This work was advertised under the title »18th March« in the Freie Volksbühne magazine for members of the theatre association at a price of »2.85 marks incl. glass and frame«. It is almost certain that none of the members made use of this offer as the work was never printed.
All three versions – including the third and final version – are therefore rare and difficult to document.
Influenced by her parents, whose intellectual and politically progressive stance had its roots in the democratic opposition movement in pre-revolutionary Germany, and who every year commemorated those killed in the March Revolution of 1848, Käthe Kollwitz wrote in Das neue Kollwitz-Werk:
I visited the cemetery of those killed in the March Revolution every year on the 18th of March. Long lines of workers slowly filed past the graves from morning until evening…«
