Filmscreening
Dir: Ralf Kirsten, colour, 93 min., GDR 1986
with English subtitles
As part of the exhibition
"Käthe Kollwitz - Life, Death and War".
A cinematic portrait of German artist Käthe Kollwitz (1867-1945), who was always close to social movements. Apart from reflecting on various stages in her life, the film wants to trace her artistic stimulus and relate it to the political events of the 20th century.
Käthe Kollwitz is 47 years old and already a well-established artist in Germany and abroad when Peter, her youngest son, volunteers to join the German army in WWI and gets killed two weeks later. This painful tragedy changes Kollwitz’s life and art forever.
She becomes a radical pacifist; in her art she reflects on her son and the meaning of war. After signing a petition against the Nazis, she is excluded from the Prussian Academy of Arts in Berlin and her art is labeled “degenerate.” Lonely and sick, Kollwitz spends the last days of her life near Dresden and she dies at the age of 78, before the end of WWII.
Presented in cooperation with the Goethe-Institut Irland.
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