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"Never," she once said, "have I created a work coldly, but always more or less with my blood." She was utterly exhausted, and her letters invariably ended with "Your very old and weary Köthe" or "Your old and life-sated Köthe." She dreamed of dying. The self-portraits in the East Berlin show begin with the drawing of a confident and alert young woman in 1892 and end with a profile of a stooped, old Köthe waiting for release. In one of her last letters, she wrote: "My deepest wish is to live no longer. I bless my life; I have not wasted it. I ask you only to let me go now. My time is up." A few weeks later, it was.