Selbstbildnis mit aufgestützem Arm

22 October 1914

Her son Peter is killed at the front

Her younger son, Peter, was killed on the battlefield of the First World War. He is buried in Belgium, in the Vladslo German war cemetery.

1917

A jubilee exhibition at Paul Cassirer’s

On her fiftieth birthday the galleries of Paul Cassirer mounted a retrospective of one hundred and fifty of her drawings.

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.

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.

1924

Her work at the “First General Exhibition of German Art”

In 1924 her work was shown in Moscow at the “First General Exhibition of German Art”.

until 1926

Turns to the woodcut after Barlach

While working on the Liebknecht sheet she found etching insufficient for monumental ideas. After seeing Ernst Barlach’s woodcuts at the Secession exhibitions she finished the sheet in the new medium and by 1926 had made about thirty woodcuts.