The following text was written and submitted by Jean Ershler Schatz, artist and researcher of Laguna Woods, California:

Kaethe Kollwitz was born in Koenigsberg, East Prussia in 1867. The family name was Schmidt, and they were cultivated, middle class people who considered a talent to be a duty. Her art education began in 1881; she began studying with Rudolph Mauer, a local engraver. At seventeen, she enrolled in the School for Women Artists in Berlin. Her early studies, which reveal a developing social consciousess, depicted workers engaged in manual labor. In 1885, she became engaged to a medical student, Karl Kollwitz, who was also a member of the Social Democratic Party. Over the next fifty years, her husba...