Kathe Kollwitz Museum

About this place

Kathe Kollwitz, who lived from eighteen sixty-seven to nineteen forty-five, was a draughtswoman, printmaker and sculptor who made poverty, grief and war almost her only subject. She lost her son Peter on the Flanders front in nineteen fourteen, weeks after he volunteered, then a grandson of the same name in nineteen forty-two, and she was forced out of the Prussian Academy of Arts in nineteen thirty-three. This museum holds the largest collection of her work anywhere: around three hundred drawings, virtually the complete printed graphic work, plus sculpture and posters. It opened in nineteen eighty-five, then closed for roughly three years of rebuilding and reopened on the eleventh of October, twenty twenty-five, under the name of its new address, the Kollwitz Forum, in the same block on Neumarkt. The work is mostly small and in black and white, and it needs time and proximity rather than a quick circuit. The rebuild added a workshop with a historic lithographic press and stations explaining etching and poster technique, which helps anyone who does not already know the difference between a metal-plate etching and a stone lithograph. St Aposteln basilica stands directly opposite.