E Thomalen

"Seed For the Planting" E Thomalen

This play is a Drama based on the life of a German artist, Kathe Kollwitz (l867 to l945). The dialogue mostly has been fictionalized, although use has been made of material from her diaries and letters. This is a play that is at its core about grief. The central character, Kathe Kollwitz, was a person who knew grief intimately, grew up with it as a constant companion in the household, observed it in her husband's daily medical practice, experienced it personally, and intensely, with the loss of a son in World War I. In this play we see an artist who struggled with her grief until she finally mastered it, using it to help others. Near the end of her life she is able to extend her support to her son, when his son, her grandson, is killed. Kollwitz, who was a Social Democrat, sympathetic to labor and peace groups as well as many oppressed groups including the poor, women, children, homosexuals, artists, etc., was, of course, a target for the Nazis. In l932, she signed a petition urging unity of the parties of the left (principally the Socialists and the Communists) to oppose the Nazi bid for power. But, while ignored by them, it was not by the Nazis. Upon seizing power they made her a non-person in Germany. They isolated her, and made her life difficult with threats, searches, loss of her position at the Art Academy and removal of her work from exhibitions and museums and terminated her husbnd's employment in the health service. Her husband died in July l940, her grandson died in the war in September l942. She completed her last lithograph: "Seed for the Planting Must not be Ground Up" at that time. She was evacuated in August l943 to the Nordhausen home of a sculptress. She is buried in Berlin where most of her productive artistic life took place.