Road renaming in Lichtenrade: Ottilie Ehlers-Kollwitz honored!

Road renaming in Lichtenrade: Ottilie Ehlers-Kollwitz honored!

Lichtenrade, Deutschland - On Tuesday, July 15, 2025, road 40 in Lichtenrade, in the Tempelhof-Schöneberg district, was renamed Ottilie-Ehrers-Kollwitz-Straße. This solemn act took place on the occasion of the 125th birthday of the artist Ottilie Ehlers-Kollwitz. Ehlers-Kollwitz was an important illustrator and graphic artist and the daughter-in-law of the famous artist Käthe Kollwitz. In her career, she created an independent artistic work, which particularly shaped the Berlin graphic of the 20th century. With the renaming, the Tempelhof-Schöneberg district wants to emphasize the visibility and appreciation of female artists and their life achievements, since less than 4 % of all streets in Tempelhof are named after women. This illustrates the long time of the invisibility of women in the history and culture of the district. [Berlin.de] (https://www.berlin.de/ba-tempelhof-schoeneberg/aktuelles/pressemageilungen/2025/Pressemage department. 1581645.php) reports that the renaming at request of the district assembly was decided.

Numerous members of the artist, residents and interested visitors took part in the festive ceremony. District City Councilor Dr. Saskia Ellenbeck opened the event and handed the word to Jan Kollwitz, the grandson of Ottilie Ehlers-Kollwitz. In his moving speech, he gave a deep insight into life and the artistic career of his grandmother. After the speech, the new street sign was solemnly unveiled.

The artistic legacy of Ottilie Ehlers-Kollwitz

Ottilie Ehlers-Kollwitz was born near Berlin in 1900 and died in 1963. Her artistic work was strongly shaped by landscape painting in the 18th and 19th centuries. From 1919 she studied with outstanding artists such as Max Hertwig, Ernst Böhm and Emil Orlik in Berlin. Despite her extensive and independent work, she mostly stood in the shadow of her mother -in -law, Käthe Kollwitz. As described by the page workload, it generated important works in the form of woodcuts, color monotypes and book illustrations. Their children's book illustrations and the free graphics that were always inspired by nature and impressions of their surroundings are particularly noteworthy

Your early work began in 1923 with colored woodcuts for fairy tale books and included topics such as the Curonian Spit and the Mediterranean Islands. Ehlers-Kollwitz had a special talent in designing impressive graphics in her studio, and also used watercolors and sketchbooks to capture motifs. However, this artistic contribution was not surrounded by the full light of the public in which it lived, since women were often disadvantaged in art.

women in art

The story of women in art that wikipedia is characterized by a variety of structural hurdles. Until the 19th century, academic training for women was hardly possible, which many artists denied access to an artistic career. Artists often did not receive the same recognition as their male colleagues. Initially, many women were only active in church or courtly contexts until the opportunity to found artists' associations in Berlin and 1882 in Munich.

Although the proportion of full -time artists rose between 1895 and 1925, the underrepresentation of women in museums and galleries remained a persistent topic. There is progress today, but it is still pointed out to pay more attention to the need to pay more female role models in art. The renaming of the street to Tempelhof-Schöneberg represents a step in this direction and aims to put the artistic legacy of women like Ottilie Ehlers-Kollwitz into public awareness.