Kleines Selbstbildnis

1918

An open letter against Dehmel’s call to arms

When Richard Dehmel called for more soldiers to fight in 1918, she wrote an impassioned letter to the newspaper that printed his call, arguing that there should be no more war and that “seed corn must not be ground”. As the war wound down and old men and children were summoned to fight, she also implored in a published statement that enough had died and that not another man should fall.

1918–1919

The Working Council for Art and the Liebknecht memorial sheet

A committed socialist and pacifist, eventually attracted to communism, she expressed her political and social sympathies in her woodcut memorial sheet for Karl Liebknecht and in her involvement with the Arbeitsrat für Kunst, part of the Social Democratic government in the first few weeks after the war.

1919

The first woman professor at the Prussian Academy of Arts

In 1919 she was appointed professor and elected a member of the Prussian Academy of Arts, the first woman to hold the post. Membership brought a regular income, a large studio and a full professorship.

1919–1925

Destroys the first monument and begins again

In 1919 she destroyed the monument to her son, and in 1925 she began again.