Aufruhr (Uprising)

Inscriptions

Embossed, lower right: AVD BECKE/Kunstverlag/BERLIN-HALENSEE

Label

A mass of farmers surges from left to right, holding their scythes and other farm tools high. In the distance, smoke rises from a burning castle. One man, his head and shoulders bowed, lifts a flag above his head as he leads his fellow farmers onward. In the sky, a nude woman, an  allegorical symbol of Revolution, flies holding a lit torch to guide the group. Although made at the end of the nineteenth century, this etching references the sixteenth-century German Peasants’ War, during which people who worked the land rose up against the aristocracy, motivated by social inequality, religious differences, and economic hardship. Ultimately unsuccessful, the revolt ended with the violent repression of the farmers. Centuries later, Käthe Kollwitz celebrates the peasants’ struggle, speaking to the continued relevance of the fight for economic equality and universalizing the earlier struggle.

From the 2023 exhibition Recording War: Images of Violence 1500 – 1900, curated by Elizabeth Rice Mattison, Andrew W. Mellon Associate Curator of Academic Programming

Course History

GERM 10, Germany and the East, Yuliya Komska, Winter 2013

SART 27, 28, 74, Printmaking I-Intaglio, II, III, Ariel Frieberg, Spring 2015

Exhibition History

A Space for Dialogue 34, Images of War, Christina Duncan Evans, Class of 1954 Intern, Main Lobby, Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire, October 24-December 3, 2006.

Aspects of Human Experience: Works from the Permanent Collection, Harrington Gallery Teaching Exhibition, Art History 2, Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire, December 12, 1998-March 14, 1999.

Recording War: Images of Violence, 1500-1900, Ivan Albright Gallery, Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire, May 20-August 20, 2023.

Selections from the Permanent Collection: An Introduction to the History of Art From the Year 1500 to the Present, Art 2, Harrington Gallery Teaching Exhibition, Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire, February 11-March 7, 1993

Publication History

Christina Duncan Evans, A Space for Dialogue 34, Image of War, Hanover, New Hampshire: Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, 2006, ill. p. 3.

Provenance

Ferdinand Roten Gallery, Baltimore, Maryland; sold to present collection, 1963.

Catalogue Raisonne

A. Klipstein, Kaethe Kollwitz: Verzeichnis des Graphischen Werkes, Bern, 1955, no. 44.

This record is part of an active database that includes information from historic documentation that may not have been recently reviewed. Information may be inaccurate or incomplete. We also acknowledge some language and imagery may be offensive, violent, or discriminatory. These records reflect the institution’s history or the views of artists or scholars, past and present. Our collections research is ongoing.

We welcome questions, feedback, and suggestions for improvement. Please contact us at: Hood.Collections@dartmouth.edu

Subjects