Poster »Vienna is dying! Save its Children!«, 1920

Crayon lithograph in to two colours (transfer, text on ribbed laid paper), Kn 148 II

I have agreed to make another poster for a major Aid programme for Vienna. […] I want to represent Death whipping the lash of starvation with the people – women, children, men – filing past, bending low, crying and groaning.«
Käthe Kollwitz, Diaries, 5 January 1920

From 1919 onwards Käthe Kollwitz was flooded with commissions for works against the deprivation of the post-war years. Although the artist regarded this new responsibility as a burden, she did not flinch from it. This is illuminated by her diary entry on the design for this poster which she created for the starving children in Vienna:

While I was drawing and was moved to tears by the children’s anguish, I felt the burden I was carrying. Yet I also felt that I could not flinch from the task of speaking for the people afflicted. I have the task of spelling out the suffering of the people which is interminable and has reached gigantic proportions. I have this task, and it is not an easy one at all.«
Käthe Kollwitz, Diaries, 5 January 1920

The poster for this appeal was never put up as the Aid programme for Vienna was cancelled as a result of the deteriorating economic situation in Germany.

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Poster »Vienna is dying! Save its Children!«, 1920