Kathe Kollwitz: Her Artistic Role in Contemporary Feminism

There is a struggle in forming a universal solidarity based on a common struggle which

has been implied and attempted in the identifying terms 'women of color' (WOC) and 'third

world woman'. I believe that can be implied in art, specifically in the prints of the artist, Kathe

Kollwitz. As a female German social realist artist, Kollwitz calls for social reform and justice

with her graphic and compelling works depicting marginalized people and their struggles and

concerns. During the Wilhelmine era of 1890 to 1918, her career as an artist grew simultaneous

an emerging feminist movement headed by the Bund Deutscher Frauenvereine, or Federation of

German Women's Associations, which strives to improve the rights of women in many sections

of German society (Clark 231).

I will argue that Kollwitz uses the tools of contemporary feminist scholarship of

standpoint feminism, intersectionality and a universal struggle that is implied in Robin Morgan's

concept of a global sisterhood. I will put Kathe Kollwitz in the global context and claim that her

work is transcendental and universal because she stresses the emotional nature and psychological

complexity of women in the context of poverty and war without forming a monolithic

perspective of women as just victims. I will use some of her prints as examples to support my

argument. Overall, by connecting this, I will reveal how Kollwitz is a figure akin to a feminist

scholar and how her artwork accomplishes the same goals.

Standpoint feminism is developed by Dorothy Smith and Patricia Hill Collins. They were

inspired by Karl Marx's socialism and Marxism where systems of power should be explained by

the perspective of the marginalized and socially oppressed in order to objectively analyze the

organization of a system of power, the way women live their lives and how they socially

construct their lives around the system of power that suppresses them (Harding 6).

In the print entitled Raped, Käthe Kollwitz uses women's bodies as a subject matter and

the historical context of the Peasants' War during 1522 to address how war and revolution can

create victims and cause pain and distress to the marginalized people in society, including

women (Prelinger 34). Kollwitz strips bare the pretense of a story line and zones in on the female

victim herself, exposing what and how a woman feels when her body is stripped, violated and

raped. Kollwitz bears the real emotions that is experienced by many women, wives and mothers.

The use of an emotional and psychological inner haptics, or the interior experience involving

touch, is what contemporary feminist scholars would attribute to standpoint feminism.

Kollwitz not only chose women as the subject matter, but she specifically uses a poor

peasant woman as the standpoint in which to portray the emotions of pain, torment and loss of

innocence which then becomes unique to a woman whose identity is socially neglected and

exists in the far edge of the social periphery. Her preoccupation in humanity has her focused on

the people considered the downtrodden of society which includes povertized men, peasant

children, and especially the poor/working-class women who were also mothers, as these women

carried the responsibility of caring for the life and soul of another human. Kollwitz recenters the

spotlight of the narrative of her works towards the people who are socially oppressed away from

the usual protagonists, the bourgeois. This is a similar tactic used in standpoint feminism where

feminists recenter their work towards a marginalized group, which allows for stronger objectivity

and revelations of the systems of power at play.

As evident in her prints, Kollwitz has realized that the people who were marginalized and

existed on the lowest level of the social hierarchy had to be at the intersection of most of the

oppressed identities. This is intersectionality, where struggles become more complex and

convoluted as more crossroads of this type of social divisions intersect (Collins and Bilge 3).

And those who stand at the intersection of these identities experienced struggles that were darker

and raw. When approaching topics such as the Peasant War, the Silesian weavers' revolt, World

War I (WWI) and World War II (WWII), Kollwitz uses an intersectional lens to identify the

most group most subjected to discrimination and harsh treatment. This is because she endeavors

to expose the psychological pain that these events of war and turmoil inflict on its people. In one

of the plates of her cycle, Krieg (War), Das Opfer (The Sacrifice) reveals the internalized

struggle of a mother and her duty to send her son into the battlefield during WWI (Sharp 95-96).

Kollwitz portrays the paradox that was experienced by many women whose duty as a mother

was contradicted when she would knowingly allow her son to die.

Kollwitz also depicts the idea of border of class and gender which aids itself in the

formation of social stratification and injustice, a prominent topic in both Kollwitz's works and

feminist scholarship. A border exists between people within a certain class in the social

hierarchy. In Raped, Kollwitz utilizes the Peasant War as an example from the past to address an

implication for the present and future about the consequences of war and the pervasiveness of the

horrific treatment towards the downtrodden. The consequences and repercussions of rape is

different based on class. In the print, the perpetrator is a male feudal lord who is of a higher class

than the peasant woman, demonstrating the power imbalance between the two subjects and the

violent implications of the extent of exploitation and domination, a theme that becomes exposed

when a feminist academic uses an intersectional lens or feminist standpoint.

Kollwitz's applied universality in the themes or emotions that she conveys is able to cut

across social divisions such as race and gender. Universality is similarly advocated for in Robin

Morgan's global sisterhood which supports for the formation of a solidarity between women

around the world that is based on shared experiences. While the concept seems to check all the

balances in creating international unity for women, the sisterhood implies a universal patriarchy,

disregards the differences between women's lives and experiences, paints women as a monolith

of a victim, and neglects the glaring effects of the processes of imperialism, colonialism and

globalization (Lee & Shaw 6-7).

It is a critique that I do not extend to Käthe Kollwitz. Kollwitz effectively draws out

empathy for the people in her prints, as they experience events and emotions that would affect

the core of people's humanity: loss, grief, depression and regret, during times of violence, stress

and distress. I believe that due to using a perspective akin to that of standpoint feminism, she

exposes the raw emotions that are felt by the downtrodden who are exploited to carry the

plebeians and the national and global social order on their shoulders. When depicting the main

subject matter of the figure, she does not depict her with a literal perpetrator nor an extensive

storyline fleshed out. She focuses in on the woman, her body and the borders surrounding her.

Because the focus is on the woman and not on any male perpetrator, Kollwitz is able to effect a

universality of the emotions of violation and loss of innocence. These emotions are universal.

Furthermore, with the medium of printmaking, Kollwitz is able to produce many prints and

copies of her work to distribute amongst the masses. At one time during world wars, almost

every home possessed a copy of her print (Herbert 3).

In conclusion, the tools that Käthe Kollwitz used in her prints to evoke a sense of

empathy by drawing out raw human emotions, were similar to the models that have advanced

feminist scholarship. The models used in contemporary feminist scholarship include the feminist

standpoint theory and intersectionality which were also employed by Kollwitz who created a

social type of realism that transcends the style and paper of the print to social critique and calls for

justice. Her work is universally applicable beyond social divisions of gender and race, and

national borders.

I want to clarify that I do not want to identify Käthe Kollwitz as a feminist, nor

do I think she held a feminist agenda. Her work shares with feminism the concern for similar

types of people: poor, oppressed, women, children, laborers and people in the working class, and

the people that stands on the intersections of many of these underdog identities that makes them

all the more vulnerable. Furthermore, Käthe Kollwitz and the feminist movement share the

endeavor to explore the ordeals, hardships and emotions that is uniquely experienced by the

people who have been exploited, neglected and marginalized within and by the global order.

I believe that the role of art in feminism needs to not only be acknowledged but expanded

upon. Kathe Kollwitz shows how artists can take on the role of a scholar by taking the writings

of the concepts and models and applying it to an image which can be transcribed in the lives of

the people. This is especially easier to accomplish globally and within the transnational space

that can be accessed through the Internet and social media. Art is a medium in which the tools of

feminism can be wielded.

Works Cited

Bittner, Herbert. Kaethe Kollwitz, Drawings. New York: Sagamore Press, 1959.

Clark, Linda L. Women and Achievement in Nineteenth-Century Europe. United Kingdom:

Cambridge University Press, 2008.

Collins, Patricia H., and Sirma Bilge. Intersectionality (Key Concepts). United Kingdom: Polity

Press, 2016.

Harding, Sandra G. The Feminist Standpoint Theory Reader: Intellectual and Political

Controversies. New York: Routledge, 2004.

Lee, Janet, and Susan M. Shaw. Women Worldwide: Transnational Feminist Perspectives on

Women. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2011.

Prelinger, Elizabeth, et al. Käthe Kollwitz. Washington: National Gallery of Art, 1992.

Sharp, Ingrid. Käthe Kollwitz’s Witness to War: Gender, Authority, and Reception. Women in

German Yearbook: Feminist Studies in German Literature & Culture. University of

Nebraska Press, 2011.