Down with the Abortion Paragraphs!

Figure 19. Käthe Kollwitz, Down with the Abortion Paragraphs, 1923, crayon lithograph, state II of II. Käthe Kollwitz Museum, Cologne

Rather than use the contemporary image of the New Woman, who simultaneously frightened the right, galvanized the radical feminist movement, and confused the KPD, Kollwitz made the deliberate decision to foreground the proletarian mother in Down with the Abortion Paragraphs. In so doing, Kollwitz brought attention to a demographic that the KPD struggled to fully address and genuinely support through visual representations of party culture and praxis. Kollwitz’s portrayal of the proletarian mother through the medium of political poster not only placed the maternal figure at the forefront of the abortion debate, but also asserted her importance for the KPD. As we will see, Kollwitz’s poster differed from the way other left-leaning artists depicted the working-class mother—as a sympathetic figure who lacked her own agency. This choice also effectively countered the predominance of fashionable, bourgeois New Women in Weimar visual culture, and implicitly rebuked the KPD for not making working-class mothers more visible in their party platform and their printed materials.

Down with the Abortion Paragraphs confronts passersby with a starkly-rendered image of a pregnant working-class mother and her children. The poster measures 52.5 x 48.4 centimeters, slightly smaller in scale relative to Kollwitz’s other political images, such as Never again War. Aside from the text and simplified image, Kollwitz left the poster deliberately bare, with no background or context specified. This was a common technique implemented in Kollwitz’s political posters, which effectively focuses viewer attention on the starkly-rendered figures. Keeping in mind how political posters functioned through public spectatorship and reception, Kollwitz created an artwork that would be bold and stark enough to grab the attention of spectators passing by on the street and leave a lasting impression on them. Kollwitz thereby ensured that the issue of abortion rights, and the KPD’s campaign, would be visually associated with the working-class mother.

Figure 20. Käthe Kollwitz, The Mothers, sheet 6 of the series War, 1921/1922, woodcut, Cologne Kollwitz Collection, Käthe Kollwitz Museum Köln

Kollwitz’s rendering of the mother was meant to evoke sympathy for the plight of working-class women while also reminding the viewer of this figure’s strength. Kollwitz depicted the mother with large hands and used dark areas of shadow to indicate muscle mass through her sleeve. These traits allude to the physical nature of the woman’s labor both in and out of the home. This seems to be a pointed riposte to KPD posters that featured muscular male laborers: Kollwitz claimed those idealized physical traits for the working-class mother. By depicting the mother in this way, Kollwitz presented an alternative representative for German communism. However, while Kollwitz emphasized the woman’s strength, she also depicted her as a victim—thus indirectly indicting the KPD for neglecting women’s welfare. The most tangible sign of her abuse is the bruise engulfing the mother’s left eye. We are prompted to assume that this abuse was perpetrated by her husband. Thus, Kollwitz not only replaced the muscular, hypermasculine laborer, but also blamed him for spousal abuse. This in turn served as an indictment of the party culture itself.

While the proletarian mother appeared frequently in Kollwitz’s oeuvre, her rendering and exhibition setting in Down with the Abortion Paragraphs indicates how Kollwitz adapted this motif to achieve a new aim. Kollwitz’s woodcut print The Mothers (1921-22; Figure 20), like Down with the Abortion Paragraphs, features maternal figures circled around their children in a gesture of protection, starkly presented in monochrome without any indication of spatial context. Kollwitz published and exhibited this print in 1924 at the Anti-War Museum in Berlin, as part of a larger cycle, to protest the horror of World War I. Here, as in her poster for the KPD, Kollwitz used working-class maternal imagery to make a political statement. But there are key differences between these works. The Mothers, which measures 34.3 x 40 centimeters, is a smaller, more intimate image designed for individual contemplation, rather than a poster designed for street viewing. In The Mothers, the image itself also bears the whole weight of the work’s meaning, as there is no accompanying text.

Figure 21. Otto Dix, Mother and Child, 1923, oil on plywood

Both of these images by Kollwitz contributed to a larger body of representations of motherhood made by left-leaning artists during the Weimar era. Otto Dix, for example, used this motif as a mode of social criticism.[1] Dix’s oil painting Mother and Child (1923; Figure 21) portrays an unidealized working-class mother with a ruddy complexion, a frowning face, and closely cropped hair. The child in her hands wears a matching bib and gown rendered in a bright shade of light blue. The purity of the child’s clean clothes is emphasized by the mother’s large hands, stained black from manual labor. Like Kollwitz, Dix clearly aimed to reveal the hardships faced by working-class mothers: their sallow complexions, protruding veins, and simple clothing point to poverty and its attendant health problems. Both artists use the mother as a way to appeal to the viewer, who should be moved to ameliorate her suffering. But Dix’s painting remained in the confines of the art gallery, and therefore could only be seen by a limited audience—primarily comprising the wealthy elite with leisure time. Kollwitz’s image, which the KPD circulated throughout Germany, could be seen on the street, where working women along with other segments of society could view it and take action. Her poster thus not only made the proletarian woman the figurehead of the KPD’s campaign, but also spoke directly to working-class female voters, giving them greater importance and agency in the political sphere.

Through the relationship between image and text in the poster, Kollwitz also made a subtle, implicit critique of the KPD’s treatment of women’s issues. The phrase Nieder mit den Abtreibungs Paragraphen takes up the left side of the composition, striking a balance with the mother and children, emblazoned with Kollwitz’s signature, on the right; the two join in the middle of the composition. Importantly, Kollwitz used a black cursive-like typography both for the main text and for her signature. Because this typeface evokes the style of handwriting, it makes it seem as if both the slogan and the signature are authored or “spoken” by Kollwitz herself.  By linking her signature and the political message together with the proletarian mother, Kollwitz simultaneously identified the issue of abortion as a working-class issue and also indicating that she personally lent her support to the KPD’s stance on the abortion paragraphs.

However, noticeably separate, and in a different typography than Kollwitz’s handwritten phrase, are the words “published by the KPD.” This sets up a subtle conflict within the poster between Kollwitz and the KPD. Separate from the main figure, the KPD’s editorial stamp is situated precariously close to the mother’s black eye. By creating a visual link between the two, Kollwitz evoked the KPD’s neglect of working-class women in their party platform.[2] Thus although Kollwitz signaled her support for the KPD’s anti-Paragraph 218 campaign, she also distanced herself from the party’s culture, and tried to instigate reform in their policies. She took the opportunity that this commission presented to align herself with working-class women and their access to legal and safe abortion, while at the same time making pictorial choices that shamed the KPD for their lack of substantive commitment to women’s issues.