Die Gefangenen (The Prisoners)

1908

Not on view

Throughout her career, Kollwitz consistently exposed the exploitation of the working class, with a particular focus on depicting hardships experienced by women and children. Peasants’ War is based on a historical account of the German nobility’s brutality and the resultant revolts of 1524 and 1525. The series chronicles sexual violence and backbreaking labor under a repressive regime, the revolutionaries’ preparation for battle, and combat; it concludes with the uprising’s defeat. The Prisoners, the last print in the series, depicts captured fighters bound and compressed in a pen as they await their fate. Their writhing bodies blend into a mass, amplifying the sense of claustrophobia while also suggesting strength and future rebellion. Contemporary viewers would likely have related to the suffering shown here.

Artwork Details

Title: Die Gefangenen (The Prisoners)
Series/Portfolio: Peasants' War
Artist: Käthe Kollwitz (German, Kaliningrad (Königsberg) 1867–1945 Moritzburg)
Date: 1908
Medium: Etching
Dimensions: Sheet: 17 11/16 × 22 13/16 in. (45 × 58 cm)
Image: 12 3/16 × 16 5/16 in. (31 × 41.5 cm)
Classification: Prints
Credit Line: Gift of Richard and JoAnn Edinburg Pinkowitz, 2024
Object Number: 2024.69.99
Curatorial Department: Drawings and Prints

More Artwork

By Käthe Kollwitz

In the same medium

From the same time and place

Self-Portrait, turned slightly to the left, Käthe Kollwitz German, Pen and different shades of gray-black ink — Self-Portrait, turned slightly to the left
Käthe Kollwitz
ca. 1893

Armor, Steel, leather, German, possibly Lower Saxony — Armor
German, possibly Lower Saxony
ca. 1540–50 and later

Seated Giant, Goya (Francisco de Goya y Lucientes) Spanish, Burnished aquatint, scaper, roulette, lavis (along the top of the landscape and within the landscape) — Seated Giant
Goya (Francisco de Goya y Lucientes)
by 1818 (possibly 1814–18)

Widow II, from "Kreig" (War), Käthe Kollwitz German, Woodcut — Widow II, from "Kreig" (War)
Käthe Kollwitz
1922–23

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