Mütter (Mothers),

1919

In 1914, at the outset of World War I, Kollwitz’s younger son, Peter, enlisted as a rifleman and was killed soon after. This immense personal loss profoundly affected her art. Here, Kollwitz depicted a huddled mass of figures—mothers with arms clasped tightly around their children and a woman who buries her face in her hands. Kollwitz wrote of this work: “I have drawn the mother who embraces her two children; I am with my own children, born from me, my Hans and my Peterchen.” Each woman bears some resemblance to Kollwitz but can be understood as universal; they are Kollwitz, but they are also every mother who struggles to protect her children. Themes of grief, death, and motherhood continued to pervade Kollwitz’s work through the early years of World War II, when her grandson, also named Peter, died on the battlefield.