Ku'damm - one of Berlin's most famous streets.

One of the great joys of reading books set in the city you’re visiting is the way they can help you understand your surroundings. I like to read novels as if they’re maps – keys to places I’ve not yet unlocked. Some people like guide books…I’d rather read a novel.

I think I’m right in saying that for most non-German speakers, the street names in Berlin can be a bit overwhelming. But even with this in mind, Kurfürstendamm – whose origins stretch all the way back o the 16th Century – is a whole new challenge, a street name even the Germans shorten to Ku’damm.

At 3.5 kilometres long, walking the entirety of Ku’damm is not a job for the faint-hearted or the stiletto-heeled. Today the avenue is known for its large department stores, high-end fashion houses and luxurious jewellery shops, as well as its restaurants, theatres and cinemas – and of course its rows of graceful plane trees.

In the days of the Wall, Ku’damm was the centre of commercial activity for West Berlin. People shopped, protested and met for coffee here. For West Berliners at that time, Ku’damm was the place to be. With the fall of the Wall, people and businesses began to explore the East, and suddenly shoppers had several commercial centres to choose from: Friedrichstrasse, Alexanderplatz and Potsdamer Platz, for example, all of which still hold their own appeal.

Sven Regner "Berlin Blues"

Sven Regner’s novel ‘Berlin Blues’ gives a pre-Wall perspective of the street. The book is set in 1989, just before the fall of the Wall and tells the story of Frank Lehmann, an aimless 30-something bartender. Lehmann’s view of the city and its people is deadpan and sarcastic, but his description of a stressful journey down Berlin’s most famous boulevard gives an insight into the Ku’damm of years past.

Lehmann is on his way to meet his parents, and is struggling to make the appointment on time. “He broke out in a sweat and swore under his breath as he skipped to and fro between his fellow mortals, evaded obstructive groups of strolling, rubbernecking, chattering tourists who always walked seven abreast at least, swerved around old ladies in fur coats, and blundered into huge, unpredictable gaggles of youngsters who abruptly altered or changed direction just as he endeavoured to overtake them.”

After an unsuccessful attempt to make part of the journey by bus, Lehmann is back on the pavement and determined to stay calm. “Herr Lehmann crossed Joachimsthaler Strasse, firmly resolved not to allow his better mood to be spoiled by the site of the Cafe Kranzler, which to him symbolised all that made the Kurfürstendamm so intolerable. He strode swiftly along the extreme outer edge of the pavement, where dogshit proliferated and no one else cared to tread, and made for his destination past hotels and motor-show rooms, steak houses and cafes, souvenir stalls and kitsch shops, thimbleriggers and three-card tricksters.”

While Ku’damm remains a main shopping thoroughfare, it feels relatively calm in comparison to such feverish descriptions. Anna

Anna Winger "This Must Be The Place"

Winger’s book ‘This Must be the Place’, published in 2008 and set in 2001, gives a more up-to-date description. It tells the story of two strangers who live in separate apartments in a once-grand Charlottenburg building. Walter is an actor who’s star is fading as he approaches 40. Hope is an American who travelled to Berlin to accommodate her husband’s career. They are both lonely and, inevitably, a friendship develops between them.

“When he’d (Walter) first moved to Charlottenburg sixteen years earlier, the streets he walked now had been busy with nightlife. But since the inclusion of its eastern half, the city had completely shifted its topography, pushing Charlottenburg to the western fringe, so that he might as well have moved to the suburbs…Gone were the bars and crowds of his youth, and in their place only hair salons and jewelry stores, women of a certain age who wore tent dresses and dyed their hair bright red, and yuppie families with children.”

Hope, through the fresh eyes of the newly-arrived, holds a more romantic view. “On Ku’damm white Christmas lights decorated the trees in the middle of the avenue and the sidewalks, brightening the grand buildings on either side. In the right light, this street reminded her of the Champs-Élysées. She waited for a light to change in a crowd of pedestrians packed together at the corner of an otherwise unoccupied stretch of the sidewalk thirty feet wide. No cars were coming up the side street, but not a single person stepped off the curb.”

Even more revealing are Hope’s thoughts when they turn to World War II: “Walter had explained that these buildings were completely flattened in the Allied bombings in World War II and had been rebuilt afterwards. Staring up through the scrim of her eyelashes, Hope tried to imagine the fancy facades ripped off to reveal furniture and wallpapered rooms, fires burning, people screaming.

Truemmerfrauen after WWII

“Walter had told her that it took years to clear the rubble. Since most of the men had been killed or imprisoned, or had to walk home from war fronts in Russia or France, the women had cleared Ku’damm themselves. Truemmerfrauen, they were called. They passed the chunks of stone and concrete, wood and tiles, one to the next, all the way down the avenue and another mile or so through Grunewald, where they made a massive pile. The pile was apparently a proper mountain now, grown over with grass. People liked to hike and picnic there.”

The mountain in question is well known to many Berliners – it’s called ‘Teufelsberg’ or ‘Devil’s Mountain’. Not only is it a great place for hiking and picnicking, in winter it provides a toboggan run and a nursery slope for skiiers. It also hosts the mysterious former listening station.

There are many other landmarks around Ku’damm mentioned in ‘This Must be the Place’ – from the Fasanenstrasse Synagogue burned during Kristallnacht to the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church which lost its steeple to a bomb during the war, and was never replaced.

Both these novels are fine reads in their own right, but also serve as unique guides to the city, both past and present. Not many conventional guide books, after all, are going to discuss dog poo on Ku’damm or the street-crossing habits of Berliners. Reading novels are a wonderful way of getting under the skin of a city.

Packabook is a project dedicated to exploring place and history through fiction. See their website for more details.

I was born in a small town near Cologne in West Germany. After an apprenticeship as a stonemason I travelled to Italy, then took a degree in architecture from RWTH Aachen. During all that time, and especially during my architectural studies, I used sketchbooks. I worked as a tutor alongside Professor Heiner Hoffmann, who put a strong emphasis on filling sketchbooks with observational drawings as an essential part of architectural education.

Sketch: Rolf Schroeter

During these Aachen days we were a group of very intense sketchers. We looked at, and commented on, each others work very passionately and there was a competitive spirit that kept things going. The multifaceted surroundings of Aachen, Belgium and Liege and other towns in the Netherlands like Maastricht  were very useful for sketching day trips.

I finished my studies in 2000, moved to Berlin and started a family – we had our first daughter in 2001. Without the challenging presence of my co-sketching friends and with the new needs of a young family, sketching fell into the background. I worked in Berlin first as an architect, then since 2003 at the illustration studio of Markus Junker. In my work as an architect and even more as an illustrator, sketching is an important part of the process, but this “design” sketching is different from observational sketching on location. At GODD.com we illustrate using Computer Graphics, mostly 3D-based, so the sketch is mainly a mean of communication and “image-finding”.

Around the beginning of 2009, I was told about the Urban Sketchers Network, founded by Seattle Journalist Gabi Campanario in 2008. I watched it for a while, slowly reactivated my own sketching and in July 2009 I felt confident enough to create my own Flickr account, join the group and post some drawings. I got totally caught by it. The feedback I received and could give was similar to the environment of the Aachen student days. Not quite the same passionate, bar-based roughness but with a wider range of people from multiple cultural backgrounds. In addition to posting in the Flickr group I started my own sketchblog in August 2009.

Sketch: Rolf Schroeter

In contrast to my student days I rarely go out with the main aim of sketching now. Paid work and family-duties (and joys) don’t leave much time for that. But I always carry a small notebook and pencil in my trouser pocket that I get out whenever I find a suitable occasion – on public transport, while supervising the kids or evenings out in theater, bars, etc. When I pass by something that really appeals to me, I might stop for a 15-20 minute sketch, rarely longer. Mostly I color the drawings digitally at home before posting them. When there’s time I use watercolors on location.

Although it’s only quick sketching there’s always this feeling of “stepping outside of the moment”. You’re outside the movement and everybody else is in it. The drawing gives you a reason to stand and watch, a gesture that would not be always be accepted socially without a sketchbook in hand. In this state my relation to the environment changes, because I am not heading towards anything – I try to let the sketching just “happen”. I start to see things – and the relationship between things – that I would not have noticed before; if things go well, this might find its way into the sketch and be of some kind of common interest at the same time.

Since I reactivated my sketching, my relation to Berlin has changed from being the city I accidentally live in to become…not a “hometown” but something I explore with continuing curiosity and that’s always challenging me. This hasn’t just happened by exploring the “scenic parts of town” either, but mostly just around everyday Charlottenburg where I live.

Sketch: Rolf Schroeter

The same thing happens when travelling (though not with family as we don’t ever seem able to travel “slowly” enough – we will improve on that). I am rarely interested in drawing yet another view of well-known sites, but prefer to roam around and find something that’s more atmospheric, something that visually appeals to me personally. So sometimes my sketching needs lead me to remote parts of the town and gives me a reason to stay there long enough, to let something new and unexpected “drip” into my experience. And, if I am very lucky, I carry a bit of it home. Sometimes this also creates some interesting contacts with the locals.

At the moment the Urban Sketchers network is an important part of all this. It’s a great environment for learning from others’ examples and testing the effect of your own stuff. Maybe it’s vanity, but I don’t think anyone sketches when no one else is watching. The network is well structured, with the public Flickr group (which anybody can join) and a few group rules, like the drawing having to be made on location, with an “urban” topic, and a bit of a story that explains the drawing. There’s also the Urban Sketchers blog, where only ‘correspondents’ can post and a “Sketchcrawl“, initialised by Enrico Casarosa, where everybody is encouraged to sketch on a special day together. In fact the next Sketchcrawl is May 15th, which I hope to be participating in.

Where were you born and what sparked your interest in photography?

I grew up in a small town in West Germany, close to the Dutch border. I moved to Berlin about 12 years ago to start my first job. I began to take pictures more or less by accident when a friend gave a camera to me. Right from the beginning the darkroom was a kind of magical place for me: the moment you see the first contours of a picture on what was a piece of white paper seconds before – fantastic.

Photo: Guido Steenkamp

What kinds of photos did you start shooting initially?

When I moved to Berlin I started to take pictures of abandoned military bases. A vast amount of these facilities can be found around Berlin, given up by the Red Army a long time ago. After two or three years of doing this, I got bored by photographing ‘dead’ stuff. Instead I focused on street photography which is all about life in its various forms.

Did you study photography?

I didn’t study photography. I studied business management. I am head of a consulting department at a Berlin based software company.

What got you into street photography?

I like walking in the streets and I like to watch people. The most exciting aspect of street photograpy is that there is very little that you have to prepare for, and almost nothing you can plan. All you have to do is to step out on the street and have your camera ready to record the small details of daily lives. I would prefer to call this ‘voyeuristic documentation’ rather than street photography. For me the basic idea of this kind of photography is to document life in its candid moments.

What makes Berlin a good place for this kind of photography?

Well, Berlin is where I live and therefore I take most of my pictures here. I wouldn’t say Berlin is the best place in the world for street photography (that would be NYC), but it’s relatively easy in Berlin. The two things that are obviously required for street photography are people and interesting environments.

Photo: Guido Steenkamp

Berlin has got a large number of (very different) districts. What I really like about the city is the fact that I can always decide what type of street photography I want to do, simply by leaving the subway at a different station.

You mentioned in your blog you don’t like going “East” – why is that?

When I’m on the streets, I am always in search of interesting subjects. I usually find these types of subjects in West Berlin districts. When I wrote that I don’t like going “East”, I was referring to districts like Prenzlauer Berg or Friedrichshain. I am well aware of the popularity of these areas by young people, but this is also what makes them boring in a certain way. If you spend some time there, you will notice that people all look alike; they wear the same type of clothes and they are mostly between 20-40 years old; elderly people are virtually non-existent. Personally, I prefer to shoot in classic West Berlin districts like Charlottenburg, Kreuzberg or Neukölln as I believe they are far more balanced in terms of their population.

What equipment do you use? Do you have your own darkroom / developing suite etc.?

Most of the time I use a small camera, a 25-year-old Leica that no one takes seriously. I do the black and white development by myself, followed by scanning and some post processing using Adobe Lightroom/Photoshop. I started to use a digital camera recently, now that the Leica M9 a decent digital camera is finally available. I still have to work on my digital workflow though in order to get the same level of quality from digital that I get from film based cameras.

Photo: Guido Steenkamp

What local equipment or developing shops would you recommend?

The best developing service I found in Berlin is Phototechnik Fehling in Berlin Schöneberg. It’s a rather small shop but the people working there really know their stuff. For new equipment the Leica Store in Fasanenstrasse (close to Kudamm) is my first point of call. Their products and customer service are outstanding but a little on the pricey side.

Which Berlin (or German) photographers do you most admire and why?

There are three german photographers I’d like to name. Harald Hauswald – for documenting the daily life in the former GDR and for founding Berlin’s famous Ostkreuz photo agency. Thomas Höpker – a well known MAGNUM photographer who has been documenting history for more than five decades. And.Andy Spyra - a young photographer I only discovered recently when I saw his work at the C/O gallery in Berlin. The exhibition is running for another three weeks. If you are in Berlin make sure to go there.

Name five of your favourite “slow” places or activities in Berlin…

• Buchhandlung Walther König at the Museumsinsel – When it comes to books about photography or art in general, Walther König is the best arranged bookstore in town.
• Camera Work gallery in Kantstrasse - There are always interesting photo exhibitions at Camera Work, either by well known photo icons or by young and up-coming artists. Admission is free!
• KaDeWe in Tauentzienstraße – You will for sure find Berlin’s premium department store in every Travel Guide. Nevertheless, the KaDeWe is always worth a visit, not only for tourists but also for people living in Berlin.
• Turkish market on Maybachufer - Twice a week you can buy everything there from fruit and vegetables to meat and dairy products and clothing.
• Familienrestaurant KiiWii in Güntzelstrasse – A great place for having a relaxed Latte Machiatto or a fine dinner while watching the kids playing in the indoor play room.

Guido Steenkamp

See Guido’s website here.

About The Author

Paul Sullivan is a Berlin-based writer & travel photographer and the founder of Slow Travel Berlin. You can check out his personal website here and some of his photography galleries here.

Marga Schoeller Bookstore

Not many bookstores can say they’ve been in operation for over eight decades, especially in a city as historically turbulent as Berlin – but Marga Schoeller’s can.

Opened in 1929 by the eponymous Frau Schoeller, the shop originally specialised in European literature and theatre works. Schoeller managed to stay open during the National Socialist years despite refusing to sell Nazi literature and – even more impressively – sold books banned by the Nazis by hiding them deep in the basement.

Once the war was over Schoeller’s became the first bookshop awarded a license to sell English books, and quickly became a focal point for West Berlin’s burgeoning literary scene, attracting esteemed international writers like Beckett, Hesse, Mann, Eliot, Auden and the members of Hans Werner Richter’s famed Gruppe 47.

Originally located on Ku’damm, the shop relocated in 1974 to the
smaller, charming and perhaps more apposite Knesebeckstrasse, whose nearby
streets resonate with the names of philosophers, writers and poets (Schillerstrasse, Goethestrasse, Kantstrasse, Leibnizstrasse…).

Though Schoeller passed away in ’78, her son and colleagues have continued her good work. The shop still sells mostly German-language books, but still maintains one of the best English book selections in Berlin, located in an alcove on the left as you enter.

Marga Schoeller Bookstore

Here you’ll find a considered selection of books on poetry, theater, philosophy as well as fiction, history, biographies and plenty of tomes about Berlin and Germany. There’s also some kid’s books in English and several reading events (German and English) per year.

Best of all, staff are friendly, well informed and speak good English – in fact some of them are English. You may well overhear one of them calling a regular customer on the phone to let them know a new book has come in that they might enjoy. Far from an exercise in cynical telesales, this is the kind of old school personalised service Schoeller’s excels at. It makes online shopping feel like the sterile experience it is…

Marga Schoeller Bücherstube
Knesebeckstraße 33
10623 Berlin, Charlottenburg
Tel: 030 8 81 11 12/22
Open: Mon-Wed 9.30-19; Thu-Fri 9.30-20; Sat 9.30-18

About The Author

Paul Sullivan is a Berlin-based writer & travel photographer and the founder of Slow Travel Berlin. You can check out his personal website here and some of his photography galleries here.

Most of us have been guilty of blurring around at least one museum or gallery in our lives, ignoring the majority of the art therein, or focusing more on what’s for dinner later than what’s in front of us. Indeed, research shows that people spend as little as eight seconds looking at an individual work.

David Lynch and Isabella Rossellini by Helmut Newton

Which is why New Yorker Phil Terry, founder of non-profit Reading Odyssey, created the Slow Art campaign in the summer of 2009: precisely to encourage art lovers to spend a longer time looking at single works of art, and have the opportunity to discuss them afterwards – preferably during a nice lunch. According to Terry, feedback from last year indicated that participants were “inspired not tired” and used the experience to go back and revisit the same venues in the same way.

This year’s installment of Slow Art will take place on April 17th. 46 cities have already signed up this year, and more are expected to register in the coming weeks. Berlin will host two Slow Art events, at the Hamburger Bahnhof and Helmut Newton museums. STB had a chat with the organisers, Bettina Follenius and Hans Raffauf…

How did you first hear about Slow Art, and what was your initial reaction?

Bettina: Last summer I got an email from Slow Art New York. They told me about the project and asked me if I would sell my domain slow-art.com to them. I became curious and decided to give the domain to them for free and become part of the Slow Art community.

Hans: I heard from my friend Jason who visited from NYC about it. He’s a friend of Slow Art founder Phil Terry. Even though my art knowledge is still very superficial, I like the idea of making art easily accessible. My initial reaction was: “why do these crazy Americans always want to do events where people do the same thing at the same time all over the world? Let me try to understand…”

What are your respective backgrounds / professions?

Bettina: I’m an artist.

Hans: I’m an entrepreneur, the co-founder of Palomar5.org, and an economics student.

How long have you lived in Berlin?

Bettina: I am a Berlinerin.

Hans: 20 years.

What made you decide to host a Slow Art event in Berlin?

Bettina: Before I heard about Slow Art I had already experimented together with a small group to find a more holistic approach to art perception. Slow Art seemed very easy to me, basically just taking more time. I tried it myself and liked the outcome. I thought it would be even more exciting to share it with others.

What was the process involved in setting up the Slow Art day? Was it difficult to organise?

Bettina: The organizers help a lot, but it’s all done through the internet, which is not really my home. I found my own way to inform and invite people. I did the preparations together with two friends: Louisa and Tekla, which was fun.

Hans: Slow Art has an amazing pre-designed registering page which they adapt for each city. I basically only had to provide the name of the venue and the location of the lunch place, so the bureaucratic effort is rather little.

What inspired your particular choice of venue?

Bettina: The Hamburger Bahnhof has lots of different contemporary artworks. Tekla and I took three pieces to look at. These were the pieces we found quite controversial and could have interesting discussions about: Joseph Beuys, Anselm Kiefer and Dieter, Björn and Oddur Roth.

Hans: Helmut Newton was a real Berliner and an American by choice. How rare are real Berliners in this city? Apart from that, the exhibition is in the west part of the city, near the zoological garden, an area where all the Zugezogene from Mitte and Pregnant Hill crowd rarely show up.

Joseph Beuys

Do you simply guide visitors through the regular exhibitions, or is there something “special” arranged just for the day?

Bettina: It’s just the regular exhibition.

Hans: The idea is that everyone is looking at around 10 selected paintings secretly, and mostly for him/herself without telling others that you belong to the Slow Art event. It’s like a blind date in a museum. First you look at the paintings (and each other) for one or two hours, then you go for lunch.

Are you hoping there will be more Slow Art events in the future?

Bettina: I hope there will be more in the future. Let a thousand flowers bloom…

Hans: I think there is space for many more. Why not have one at every exhibition or museum in Berlin on the same day.

Participants will receive a list of works to observe in each museum, though there is no group tour. Instead you attend the venue alone (or with whoever you signed up with) and at a designated time meet up with the other participants to discuss the works. Participants pay the museum admission themselves and buy their own lunch.

To register for the Hamburger Bahnhof click here
To register for Helmut Newton click here

About The Author

Paul Sullivan is a Berlin-based writer & travel photographer and the founder of Slow Travel Berlin. You can check out his personal website here and some of his photography galleries here.

Photo: Kevin Braddock

A Berlin mate of mine happens to be a very successful illustrator known for composing colourful infographics and tiny, pixelated portraits of popstars. We often spend evenings in the bars around Kottbusser Tor pontificating on life, on the whole agreeing with each other.

One day though we happened upon a quite intractable difference in our views. It crystallised around my proposal to do a walk along the full extent of the Landwehr Kanal. The following Saturday was expected to be frosty, it was late December and there was nothing else to do and there was no-one else about.

Being a compulsive cartomaniac, I have spent many hours poring over maps of Berlin in search of interesting walks, rides and runs. The Landwehr Kanal is by far the most obvious. It bisects the entire lower half of central Berlin, running from Charlottenburg, between the southern fringes of Tiergarten and the Zoologischer Garten before floating on through befronded Kreuzberg, finally executing a sharp 90˚ left-hand turn to emerge back onto the Spree’s eastern stretch just after the intersection with Pushkinallee.

All in all, it seemed the perfect Saturday walk – six or seven miles from west to east, and no need for a map.

I proposed the walk to my friend along with an ETD. He agreed to it. Then, studying the map more closely I noticed a possible prologue in the form of a stretch of the Spree connecting from Westhafenkanal near Jungfernheide with the beginning proper of the Landwehr. An extra mile or two. I was up for it. My friend wasn’t. He argued, quite correctly, that the Kanal officially starts near the Bangladeshi Embassy close to Dovestraße. I carried on advocating for the extended route, but he was having one of it.

“I like the purity of the Kanal walk,” he said. I could see his point. The infographic sensibility, as he had once pointed out, is concerned with imposing order, making the confusion of modern life explainable. But I was in psychogeographic mode: Forget the route. Walk. See what we see.

Photo: Kevin Braddock

Our breach could not be bridged and consequently I walked it alone. It was –15˚C the entire way, and while it was an anonymous, silent and perhaps even lonely walk at times, it was full of sights: Llamas and peacocks were overlookable in the Zoologische Garten, while ducks and swans skittered across the frozen surface of the Kanal. Berlin’s runners are hardy as hell, and I saw plenty all the way along the route. The Schloss Charlottenburg twinkled prettily in the dry winter sun.

The architectural morphology at the western ends of the walk is prettier and more open than that of the central leg: As you gain Lüztow Ufer and Schöneberger Ufer, Berlin closes in, the road snaking hard by the Kanal. The Neue National Gallerie is a stone’s thrown to the right and the suspended Dakota transport aircraft at the Deutsches Technikmuseum at Gleisdreieck is similarly imposing.

It’s only as you hit the Urbanhafen deep in Kreuzberg that the walk once again opens out, the shallow grassy banks sloping in to the huge basin where a derelict party boat is moored. You cross Kottbusser Damm, then continue along Paul Linke Ufer and onto the final stretch. Cross again to the eastern bank as the Kanal diverts to the Spree, and you’re walking the old line of the Mauer, parallel to Lomühlenstraße. In all it’s about eight miles, and took me around three (exceedingly chilly) hours at a brisk, blowing-into-the-hands pace.

Photo: Kevin Braddock

I rejoined my mate later at the Coffee Corner (Kottbusser Damm 1, 10967 Berlin. 0177 2548442), a cute café on the intersection of Kottbusser Damm and Graefe Straße run by a gregarious chap called Enrico, and we speculated that it would be possible to return east along the Spree, all the way back to the beginning of the walk or beyond. That really would be a psychogeograhic project, a journey with no destination. Doubtless it would make for a nice infographic treatment too.

An agreement was finally reached.

About The Author

Kevin Braddock is editor of Manzine and Contributing Editor at British GQ. He lives in Berlin.

Charlottenburg’s Käthe Kollwitz Museum is one of those Berlin attractions not particularly recommended for anyone looking to cheer themselves up on a rainy day. This permanent exhibition, which opened in 1986, is housed in a charming 19^th century villa next to the Literaturhaus on Fasanenstrasse. It presents an extensive range of the German artist’s work, embracing “crucial aspects of life suffering…poverty and death, hunger and war…as well as the truly happy and positive sides of life.”

Käthe Kollwitz: Poverty (1893-1894)

Those “truly happy and positive” parts are outweighed by the darker stuff somewhat unanimously. The self-portraits on the second floor are a case in point: of the dozen or so that hang there (Käthe made around a hundred or so throughout her life, calling them ‘psychological milestones’ – many of them unflattering) only one shows her laughing. It’s likely the only smile you’ll see during the exhibition, either on the walls or on the faces of any visitors.

The titles of the charcoal and crayon sketches, woodcuts, lithographs and sculptures that fill the villa’s three floors say it all. “Poverty”, “Unemployed”, “The Lament”, “Battlefield”, “Raped”, “Killed  In Action”…these are not uplifting works. The artist once said that while she drew, she “wept along with the terrified children I was drawing, I really felt the burden I am bearing. I felt that I have no right to withdraw from the responsibility of being an advocate.”

Withdraw she did not. For nearly five decades she trained her compassionate yet unflinching gaze on those who needed it most. The exploited and oppressed; the desperate and needy; the dead and the about to die.

Kollwitz (née  Schmidt) herself was born into a comfortable East Prussian middle class family in 1867. A nervous and sensitive child, given to tempers and nightmares, she began drawing when she was 14, attended the Berlin School of Art in 1884 and later studied in Munich. She married a doctor, Karl Kollwitz in 1891 and settled with him in Prenzlauer Berg, which back then was one of poorest areas of Berlin.

Through her husband’s work (he treated many of his poorer patients for free) and her location, she came into continuous contact with the sick and the suffering. She experienced plenty of personal heartbreak too, most significantly the loss of her son Peter during World War I and her grandson in World War II.

Kollwitz also suffered for her art. As early as 1897 she was denied a gold medal at the Berlin Salon by the autocratic Kaiser Wilhelm due to her ‘subversive’ work. Despite becoming the first woman elected to the Prussian Academy, she was expelled in 1933 because of her art and her beliefs. And she was eventually forbidden to exhibit at all by the Nazis who classified her work as “degenerate”. She was even threatened at one point with imprisonment in a concentration camp, though the threats fortunately proved idle.

Käthe Kollwitz: Killed In Action (1921)

So what made Kollwitz such a thorn in the side of her country’s leaders? This museum answers the question readily. Beginning with her early works like A Weavers Uprising (1893-97) and Peasants’ War (1902-08), which dramatised the oppression of the 1842 failed Silesian weavers revolt and the violent South German Reformation uprising respectively, it’s immediately clear that Kollwitz was all too keen to expose the deep flaws hidden within the fabric of German society.

The technical mastery of these early naturalistic etchings is impressive, especially in the case of the larger format “Peasant” series, and the themes adumbrate those that came to dominate the artist’s entire life and career.

By the turn of the century Kollwitz had joined the Berliner Secessionists and was a committed socialist. Working freelance for satirical German magazines like Simplicissimus (whose contributors included Hermann Hesse and Gustav Meyrink) she produced works like Homeless, Waiting for the Drunkard, Down to the River and Unemployment, highlighting the impoverished plight of the working classes.

It’s interesting to see her works grow gradually more Expressionist as she sought new ways to broadcast her moods and feelings in intense and personal ways. The outbreak of war and the loss of her son prompted her to focus more specifically on the impact of war on women in the shape of heart-wrenching images like Widowed Orphans, Killed In Action and Survivors.

Another quote of hers was: “I have never worked coldly, but rather, in a certain sense, with my own blood. Those who see my art must feel that.” It’s impossible not to feel it. With their gestures of inconsolable loss and despair these works are reminiscent of Picasso and Goya in their depiction of the harrowing, human cost of war.

Her son’s death led Kollwitz eventually to a pacifist path. Withdrawing from the Communist Party (due to their acceptance of violence as a legitimate means of social change), she supported instead the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom and the International Workers Aid organization. However, she depicted the assassination of Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxembourg in early 1919, and began at this point working with woodcuts alongside lithographs and prints.

Next to the woodcuts from her emotive War series on the second floor (which includes The Parents, The Mothers, and The People) are three of her most famous poster designs, created in 1924 for International Workers Aid: Germany’s Children Are Starving!; Bread!; and the stark, striking Never Again War! (Nie wieder Krieg!).

Käthe Kollwitz: Mother With Dead Son (Neue Wache)

Kollwitz continued her anti-war stance throughout WW II, signing an appeal of unity against the Nazis in 1932 and finishing her final cycle of lithographs, Death, in the mid-30s. She also completed some of her most famous sculptures during this time, such as Mother With Two Children (1936) and Mourning Parents (a tribute to her son, completed in 1931). Casts of these are shown on the third and final floor.

At the end of an exhibition as relentlessly abject as this, it’s hard not to feel a bit shellshocked. It’s also impossible not to feel overwhelming admiration for this strangely formidable woman, who through the abominable horrors of the first half of the 20^th century tried unceasingly to bring an end to war and suffering through her art. Not once did she turn her gaze away from the terror around her. Not once did she give up.

In 1940 her husband Karl died. From that day on she walked with a cane. Two years later she lost her grandson to the fighting in Russia, and despite this and the fact that many of her contemporaries were fleeing Berlin, she hung on until the very end – literally until she was forced to evacuate to Dresden. She passed away there on April 22, 1945, shortly before the signing of the armistice. Yet another tragic twist in her convoluted life.

Before she died, Kollwitz confided to her grand-daughter that “some day a new ideal will arise and there will be an end of all wars”. The idealism of these words is profound, and makes you think immediately of all the suffering endured since then by mothers and families in war-stricken places all over the world, including Iraq and Afghanistan today. Kollwitz’s work reminds us of the painful individual tragedies that are a part of all futile wars.

Käthe Kollwitz Museum
Fasanenstrafle 24
10719 Berlin
Tel: 030 8825-210
Map

More of Käthe Kollwitz’s work can be found around Berlin. The various art projects that took place outside her house at Kollwitzstraße 56a after the war are now part of the Prenzlauer Berg Museum. A replica of Mother With Two Children, originally placed in Kollwitzplatz in 1951, can now be found  in the courtyard of the Bezirksamt (Fröbelstraße 17, Prenzlauer Berg) and another piece (Zille, Kollwitz und Nagel im Gespräch) was placed at the entrance to the Bezirksamt, near the corner of Prenzlauer Allee. Since 1961, a sculpture of Kollwitz can be found in Kollwitzplatz itself, near the playground. The bronze replicates one of the self-portraits Kollwitz completed late in her life, though it’s controversially much larger than the original. A replica of Kollwitz’s Mother With Dead Son (also controversial, and also larger than the original) can be found in the Neue Wache (Unter den Linden 4).

About The Author

Paul Sullivan is a Berlin-based writer & travel photographer and the founder of Slow Travel Berlin. You can check out his personal website here and some of his photography galleries here.