Hans Strohbach
Stage/set design for “Masse Mensch” (Mass Man)
1921
(Production by Jürgen Fehling at the Berliner Volksbühne, 1921)
Mixed media
Theater Studies Collection of the University of Cologne
Käthe Kollwitz saw this drama by Ernst Toller (1893–1939) on stage in February 1922, together with a relative, and then wrote about it in her diary:
“It moved me deeply. How he expresses everything that one has tossed and turned over in one’s mind to the point of torment. In the end: ‘One must sacrifice only oneself.’ / The tense, chained masses of workers, upon whom machine-gun fire is unleashed and who sing the Marseillaise, roar, rage—it’s enough to drive one mad.”