Grieving Parents
Before World War I, the German artist Käthe Kollwitz gained her artistic reputation with woodcuts of handloom weavers whose livelihoods were threatened by industrialization. From 1914 on, she depicted the suffering and death that swirled around her—and never with more sober force than in these two monuments to her son Peter, who died on the western front in the first months of battle. Today one can still travel to Peter’s burial place in Vladslo, Belgium, to see this father and mother mourning their loss, like millions across Europe in those heartbreaking days. (Kathe Kollwitz / photo © Paul Maeyaert / Bridgeman Images / © 2015 Artists Rights Society [ARS], New York / VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn.)