What is left for the mother? One boy on the right, one on the left – my right-hand and my left-hand boy, as they called themselves. One is dead, the other so far away that I cannot help him. My entire life as a mother is really over already. And I have such terrible longing for this life. To have my children – my boys – back, one on the right, one on the left, and to dance with them as in the old days when spring came and Peter brought back flowers and we danced a spring dance.«
Käthe Kollwitz, Diaries, 17 January 1916