Place of birth: Konigsberg, Germany
Kathe was born in 1867 in Konigsberg, East Prussia. She studied art in Berlin and began producing etchings in 1980 In 1981 she married Dr Karl Kollwitz and they settled in a working class area of north Berlin. In 1896 her second son, Peter, was born. From 1998 to to 1903 Kathe taught at the Berlin School of Women Artists, and in 1910 began to create sculpture. In 1914 her son Peter was killed in Flanders. The loss of Peter contributed to her socialist and pacifist political sympathies. In 1919 she worked on a commemorative woodcut dedicated to Karl Liebknecht, the revolutionary socialist murdered in 1919. Kathe became the first woman to be elected to the Prussian Academy of Arts, but in 1933, when Hitler came to power, she was expelled from the Academy . In 1936 she was barred by the Nazis from exhibiting, her art was classified as "degenerate" and her works were removed from galleries.
