Having been involved with art for most of my life and
studio art being my minor, one of the facts that I found interesting about
Berlin were artists George Grosz and Käthe Kollwitz. Each artist captured a different
time and theme in their artwork, but both reflect an event or theme in Berlin
history. Grosz focused on the corruption of society during the 1920s when the
wealthy were the ones who held all the power and controlled all of the jobs
while the poor consisted of the wounded soldiers from WWI and the general
working class. In the documentary, it was stated that Grosz was painted the
most accurate pictures of Berlin in the 1920s. It is a part of Berlin’s history
that I believe most people do not here about. Grosz either used a simple
contour drawing (using only the outline of images) or used paint to capture
this corrupt and completely social spilt of society. Grosz did not try to capture
any beauty, he wanted to show what Berlin was most like during this time. What
I find really interesting about Grosz is he used his art as a way to record
history. Instead of writing it down in a journal, he used his art to record it
so generations from now can look back and visually see his representation of
Berlin.
An image created by George Grosz that shows the greedy upper class with their money at the table while the poor working class and wounded soldier wander in the back,
Käthe Kollwitz’ artwork focused on an entirely different
theme from Grosz. Kollwitz lost her son during WWI; she was one of many mothers
in Berlin that lost their sons to the war. After that lost she used art as a
way to express her grief and the grief of many in Berlin. WWI left thousands of
women without their sons, husbands, fathers, and brothers. One of the most famous works created by her
is the statute of a mother and her dead son. What is interesting about this statute is that
it shows the famous image of a mother and her child but in an absolutely new
way. What I mean by this is the grouping of a mother and her child in art has
been around for centuries; it’s a common theme that can be viewed in works by Mary
Cassatt, Friedrich August von Kaulbach, and numerous religious paintings of
Mary and Jesus (the main symbol behind many mother and child paintings).
However, what makes Kollwitz interesting is she takes these two figures of
mother and child but alter it to show Berlin’s aftermath of WWI. Most paintings
show the mother and son alive. Kollwitz changes this historical image to show
only the mother alive to represent the loss of her son and the loss of so many
mothers in Berlin. It was a statue that represented the pain and struggle that
followed any war and that any side, victor or defeated, can relate to.
The statue that showed the horrors that followed WWI. Käthe Kollwitz. Title: Pietá
As for East Berlin, what I found the most interesting about
its history was how the Russians truly left their mark on East Berlin after
WWII when they had power over it. For example the Russian power in East Berlin destroyed
the Schloss, the royal palace of Germany, because it represented the old power
and interfered with Russian’s new vision for East Berlin. Also the Russians used the ruins and fallen
stones of the buildings to build a monument to represent the fallen soldiers of
WWII of the Russian army, not of the German army. It was hard to believe that Russia left such a
huge imprint on Berlin by destroying a German historical building such as the
Schloss and then building a monument in honor of their dead. It was as if they
were trying to create a new Russian communist country in East Berlin and try to
remove some of Germany’s history from this place all together. What is even more interesting was after the
wall came down and East and West Berlin became one again, some people in East
Berlin still struggle today with trying to decide to rebuild their history by
rebuilding the Schloss while others rather have nothing to do with rebuilding
it as if the Russian ideas still linger in their minds.
The Schloss before being destroyed during WWII.
The devastation of WWII represented in this image of the destroyed Schloss, just one of many buildings destroyed in Berlin due to the war.
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