This small yet intense and impressive self-portrait was first published in the periodical Zeitschrift für bildende Kunst (Neue Folge, Jahrgang 26, Heft 12) in 1914/15. At the time, the journal was printed in an edition of approximately 1450 copies; the prints were not signed. The publisher Emil Richter then published a signed and numbered edition of fifty impressions, printed in brown ink, in 1918 in Dresden. He then added the artist's name, his own and the printer Felsing's adresses to the lower edge of the plate and continued to issue impressions since 1921, most of which were unsigned but some given an occasional signature by the artist. After Richter's bankruptcy in 1930, Alexander von der Becke acquired Richter's holdings of plates, woodblocks, prints, books and portfolios by Käthe Kollwitz, including the present plate, and continued to issue them with the artist's consent. The present sheet comes von der Becke's first edition of unknown size, which included some signed impressions on Japan paper and some on wove paper, most of which remained unsigned.