Studio house in Hansaviertel
When her sons Hans and Peter were teenagers, Käthe Kollwitz looked around for a studio outside the apartment, mainly because she wanted to turn to sculpture.
In October 1912, she found a room in the studio house Siegmundshof in the street Siegmunds Hof 11 directly on the Spree. Initially Kollwitz rented the studio for a year, but it turned into 16 years. She stayed until 1928.
The building was commissioned as a master studio building at the request of the Ministry of Culture, apparently against the backdrop of the cramped space in the old Academy of Arts Unter den Linden 38, which only moved to Steinplatz on Hardenbergstraße in Charlottenburg in 1902 and still sits there today. From the outside, the red brick building with its large windows and high ceilings resembled a factory building; it was a functional art production facility, not a representative artists’ house. Dozens of painters, engravers and sculptors had studios in Siegmundshof, among them many women. Despite the long distance from the apartment in Prenzlauer Berg, the studio was easily accessible for Käthe Kollwitz by streetcar and city train. Sometimes her son Hans came to the studio and they discussed her current work. Käthe Kollwitz’s mother lived not far from Siegmundshof at the time.
From 1924, the synagogue congregation Adass Yisroel also used the Künstlerhaus as a synagogue and school. In 1939, the community’s facilities were destroyed by the Nazis. In 1950, the British military government confiscated the building, which was in danger of collapsing due to bombing, and in 1955 the property was sold to a Berlin housing association.
Today, a seven-story apartment building stands there on the edge of the Hansa Quarter; apart from a memorial to the synagogue, nothing reminds us of the historic site. The passable Achenbach Bridge from 1907 next to the building was also bombed away; since 1957, the Wullenwebersteg pedestrian bridge has led across the Spree.
