Kollwitz captures the revolutionary ferment in Germany at the beginning of the twentieth century in Die Carmagnole – the simmering discontent of the working classes and their hunger for a socialist revolution that would create a new, liberated society.
This early etching is inspired by Charles Dickens’s 1859 novel A Tale of Two Cities, which is set in London and Paris in the late eighteenth century during the turbulent period of the French Revolution. Kollwitz evokes a particular scene in which a wild crowd performs La Carmagnole, a popular revolutionary song and dance that scorns the monarchy. Transporting the scene from the Piedmontese town of Carmangnola to contemporary Germany, she creates an atmosphere of unbridled revolutionary fervour and collective energy. The crowd – led by the drummer boy – reaches feverishly towards the guillotine in the centre of the image, which is enclosed by tall buildings reminiscent of the working-class districts in Hamburg and Kollwitz’s home town of Königsberg.
