A masterpiece of social realism, Emile Zola's celebrated novel Germinal explores the tangled lives of a group of coalminers in northern France who, driven by severe poverty and oppression, begin an uprising which is violently quashed by the authorities.
Though Kollwitz had been interested in naturalist literature since her youth - driven by the publications of French, German and English authors she discovered in her father’s library - it was while studying painting in her early twenties at the Künstlerinnen-Verein München (Association of Women Artists in Munich) that the idea for a project focusing on Zola’s novel first came to mind. Kollwitz attended an informal artistic gathering known as a 'composition evening' alongside several of her fellow students, where each of the participants were challenged to create a drawing on a specific theme before the night’s end—on this occasion, the group were tasked with illustrating a fight. Kollwitz chose a scene of intense jealousy from Zola’s novel that, though not central to the plot, was filled with drama: 'in a smoky tavern, the young Catherine is being fought over by two men' Kollwitz explained (quoted in E. Prelinger, Käthe Kollwitz, exh. cat., National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., 1992, p. 19). The resulting drawing won Kollwitz high praise, and cemented in her mind the future direction of her art. 'For the first time I felt established in my path,' she later wrote; 'great perspectives opened themselves to my fantasies and the night was sleepless with happy expectation' (ibid.).
This charcoal drawing, which was also in the Hegewisch Collection and sold at Christie's in London on 16 October 2025 (£228,600), formed the kernel of the artist's occupation with the novel as a subject for further works, possibly a painting or a series of prints. In the event, she created only the present etching on the subject and abandoned another (Knesebeck 18), which was printed in two trial proofs only. This project, although never realised, would occupy the artist in drawings for almost five years, and allowed Kollwitz to explore the lives of ordinary people, a rich subject that would become a primary focus throughout her career.
Szene aus Germinal is Kollwitz's first finished, large-scale composition in the print medium, and early impressions such as the present one are very rare.