Käthe Kollwitz was a German Artist who who worked with painting, printmaking and sculpture. This film is not a linear narrative, it explores the times between the opening of 1914 and Kollwitz's death in 1945, with a brief sequence regarding her time in Paris. Central to the film and to her life was the death of her son, Peter, in the opening months of WW1. She learned of his passing when her letters to him were returned to her stamped: "Undeliverable. Recipient Deceased.
While she was already a Social Democrat this event turned her into a Radical Pacifist and caused her to contemplate and illustrate war ans the death of her son in her Art. One of her great works being the sculptures of The Grieving Parents a memorial to Peter and his fallen comrades, in the Vladslo German war cemetery, Belgium.
A 97 minute film can only provide a sketch for a life but it shows her drawing Karl Liebknecht as he lay in a morgue with the other Spartacist dead in January 1919, her doctor husband was tending the wounded. We see the consequences of her opposition the Nazis as she is sacked from her academic post and her studio is raided by the Gestapo. Her later years when she was evacuated from Berlin in 1943. But also her being awarded the Pour le Mérite by stuffed shirt officials and a scene in a Berlin Café which brings the film Casablanca to mind.
Käthe is portrayed by Jutta Wachowiak who herself in several sequences goes in search of Käthe Kollwitz. She discusses the challenges of mainly playing the role of Käthe between the ages of 47 and 78. She visits Käthe's grave and notes that it is only 100 metres from that of Rosa Luxemburg. Jutta travels to Belgium and speaks to an artist who helped to erect The Grieving Parents sculpture in 1932 when he was a teenager, she visits the foundry where the Memorial was cast.
While she was already a Social Democrat this event turned her into a Radical Pacifist and caused her to contemplate and illustrate war ans the death of her son in her Art. One of her great works being the sculptures of The Grieving Parents a memorial to Peter and his fallen comrades, in the Vladslo German war cemetery, Belgium.
A 97 minute film can only provide a sketch for a life but it shows her drawing Karl Liebknecht as he lay in a morgue with the other Spartacist dead in January 1919, her doctor husband was tending the wounded. We see the consequences of her opposition the Nazis as she is sacked from her academic post and her studio is raided by the Gestapo. Her later years when she was evacuated from Berlin in 1943. But also her being awarded the Pour le Mérite by stuffed shirt officials and a scene in a Berlin Café which brings the film Casablanca to mind.
Käthe is portrayed by Jutta Wachowiak who herself in several sequences goes in search of Käthe Kollwitz. She discusses the challenges of mainly playing the role of Käthe between the ages of 47 and 78. She visits Käthe's grave and notes that it is only 100 metres from that of Rosa Luxemburg. Jutta travels to Belgium and speaks to an artist who helped to erect The Grieving Parents sculpture in 1932 when he was a teenager, she visits the foundry where the Memorial was cast.
