Käthe Kollwitz

German printmaker and sculptor (1867–1945)

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Lived 1867–1945, aged 78Germany

Germany ArtistsArtist

Wikipedia
55 languages
Cross-language footprint
Era
1867–1945
Aged 78
Known for
Kollwitz - Ein Leben i…
2015

Summary

Updated 2026-06-12

Her etchings and lithographs made visible what polite society preferred not to see: the hungry, the grieving, the mothers burying children after war and famine. Käthe Kollwitz turned the working class into high art, and Germany's establishment eventually had no choice but to let her in.

Biography

About

Born Käthe Schmidt on 8 July 1867, she trained across painting, printmaking, and sculpture, but found her sharpest edge in the graphic arts—etching, lithography, woodcuts. Her early cycles, The Weavers and The Peasant War, depicted poverty, hunger, and war with a realism that burned. Over time her work shifted toward Expressionism, the forms growing starker, the emotion more raw. In 1919 she became the first woman elected to the Prussian Academy of Arts, and later the first to hold honorary professor status. She died in Germany on 22 April 1945, two weeks before the war ended.

Voice

In their own words

Sourced, dated quotes from Käthe Kollwitz

Käthe Kollwitz

said21 Feb 1944

Every war already carries within it the war that will answer it. Every war is answered by a new war, until everything is smashed.

— Diary entry (21 February 1944).

Käthe Kollwitz

said21 Feb 1944

Pacifism simply is not a matter of calm looking on; it is hard work.

— Diary entry (21 February 1944).

Käthe Kollwitz

said1941

For me the Koenigsberg longshoremen had beauty; the Polish jimkes on their grain ships had beauty; the broad freedom of movement in the gestures of the common people had beauty.

— "In Retrospect" (1941).

Käthe Kollwitz

said28 Jun 1921