The artist's themes – poverty, hunger, suffering – stand for those human hardships which the savings banks movement attempted to address in the 19th century.

[3] In accord with an agreement between the Kollwitz heirs and the bank, the collection is constantly amended, documented, made accessible for academic research and presented to the general public.

In addition, the collection includes pencil and charcoal drawings on the themes of Family, Politics and War, erotic scenes and nude studies from the so-called Secreta portfolio, self-portraits and portraits of workers .

This sculptural collection, together with a copy of the Grieving Parents in the church ruin of Alt St. Alban (1956, created in the workshop of Ewald Mataré by his students Erwin Heerich and Joseph Beuys) and the Grabrelief Levy (funerary relief for Levy)(1938) at the Jewish cemetery in the Cologne district of Bocklemünd, gives visitors to Cologne the opportunity to study the entire sculptural work of the artist.

The museum also boasts a complete collection of Kollwitz’ posters against the war and for social justice, humanity and peace which she created mainly in the 1920s in line with her motto I am determined to have an impact in these times.

In 2002 the bank gave financial support for the publication of the catalogue of prints in a revised edition by Alexandra von dem Kneesebeck,[4] im 2010 the museum has published an extensive monograph with fundamentally new insights of the Kollwitz-research.