The Carmagnole, 1901

After Käthe Kollwitz became acquainted with the work of Max Klinger, the innovator of German printmaking around 1900, she stopped painting and devoted herself to graphic art. Kollwitz was interested in the life and misery of the working class. For her first social works, she did not seek her inspiration in reality but in literature. This is the case for the print The Carmagnole, which depicts the last pages of Charles Dickens' A Tale of Two Cities. Kollwitz moved the scene, which in the novel takes place in Paris, to the Gängeviertel in Hamburg. Bare-breasted women who assisted in the executions during the Reign of Terror (1792-1794), known as les tricoteuses, perform a witches' sabbath around a guillotine to the rhythm of drumbeats. Kollwitz here portrayed the frenzied crowd in an almost caricatural way. Her approach and the technique she used are related to Klinger's vision, who emphasised that the contrast of black and white enhances the power of the message, as opposed to colour, which, although closer to reality, weakens its scope.