Käthe Kollwitz (1867-1945) was one of the most prolific – and political – graphic artists of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. She was keenly interested in the situation of the poor and the working class. This lithograph, which is set in a cramped, dark room, captures the most painful possible moment in the life of a mother – the death of a child. A number of Kollwitz’s works portray the mother-child relationship, which was often cut short in Germany’s impoverished working-class neighborhoods, where child-mortality rates were high.