Abb. 33: Ernst Toller, »Speech Given by Ernst Toller on June 6, 1937«, Manuskript (maschinenschriftliche Kopie), Seite 1 von 5

1SPEECH GIVEN BY ERNST TOLLER ON JUNE 6, 1937

2When the Nazis came into power in 1933 and began their | campaign against all free art that would not humble itself in the | service of the ruling system, when the Great German painter, Max | Liebermann, received notification on his death bed that he would no | longer be permitted to paint in Germany nor to exhibit there, Kathe | Kollwitz was also expelled from the German Academy.

3Kathe Kollwitz is the daughter of an independent protestant | clergyman. She grew up in an era in which the literary works of | Tolstoy and Gorki, of Hauptmann and Zola prevailed and influenced | the youth of those days with their social ideas. This influence is | apparent in Kaethe Kollwitz’ art also. From her earliest youth she | gave her devotion to the struggle of the people and she has remained | true to this devotion to this very day. Already during the epoch of | German monarchy her realistic art incurred displeasure. When the | Prussian Academy, recognizing her greatness and importance, proposed | her for the Gold Medal in 1899, Kaiser Wilhelp1 declined to grant such | decoration to Kathe Kollwitz. When in 19082 a poster was shown which | she had <xxx> drawn for an exhibition known as “Heimerbeit”3 (Home | Industry), a poster in which she displayed the true character of that | wretched and much exploited people, the poster had to be removed | upon an order of the Empress. But Hitler reserved to himself the | right to do what the monarchy had not dared, to eliminate this great | artist from the public life of the nation. If ever an artist <xxx> | can be called an artist of the people, it is Kathe Kollwitz. Her | drawings, her lithographs, her sculptures, they all have but one | motif: “The suffering of the people, the suffering of those mute |

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4ones whom in the words of Goethe God has not given the power to voice | their suffering.

5Kathe Kollwitz’ pictures have as their theme one great chant: | the lament of the reviled human creatures. The eyes of the children | whom she portrays hold in them this lament. These children have | grown up in tenements, in congested apartment houses of large cities, | into which a ray of sunshine seldom penetrates, in buildings where | posters issue the warning that children are forbidden to play on the | stairs or in the yard. All these little ones are chilled, chilled | because they lack the loving warmth of a Mother, who is forced to | work in a factory from morning to night for a starvation wage.

6This same lament is etched on the faces of the Mothers. The | Mothers whom Kathe Kollwitz sketches feel no joy at the thought of | motherhood. These mothers, proletarian mothers, know that every new | born child means one more mouth to feed, means an added burden to an | already acute misery. These pictures say to us: “It is easy for the | state to tell us that it is our duty to bear children, destined to | defend the German Fatherland and that it is a crime against the state, | if we refuse to bear these children.” In answer we say to the State, | “If you want us to raise families, give us milk to nourish them, give | us clothesto [sic] clothe them, give us sunshine to make them happy.”

7The spare emaciated bodies of the men whom Kathe Kollwitz | portrays and who all their lives have walked in the shadow, express | this same lament.

8But the lament of Kathe Kollwitz’ men and women does not | remain passive; it becomes an indictment: must it be thus? is our | fate necessary, from everlasting to everlasting, her figures say.

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9And from this question there rises protest and rebellion. This | element of Kathe Kollwitz’ art is propaganda, but propaganda that | at no time becomes foreign matter, that never stresses its individuality | obtrusively. The propaganda is so intimately bound to the subject | portrayed that it becomes an indispensable part. Kathe Kollwitz’ | art is an art motivated by pity, it is a social art, a revolutionary | art. She models the German child, the German woman, the German man, | but the tragedy of the German people becomes the tragedy of all those | suffering and oppressed. |

10Her technique is the technique of social realism. Her later | work bears the influence of the style, which we call expressionism, | that form of art which endeavors to express the idea, the soul, the | spirit behind the mere outward semblance. |

11It could not be expected of this woman that she would welcome | the world war. Always she had branded the war as one of the most | horrible crimes perpetrated on humanity, and her vision was not | obscured when in 1914 Germany became intoxicated with war enthusiasm. | The world’s tragedy became the tragedy of her home. Her second son, | who was not yet subject to military duty, volunteered for service | in the army. He went to the front and was killed the first day he | saw action. The grief of Kathe Kollwitz–the Mother–became [sic] the grief | of all Mothers through her artistic interpretation of this experience. | She herself was the model for the central figure of the great war | memorial she created–the Mother holding her dead son on her knees.4

12After the war when the social struggles became increasinly [sic] | urgent and stormy, she accompanied these struggles with her immortal | posters.

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13When the leader of the German revolution, Karl Liebknecht, | was slain by nationalistic officers, she went to the morgue and there | made the famous sketch of the head of the man whom she had so greatly | revered.5When’ famine overtook Soviet Russia she solicited aid for the | Russian people through her drawings.6

14She is a child of the people and she has remained close to | the life of the people always. At the age of 24 she married Dr. | Karl Kollwitz, a physician for the health insurance system, then | practicing in the north of Berlin, in a section inhabited by the | working classes. She still lives there today. The people, whom | she <xxxx> depicts in so masterly a fashion, are the people among whom | she lives. She shares their life. Like these people she lives | simply and frugally, as simplicity and homeliness are the keynote | of her bearing and her language. Even when the world acclaimed her | art she did not change her mode of living. Luxury and riches hold | no attraction for her. Always her face has remained the face of a | woman of the people. Large pronounced features, her hair parted | plainly. Clear eyes, and in them the shadows that <xxx> the melancholy | of knowledge has transmuted into them.

15I never saw this woman laugh. When I looked at her, I was | reminded of the words of Michelangelo, which are in substance: “How | can I laugh in a world that harbors so much grief.”7

16We all know that today Kathe Kollwitz is living in Berlin | in penury and amid great privations. Her husband has passed away.8<xxx> The artists, who sold themselves to Hitler, avoid her. But the |

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17people love her still, as they have always loved her. She is silent, | but her silence is eloquent. It accuses those men who war upon their | own people, those men who threaten the peoples of other nations, | those men who sow the seed of hatred and desecrate humanism.

18To me it is a great joy that her work which may no longer be | shown in Germany, is being shown in this country. If our thoughts | had magic power they would reach this venerable woman; they would | tell her that the love and devotion of a world surrounds her, a | world which shares her hope that the day may come when, in a new | Germany, she will be accorded the rank in art which is her just due.