Ludwig Frank, a lawyer and social democrat, who had volunteered at the beginning of the First World War, fell shortly afterwards on 3 September 1914. On the eve of the war, he had still lobbied for a parliamentary rapprochement between France and Germany, but eventually followed his ›national duty‹.
That same month, Käthe Kollwitz was commissioned to create a drawing on Frank’s death for the Kriegszeit journal. In her designs, she had recourse to a compositional formula based on the pictorial tradition of the ›Lamentation of Christ‹. After making a few preparatory drawings and two rejected lithographs, however, she abandoned work on the unfinished project.
A few years later, her compositional ideas for this project were used for her work on a commemorative sheet for Karl Liebknecht.
