Käthe Kollwitz

Käthe Kollwitz was a German artist known for prints, drawings and sculpture depicting poverty, grief, war and social injustice. Her work drew on the lives of workers and on personal loss, including the death of her son in the First World War.

Kollwitz opposed militarism and created some of the twentieth century’s most powerful images of mourning and maternal suffering. The Nazi regime forced her from official positions, but her reputation continued to grow.

In William T. Vollmann’s Europe Central, Real and fictional lives are paired across the two regimes: Käthe Kollwitz attempts to preserve humane art under Nazism; Kurt Gerstein enters the SS and tries to expose mass murder; Friedrich Paulus is trapped with the Sixth Army at Stalingrad; and Andrey Vlasov crosses from Soviet command into collaboration with Germany.