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01/03/2018

BBC Radio 4 - The World in 3D

Seeing the Kathe Kollwitz sculpture Mother and Her Dead Son can change your life.

Every day, in Berlin, people stand before a Kathe Kollwitz sculpture called Mother and her Dead Son. Lucy Lunt asks why they came and finds how a piece of art can change lives.

Kaethe Kollwitz's most famous sculpture, Mother and Her Dead Son, sits in the middle of the Neue Wache (The New Guardhouse) on the Unter Den Linden in Berlin. It's visited each year by thousands of people from all over the world and few fail to be moved by this life size bronze in the stark stone-line chamber. 

For three, very cold days last November, producer Lucy Lunt sat there to watch and talk to the people who came to visit. They talked to her about the emotions it evoked, the nature of motherhood, the tragedy of war and the desire to do better for future generations. For one young man, it inspired him to call his mother, over six hundred miles away, to say ' thank you' and ' I'm sorry'.

The Neue Wache was designed in the nineteenth century as a guardhouse for the Prussian Royal family, today it serves as the Central Memorial of the Federal Republic of Germany for the Victims of War and Dictatorship. It was rededicated as such in 1993 . It was the personal suggestion of the then Chancellor, Helmut Kohl that the Kollwitz sculpture should be placed there. Kaethe's grandson, Arne, explains how controversial this decision was how he and his sisters took their time to give their permission.
Music: Brahms German Requiem with the Berliner Philharmoniker and the Rundfunkchor Berlin, conducted by Sir Simon Rattle..

Producer Lucy Lunt.

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