#patsaat

Kasvot

Patsaat

Statues, those metal or stone objects, have never really been my great interest.  There seems to be no life in statues like there is in music, and even in paintings. I find it hard to have contact with these silent, firm, hard, cold objects.

The past week, however, I connected with a certain statue. Here is a picture:

  It is a statue in honour of artist Käthe Kollwitz by Gustav Seitz. Kollwitz was an artist who died soon after the Second World War. She used to live in Prenzlauer Berg, Berlin, across the street from a square now known as Kollwitzplatz where her statue sits. (Sits, yes, because it does not stand, but sits.)  I will skip Kollwitz’s biography, apart from a couple of significant events. You can find her story on the internet or in books. Or if you happen to be in Berlin, there is a museum dedicated to her. 

And so I went to the museum.

Passing through the museum was a tearful journey. For Käthe Kollwitz’s art is both humane and socially aware. It’s incredibly compassionate for the human condition and the vulnerability of human life in the face of violence, hunger, war and death.

Especially vulnerable are of course those who have nothing with which to protect themselves: the working class and the poor. But also children, who run as a thread through her work, playing and dying.

Kollwitz’s work portrays the working class life in the first decades of the 1900’s. It portrays hard life and the conditions the working class had to live under. The harsh life gets an expression in the bodies and in the grim faces. There’s hunger and violence. There’s rape, which is also a name of one of the works. It portrays  a woman lying on the ground with her legs spread open. 

From time to time, there are also women with children, talking, laughing. Holding each other. And men in pubs.

But most of all, there’s death. Women, men and children walking towards their death.

Death reaching out its hand from somewhere in the outskirts or corner of what we see. Lurking and waiting, coming to claim those who no longer belong to Life.

Death seizing children in the middle of movement. Children with horror in their eyes. Hungry children. Horror of war.

Children hanging and clutching onto their mothers’ skirts.

Still, even if people taken by death seem horrified, most often they look tired. It seems that death itself is not scary after all. In some of the works death is a (woman) figure tenderly closing the victims into her arms, holding and embracing them. Giving them comfort and consolation. 

I don’t know what most visitors do but I started crying not two minutes after I had stepped into the museum. Luckily I was having a flu so I could blame that for my sobbing and sneezing. There were not many people, the weather outside was so lovely. There was an elderly man, he was calm and quiet, and seemed to be in no hurry. I got the impression that he was not there for the first time. 

It was impossible to avoid thinking about the different situations where each of us, sooner or later, face our death. I believe each death experience is unique, but we don’t really know too much about it - for obvious reasons: there is no one left to tell. And yet, there are some shared elements. Perhaps the most widely shared is the uncertainty of a living creature who has no way of knowing what happens after the line is crossed. We have different beliefs, of course, and we have doubts. None of us knows for sure. And even if we think we do know, we still cannot understand it. How could we? I think deep down there’s a certain amount of insecurity surrounding death.

Or is it the wonder of death?

I know the idea of death as a nurturing figure is ancient but to me this figure only came alive through Kollwitz’s work. I’m glad it did because now I have an alternative to that cruel, cold and scary figure of death. When the time comes, I would much rather have a consoling presence taking me into its arms than a Grim Reaper type of character. I’m guessing there is a good chance of feeling that warm and safe presence when that vital engine that has been known to me as, well, me, finally shuts down for good. That is because I’m also a big believer in the body and its power to produce endorphins as a response to the shock. Because a shock it must be when one realizes that it really is time to go. If there is time for that, I hope there is. On that moment (which probably will be completely different from what I could ever imagine) I would like it to be Kollowitz’s Death that reaches her hand to me. 

Kollwitz was haunted by death herself in her real life. She lost her younger son in the First World War. He was a volunteer in the war. In a way Kollwitz herself opened a door for him to walk into his death: he was so young that he needed his parent’s approval in order to volunteer. And then in the Second World War she lost her grandson, son of her other son, named after her younger son who had died in the first war.

Kollwitz’s art is fiercly pacifist. It calls for the end of war and injustice. It demands bread for hungry children who are being deprived of safety, food and, ultimately, life, by war and violent injustices in the society. But not in a simplistic way. For the young men walk to their battle with their own feet, yet they are pulled by something that is bigger than them.

Now, back to the statue. The statue is in a small park or square, and it is surrounded by a children’s playground. There are lots of children in Prenzlauer Berg nowadays. I’m guessing there were lots of children back in Kollowitz’s days too, and in between our lives, after she was gone and before I was born. Today there are lots of men with children in that area, I noticed. Men picking up their kids from kindergarten and sitting in the corner cafés with friends. Very different life from what it must have been 100 years ago. 

The artist has sculpted Kollwitz as an old woman sitting firmly in the middle of the park. I went there a day after I had gone to the museum, and sat down to face the statue. All the time there were lots of children around her, their voices surrounding her. Laughter, screams, German words I did not understand, and crying. There was this one little girl, she came from the playground to sit on the fence behind the statue, crying helplessly. She sat there all alone for a long while. Probably she had been hurt, or had experienced an injustice. But I have no doubt about where her tears were flowing from - they were flowing from the same place where they always do, whether you are five years or forty years old.

After a while the girl stood up and headed back to the playground.

So, I was sitting next to the statue, thinking about what this artist had given me.  There’s no point in trying to give it a name. These things, I don’t think they have names. We experience them and they stay with us as we gradually but constantly change, taking in other things. I was also thinking whether I might be bold and climb into her lap. But it did not feel right as there were so many actual children around. Then I decided to do what every good tourist would do – I would climb to sit beside her, and take a picture.

While I was setting my camera on automatic, a little girl came and ran to her. She climbed all the way up, stood in the statue’s lap, took the head between her hands and gave kisses all around the statue’s face.

  I ended up talking to her. She told me her name and I told her mine. She told me that she was five years old. I tried to tell her that I am 34 years old. She taught me how to pronounce Käthe Kollwitz the German way. We counted to ten in German and she continued up to 100. I told her with not so many words that I don’t understand German very well. She started talking very slowly and loudly, it made me laugh. Her mother waved at us and we waved back. Her little body was warm as she leaned on me, with that innocent familiarity that we only accept from children when strangers are concerned. Such a contrast to this huge cold bronze statue that we were leaning on. Such a contrast to those horror filled eyes in the museum. 

I think Käthe Kollwitz would like the fact that the statue in her honor is being kissed by happy and confident children, and that they climb to sit on her lap. (The statue’s lap wears signs of this.) And that they sometimes come crying to her. It does’t mean that all the children in the world would be happy, but it is certainly a good start. 

The statue and the way it is situated honors Kollowitz’s work and spirit very beautifully. And so I now have a favorite statue and it is this one.

*I made an exception this time and wrote in English. It seems appropriate as I’m writing this while I’m still traveling. Next time, Finnish again.