Käthe Kollwitz's artwork focuses on her evolving beliefs about death. Infant mortality, death due to war and his relationship with death are some of the ways he associates death in his work. He showed death as a worthy sacrifice, as a villain who takes life early, and finally as a friend who comes to accompany her to the afterlife. He had an almost obsessive relationship with death. When death was not physically personified in his work, it was an invisible enemy portrayed in the faces and body expressions of his figures. Her view of society and her duty as a mother were intertwined with death. Although the subject matter is morbid, his artwork is something to admire and praise. As the old saying goes, beauty is in the eye of the beholder and although death is shown in Kollwitz's artwork it is somehow beautifully sad. Before talking about his artwork it is best to know where Kollwitz's fascination with death originated. The infant mortality rate was much higher back then, so it was not uncommon for women to give birth to five or six children and only three of them live beyond three years. Kollwitz's mother was no exception. Mrs. Schmidt gave birth to five children and only three survived. Kollwitz distinctly remembers the death of his younger brother, Benjamin, and its impact on his mother. The death of her little brother caused a distance between her and her mother. From that moment on, death always walked beside her in her thoughts. In all his works there is a mother, a child and death. Estella Lauter and Kominque Rozenberge discuss in their work The Transformation of the Mother in the Work of Kathe Kollwitz the different facial and bodily expressions portrayed by mothers in Kollwitz's work. This was increasingly interesting because... middle of paper... scary but beautiful at the same time. It is human nature to wonder what death is like. It gives death a face, so to speak. Works Cited Käthe Kollwitz on Sacrifice, Mourning, and Reparation: An Essay in Psychoaesthetics Angela Moorjani MLN, vol. 101, No. 5, Comparative Literature (December 1986), pp. 1110-1134 Published by: The Johns Hopkins University PressLauter, Estella and Dominique Rozenberg. "The transformation of the mother in the work of Käthe Kollwitz." Soul 5.2 (1979): 83-98. ATLA Religions Database with ATLASerials. Network. 4 November 2011.R Schulte “The sacrifice of Kathe Kollwitz” Hist Workshop J (SPRING) 1996(41): 193-221doi:10.1093/hwj/1996.41.193Yates, Wilson. "Käthe Kollwitz and the question of death." Visual theology. 207-224.Collegeville, Minn: Liturgical Pr, 2009. ATLA Religion Database with ATLASerials. Network. November 4. 2011.