JEAN MIL
THE GRIEVING PARENTS of Käthe Kollwitz

All over the world military cemeteries remind us of the immense loss of human life in times of war. In these war graves winners or losers find a final resting place in a field of honour.
More than 25.000 German soldiers are buried at Vladslo, a Belgian sub-municipality of Diksmuide. They gave their lives for their country in World War I (1914-1918).

This Soldatenfriedhof is a very special site. In fact, it is unique. Where on earth do we find a war cemetery with the sculptures of mourning parents right in front of the gravestone of their son, Peter, and of the stones of all the others far too young to die?
Whereas the sculpture ‘The destroyed city’, created by Ossip Zadkine in reaction to the bombing of Rotterdam (1940), mainly visualizes a cry of fear and distress, Kollwitz’s ‘The grieving parents’ expresses great sorrow deep inside. Nowhere else the universal indictment of war is as pervasively present as at this Soldatenfriedhof at Vladslo.
18-year-old Peter Kollwitz fell on a

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