Diary of a German Mother--1918

[Chalco]

My husband gave me the Diary and Letters of Kaethe Kollwitz, a German artist, the other day. He thought I'd like it because I'm an artist as well. It is inspirational, I'd have to say, from an artist's point of view.

But her son, Peter died defending Germany in 1915. He was 19.

Her diary entry from March 19, 1918 reads in part:

"When someone dies because he has been sick--even if he is still young--the event is so utterly beyond one's powers that one must gradually become resigned to it. He is dead because it was not in his nature to live. But it is different in war. There was only one possibility, one point of view from which it could be justified: the free willing of it. And that in turn was possible only because there was the conviction that Germany was in the right and had the duty to defend herself. At the beginning it would have been wholly impossible for me to conceive of letting the boys go as parents must let their boys go now, without inwardly affirming it--letting them go simply to the slaughterhouse. That is what changes everything. The feeling that we were betrayed then, at the beginning. And perhaps Peter would still be living had it not been for this terrible betrayal. Peter and millions, many millions of other boys. All betrayed."

Then on October 1, 1918 she writes: "Germany is near the end. Wildly contradictory feelings. Germany is losing the war."

"What is going to happen now? Will the patriotic emotion flare up once more so powerfully that a last-ditch defense will start? ...I find in my self no agreement with it. Madness not to cut the war short if the game is up, not to save what still may be saved. The young men who are still alive in Germany must keep; otherwise the country will be absolutely impoverished. Therefore, not another day of war when it is clear that the war is lost."

When are we going to learn?

[Cleita]

1. She speaks for all the mothers who have lost their children

in war. What is sad is when the wars are not just wars. Then the death of a child in war for profit is not heroic but a waste. Mothers feel this keenly as witness the sadness and anger of Cindy Sheehan in challenging this war-mongering administration to explain themselves to her.

[Chalco]

2. It never ends. We get complacent,

believe the lies, and commit again. The diary goes on to see this woman become angrier. Her grandson, also named Peter, dies in the next war.