book: Die Blauen Bücher, Käthe Kollwitz | Fritz Schmalenbach     books:     Die Blauen Bücher,...   Die Blauen Bücher, Käthe Kollwitz Fritz Schmalenbach Langewiesche, 1994 - 80 pages average customer review:based on 1 review view larger image  for more information click here Ugliness is Powerful: Kathe Kollwitz Knocks the Wind Out of You This book is written in German and I have not spoken it in years, but this is good because I could feel the impact of the work of Kathe Kollwitz. When my art teacher compared my ability and style to Kathe's style, my reaction was, "Oh thank you! You are too sweet!" Then she showed me some of her work. It is ugly-- as the wife of a doctor in the worst parts of Berlin at the turn of the last century, she saw poverty. She portrayed it. This was at a time when people routinely died of starvation, where crime was worse than we know it, where there were no social nets. Kathe's work depicts death taking young children, the tenderness of grieving mothers crying, and of the social ills that plagued her day. In a work that depicts the aftermath of a rape, you see a woman's body, mostly her legs, then you look for her torso and head and the rest of her. You feel the woman's humiliation and you know that her life as she knows it, she will probably get up and return to her routine as there is no justice for poor women. You see Death in the form of skeleton hands beaconing mothers who are cradling their children, yet who long to be released from their tortured lives. This isn't work that you hang above your couch, dear readers-- this is work that you look at, scream, and then want to go back in time and tear up the Treaty of Versailles. I wish I wasn't done with my college history classes as I would surely use her work to depict the impoverished conditions of Germany that made them susceptible to the Fascist diatribe that lead up to WWII. As a social work major, my art instructor told me of the responsibility and burden of talent. I was honoured to have my name and that of Kollwitz mentioned in the same sentence. If you are an art major, political science major, German culture buff or social work major, you need to buy this book even if you don't speak German. It's easy to get a translation at one of the free online sites and just type in a title or sentence or two and get the gist of the description, but let me tell you all something-- this work doesn't need a description to understand it. I can say nothing of Schmalenbach's writing as my German language knowledge is limited to that of a preschooler, but I think that he probably doesn't mind knowing that I just appreciate his book for what it is: a book about the art of an amazing woman and the time of great social upheaval she lived. I look at her victims depicted and know that many of their children probably survived somehow and how happy they would be to know what an great place Germany is now. America is fortunate in that we have never understood the wide-spread poverty in which people lived in Kollwitzes day, and it makes me understand why Europe goes out of her way in socialistic manners to provide for the people. I can't say that I agree with it, but I do understand.  for more information click here search for books blauen bücher, blauen, bücher, kollwitz, käthe      toavi.com    web randomly chosen music: Die schönsten Serenaden, Vol. 1