Lovis Corinth
Rudolf Rittner as Florian Geyer
circa 1915

Watercolor and black chalk, heightened with opaque white

Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Kupferstichkabinett

The actor Rudolf Rittner (1869–1943) played the title role in the new production of Hauptmann’s Peasant War drama Florian Geyer at the Lessingtheater in Berlin in 1904. The stage design and costumes were by the painter Max Slevogt (1868–1932). Rittner was known to Käthe Kollwitz as Moritz Jäger from the premiere of “The Weavers.” Lovis Corinth (1858–1925) was so impressed by the actor that he depicted him several times in the costume and pose of Florian Geyer.
There is evidence that the artist was familiar with Hauptmann’s play. However, we do not know whether she saw it on stage, and it has not yet been investigated whether it had any influence on her cycle on the Peasants’ War. Kollwitz herself rejected belles-lettres as a source for her work.

Käthe Kollwitz
Uprising
1899

Etching, drypoint, aquatint, brush etching, emery, and some roulette in black and red on copperplate paper

Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Kupferstichkabinett

This etching represents the artist’s first engagement with the theme of the German Peasants’ War of 1524/25, to which she later devoted a cycle. Like Gerhart Hauptmann (1862–1946) for his drama, Kollwitz also states that her source for this was Wilhelm Zimmermann’s (1807–1878) historical treatise.
The question arises as to whether she was not inspired to deal with the subject by the premiere of Florian Geyer in 1896. A comparison with Corinth’s watercolor reveals two defining elements that are found in both Corinth’s and Kollwitz’s works: the flag and the fire.

Käthe Kollwitz
Outbreak
Sheet 5 from the cycle Peasants’ War
1902/03

Etching, line etching, drypoint, aquatint, and vernis mou

Käthe Kollwitz Museum Berlin

In her series Peasants’ War, Käthe Kollwitz took up for the first time the motif of the (human) crowd, which had emerged with the industrial age and was a theme in contemporary theater. According to a psychological theory by Gustave Le Bon (1841–1931), a group of individuals can merge into a crowd in which the individual disappears. This mass acts like a living being, led by individuals who emerge from it as leaders.
The print “Outbreak” reveals revolutionary energies. The mass of farmers charging forward in a wedge formation forms an inextricable mixture of limbs, heads, and weapons. Only a few individuals can be distinguished.

Käthe Kollwitz
Ploughman with standing woman in the foreground
Rejected third version of plate 1 from the Peasants’ War cycle
1906?

Etching, needlepoint and vernis mou with transfer print on copperplate paper, reworked with pencil, opaque white and brown ink

Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Kupferstichkabinett

This early version of the first sheet in the etching series “Peasants’ War,” entitled “The Ploughmen,” once again highlights the theatrical nature of Käthe Kollwitz’s pictorial concepts. As on a stage, the scene is divided into a foreground and a distant background. In the theater, this background would be represented as a painted backdrop. The figures depicted present us with a story from the past for which we have no pictorial documents.

Käthe Kollwitz
The Prisoners
1908

Charcoal on brown paper

Käthe Kollwitz Museum Cologne

Käthe Kollwitz
The Prisoners
Sheet 7 from the cycle Peasants’ War
1908

Etching, line etching, drypoint, emery, and vernis mou

Käthe Kollwitz Museum Berlin

While the peasants, huddled together after their defeat, are primarily preoccupied with themselves in the upper composition drawing, the final version of the sheet shows a figure in the center that is particularly emphasized. She seems to be the only one staring intently at the viewer. With this figure, the artist invites us to empathize with the miserable situation of the prisoners.
It seems as if Käthe Kollwitz had the later viewer in mind when she created her design, as someone who could be addressed directly. Like the performers on stage, she was also aware that she had an audience to whom she wanted to communicate something.

Emil Orlik
The Tavern on the Border with Saxony from Schiller’s “The Robbers”
1908

Gouache

Theater Studies Collection of the University of Cologne

The scene in this tavern is similar in structure to Kollwitz’s etching “Four Men in a Pub.” In this tavern scene, too, a dramatic conflict comes to a head. Here, the ‘good’ brother Karl receives a message forged by his “evil” brother that their father has disowned him.
Orlik (1870–1932) also places a group of men with their backs to the viewer in front of a window. With appropriate stage lighting from behind, the shadows cast here and there would suggest that events arising from the situation are about to unfold.

Emil Orlik
Franz Moor’s Room in Schiller’s “The Robbers”
1908

Gouache

Theater Studies Collection of the University of Cologne

In 1908, Emil Orlik (1870–1932) was commissioned by director Max Reinhardt (1873–1943) to design the sets for his new production of Friedrich Schiller’s (1759–1805) drama “The Robbers” at the Deutsches Theater Berlin. Paul Wegener (1874–1948) took on the role of the jealous Franz.
It is likely that Käthe Kollwitz saw this production on stage. On the one hand, she held her colleague Orlik in high regard, and on the other, she had also performed the play with paper theater puppets together with her sister Lisbeth in her childhood. In addition, her brother Conrad had published a positive review of this production.

Emil Orlik
Area on the Danube for Schiller’s “The Robbers”
1908

Gouache

Theater Studies Collection of the University of Cologne

The stage design shows the hideout of Franz Moor’s band of robbers, which was located in the woods on the Danube.
When Hans Kollwitz wanted to become an actor after graduating from high school, his parents asked the famous actor Paul Wegener for his opinion. In 1909, Hans auditioned for him with a part from The Robbers, among others, but was unsuccessful. At the same time, Wegener was playing Franz Moor in a current production of the play.

Johann Ferdinand Schreiber (publisher)
The Robbers
No. 504, picture sheet
after 1877

Paper, printing techniques

Berlin City Museum Foundation

Not only Käthe Kollwitz, but also her sister Lisbeth could still remember playing with paper theater puppets as children. She recalled that the two of them had played with characters from Friedrich Schiller’s play The Robbers, among others.

J. F. Schreiber (manufacturer)
Paper theater with proscenium, Berlin
circa 1900

Theater with architecturally structured stage, wooden frame for changing backdrops, stage set “Forest” by Schreiber, Esslingen, and figures for Schiller’s Robbers.

Berlin City Museum Foundation

As a young girl, Käthe Kollwitz loved to play theater with paper figures together with her sister. These were bought as picture sheets, colored with ink, and then cut out. The sisters did not have a perfect theater, but made do with building blocks, chairs, and tables.
This stage for cardboard figures is nevertheless interesting because it shows how a scene was staged in large theaters at that time: painted backdrops were either pushed onto the stage from the side or lowered from above from a pull-down ceiling.

Emil Orlik
Portrait of Hermann Bahr
1908

Etching, drypoint, roulette in brown-black

Private collection, Cologne

In 1948, Hans Kollwitz remembered his mother as a person who had a great sense of humor and loved to laugh. The artist is known to have enjoyed performances of comedies such as “Das Konzert” (The Concert) and “Das Prinzip” (The Principle) by Hermann Bahr. She saw the latter comedy in January 1913 together with her husband and son Peter.

Of the many comedies written by Bahr, this last one can best be compared to his masterpiece, the effervescently funny “Concert.” Carried by an excellent performance, his cheerful mood swept the audience along; one could not only laugh out loud, but also quietly enjoy the approval of one’s intellect. The surprise was all the more pleasant given that “Children” and “The Little Dance”, the two comedies that appeared after “Concert,” seemed to signal an inability to develop further. Certainly, “The Principle” is also fleeting, if you will. The author does not care about a handful of improbabilities, even impossibilities; he glosses over many important things and sketches the humanitarian world-improvement enthusiast Esch, who according to the title should be the main character, with only a few very caricatured strokes. But this summarily erratic approach works at the same time with such daring élan, such a wealth of ideas, contrasts, and meaningful psychological insights that one is happy to accept it as “poetic license.”

Conrad Schmidt: Vorwärts, 21.1.1913

Emil Stumpp
Portrait of Alfred Kerr
1926

Lithograph

German Historical Museum Foundation, Berlin

Alfred Kerr (1867–1948) initially studied German language and literature in Breslau and Berlin and wrote his first newspaper articles while still a student. He became one of the most renowned theater critics of his time, writing for various newspapers, including the Vossische Zeitung and the Frankfurter Zeitung. Kerr was friends with Gerhart Hauptmann and had supported him in his younger years.

Ernst Stern
Four stage sets from “Danton’s Death”
1916
(Production by Max Reinhardt at the Deutsches Theater Berlin, 1916)

Pen and ink

Theater Studies Collection of the University of Cologne

After attending the play in December 1916, Käthe Kollwitz wrote in her diary: “Very powerful. Final scene: the guillotine on the Place de la Bastille. Two drunken servants sweep the blood from the steps and leave, bawling. The triumph of madness.”

Ernst Stern
Bridge in Paris
1916
Stage design (squared) for “Danton’s Death”
(staged by Max Reinhardt at the Deutsche Theater Berlin, 1916)

Pencil, watercolor

Theater Studies Collection of the University of Cologne

Alexander Moissi (1879–1935) also played the leading role in Max Reinhardt’s (1873–1943) production of Georg Büchner’s (1813–1837) drama “Danton’s Death,” which Käthe Kollwitz saw at the end of 1916. She was so impressed by the performance that she sent her sister Lisbeth and her son Hans to the next performance.
The squaring on this draft shows that Stern’s image idea was enlarged directly to create a background stage set for the production. This makes it possible to understand the visual impression that Kollwitz had on stage.

The play at the Deutsches Theater flew by at a rapid pace, with Reinhardt’s usual imaginative and atmospheric staging of the crowd scenes. The first scene shows the great revolutionary, tired of politics, sitting at a card table surrounded by his friends, listening to a frivolous young woman recount her adventures. The stage darkens, and amid shrill cries, the image of lighthearted enjoyment is transformed into a picture of the terrible hardship facing the people.
[…] An aristocrat who has strayed into the crowd is to be punished for his pristine clothes by being hung from a lamppost, but escapes death at the last moment. What good are the severed heads of aristocrats to you, cries a street agitator, when your skirts are full of holes and your stomachs remain empty and hungry? Courage and despair mingle with excited laughter and the dance of the Karmagnole. […]
At the end, Reinhardt was called out stormily.

Conrad Schmidt: Entertainment section of Vorwärts, December 17, 1916

Sándor Járay
Portrait of Austrian actor Alexander Moissi
Model circa 1915 (?)

Bronze

Berlin City Museum Foundation

Käthe Kollwitz greatly admired Alexander Moissi (1879–1935) in various roles. She found the actor to be “enchantingly charming and spirited” in his portrayal of Everyman. In 1912, she wrote to her son Hans: “Except for Hamlet, I have never seen him perform so well.”

Alexander Moissi
Monologue from Shakespeare’s “Hamlet”
Original recording from 1912

Deutsche Grammophon-Aktiengesellschaft

Saxon State Library – Dresden State and University Library

Listen to what Käthe Kollwitz heard on stage: Alexander Moissi (1879–1935) recites the famous Hamlet monologue from the third act about “to be or not to be.” 

Scan the QR-Code on the object label.

Fritz Erler
Design for Hamlet, Prince of Denmark
Scenes I.1 and I.4, 1909

Oil on canvas

Theater Studies Collection of the University of Cologne

It is unclear when Käthe Kollwitz saw the production of Hamlet that Max Reinhardt staged at the Deutsches Theater in 1909. In a letter to her son Hans in 1912, she mentions in passing that she found the actor Alexander Moissi (1879-1935) particularly good in the role of Hamlet.

[…]The decorations were extremely simple, clearly modeled on those of the Munich Artists’ Theater, whose limited space he had to contend with. Only the snow-covered castle terrace, the tall forest of halberdiers’ spears, and perhaps Ophelia’s funeral procession, dark against the light sky, had something pictorially imaginative about them, despite the great simplicity of the stylization. The sketches of the castle chambers and galleries were characterized by a restraint that here and there went too far and turned into sobriety. […]

The highlight of the evening, a triumph for the actor Reinhardt himself, who, despite initial failures, unwaveringly challenged his talent—which had been marred by severe affectation—with ever new and greater tasks, was Moissi’s Hamlet. […]

He was a handsome prince, yet without the slightest hint of conventional theatrical idealization, marked by the finest intellectualism, amiable and gentle by nature, a deeply introspective man who, thrown off course by a terrible experience, fought in vain against his paralysis with shame and fear.

Conrad Schmidt: Vorwärts, 19.10.1909

Virtues and shortcomings of the performance… The virtue lay in its greater simplicity. […] Now, in “Hamlet”… the core space remains virtually unfilled, but nowhere do secondary matters become the main focus.[…]
Hamlet, a conversation piece. In some places, quite rightly so. Twenty years after the founding of the Freie Bühne, people in their city certainly speak more naturally […]
The most serious flaw, in my opinion, lies in the lack of control over the individual parts. The line towards the end becomes wavering, dull. A great director, it seems to me, brings intensity; he brings a sense of the whole; here, it is piece by piece (and fading towards the end)… the second half is fleeting… I don’t notice any growth in what has been achieved… One sees a tasteful Hamlet drama. Much of it is neatly toned, attuned, appealing, refined, delicious. I don’t want to say: a charming Hamlet. But instead of mythical clouds, something well-defined. […]
Moissi (with all his charms) was not a creature obsessed with ultimate questions. […]
A touching little Hamlet, yes. […] Alongside all the wonderful things. But we knew he had that. He was even charming … Except that he wasn’t that man in that play.

Alfred Kerr: Der Tag Nr. 245, 19.19.1909

Fritz Erler
Design for “Hamlet” 1909
Mixed media

Theater Studies Collection of the University of Cologne

Max Reinhardt (1873–1943) staged William Shakespeare’s (1564–1616) drama “Hamlet” in 1908 at the Künstler-Theater in Munich and in 1909 at the Deutsche Theater in Berlin.

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.”

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

Hermann Krehan after Robert Neppach
Stage/set design for “Die Wandlung” (Transfiguration)
undated
(Production by Karlheinz Martin at Die Tribüne Berlin, 1919)

Gouache

Theater Studies Collection of the University of Cologne

On October 12, 1919, Käthe Kollwitz recalled in her diary that she had seen her son Peter for the last time on that day five years earlier, shortly before he was killed in World War I on the Western Front in Flanders. Against this backdrop, she was reluctant to attend the evening performance of Ernst Toller’s (1893–1939) play Die Wandlung (The Transformation) with her husband and son Hans.
The production of the play was a resounding success, also for the leading actor, the young Fritz Kortner (1892–1970), who would later marry Kollwitz’s niece Hanna—stage name Johanna Hofer. Another novelty was the innovative stage design, which dispensed with any spatial illusion.

Ernst Barlach
Encounter on the heights (top left)
Reception under a tent (top right)
Mountain forest with the ark (bottom left)
Noah and Calan (bottom right)

Illustrations for the drama “The Sin Flood”

1924

Charcoal drawings

Ernst Barlach Haus – Stiftung Hermann F. Reemtsma, Hamburg

In January 1939, Käthe Kollwitz reported that she had attended a gathering in honor of the deceased and ostracized Ernst Barlach (1870–1938): “The Flood was read. […] It made a huge impression.”
However, she had probably not seen the 1925 production of the play directed by Jürgen Fehling at the Prussian State Theater.

Ernst Barlach
The Couple in Conversation, sheet 3 (top left)
Appearance in the Fog, sheet 24 (top right)
The Caller, sheet 22 (bottom left)
Call in the Fog, sheet 23 (bottom right)

Lithographs from the series The Dead Day

Ernst Barlach Haus – Stiftung Hermann F. Reemtsma, Hamburg

In December 1913, Käthe Kollwitz wrote in her diary:
“Read Barlach’s ‘Toten Tag’ (Dead Day) and was deeply moved by it. […] What grips me is the mother and her son. How he then wriggles free from her and calls for his father. And yet cannot reach God in all the fog. And returns to his mother’s side.”
In 1916, the artist also viewed the lithographs of Ernst Barlach (1870–1938) in an exhibition. Unlike with the drama Die echten Sedemunds, it is unclear whether she also attended the performance of the play at the Neues Volkstheater in 1923.