The Kollwitz family in Prenzlauer Berg
Käthe and Karl Kollwitz moved from Königsberg in East Prussia to Berlin-Prenzlauer Berg in 1891 to Weißenburger Straße 25 on Wörther Platz. Today the street is called Kollwitzstraße in her honor and the house is number 56a at the corner of Knaackstraße directly at Kollwitzplatz.
Sons Hans and Peter grew up in the apartment. Initially, the family lived in a 4-room apartment on the second floor, half of which was used as a practice by the doctor Karl Kollwitz. On the 1st floor Karl’s sister Lisbeth, a teacher, had a room until her death in 1900, which Käthe was allowed to use as a studio in the early days when Lisbeth was at work. Later, the private rooms on the 2nd floor were converted into Käthe’s studio, and the family moved into an apartment on the third floor.The most important of her drawings and graphic works were created here.
At that time, the streetcar and buses departed from Weißenburger Straße directly in front of the Kollwitz family’s front door, so that Käthe Kollwitz could easily move throughout the city.
When the couple settled on Wörther Platz, the neighborhood was mixed; in addition to workers, many white-collar workers, academics and merchants lived in Prenzlauer Berg. Through Karl Kollwitz’s family doctor’s office, the family came into intensive contact with the less well-off residents of the neighborhood. Nearby were social institutions of the city, in Fröbelstraße the hospital and the municipal shelter, in Barnimstraße the women’s prison. In 1892, a market hall was opened on Wörther Platz, but it was not successful due to the high cost of the stall and had to close again in 1910. During World War I, the hall was converted into a soup kitchen for the poor, where about 30,000 liters of soup were cooked and served daily.
During the 2nd World War, on November 23, 1943, the residential building burned to the ground after being hit by a bomb. Käthe Kollwitz had moved to Nordhausen in Thuringia three months earlier, Karl Kollwitz had already died in 1940.
© Museum Pankow
The historic photograph from 1947 shows two men installing the new street sign “Kollwitzstraße”. The old inscription “Weißenburger Straße” is still there, but has already been crossed out.
On the corner lot today stands a Plattenbau without any reference to the history of the place. Two plaques on the facade commemorate the artist. A bronze sculpture depicting her by the sculptor Gustav Seitz has stood on Kollwitzplatz since 1961. In the courtyard of the nearby Museum Pankow at Prenzlauer Allee 227 is a replica carved in stone of Kollwitz’s well-known sculpture “Mother with Two Children.”
The Museum Pankow is located not far from Kollwitzplatz. It is an institution of the Berlin district Pankow and shows permanent and special exhibitions in several locations.
The previous location of the stone setting “Mother with two children” was the garden of the Bürgeramt Prenzlauerberg.
