthe Kollwitz left the increasing bombing in Berlin and found a place to stay with the sculptor Margaret Böning (1911-1995) in Nordhausen. On November 23, 1943, the apartment building in Weißenburgerstraße where the artist had lived for 51 years was destroyed in air raids. Most of her artistic work was brought to safety in time.
In a letter from Nordhausen to her daughter-in-law Ottilie in February 1944, she formulated something like her life’s summary:
This is the last post of the tour through the permanent exhibition “But yet it is art”, learn more about the origins of the museum under the link Museum History or discover places in Berlin with a Kollwitz connection in our tour Käthe To Go.
