A mother's grief became Germany's conscience — art born from the unbearable.
Kathe Kollwitz was 47 years old, and already a well established artist in Germany and abroad when Peter, her youngest son, volunteered to join the German army in WWI and was killed two weeks later. This painful tragedy changed Kollwitz's life and art forever.
Acting
Jutta Wachowiak ages 20 years through posture and silence alone.
Cinematography
Shadows that look carved from Kollwitz's own woodcuts.
Production
East German authenticity — no glamour, only granite truth.
Director
Ralf Kirsten
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
Kollwitz was the first woman elected to the Prussian Academy of Arts — and the first expelled by the Nazis. The film was made in East Germany, where her socialist politics were celebrated but her pacifism was quietly downplayed.
Director Ralf Kirsten fought to shoot in Kollwitz's actual Berlin studio, preserved exactly as she left it. The desk where she learned of Peter's death is the real desk.
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