Because most items had been evacuated to Schloss Weesenstein in the early stages of World War II, the collection was saved from the bombing of Dresden in February 1945.

[3] Most of the exhibits were looted by the Soviet Union after the war and did not return to Dresden until the late 1950s,[1] and some when they were put back on display in the Albertinum.

The most renowned artists in the collection include Lucas Cranach the Elder, Albrecht Dürer, Jan van Eyck, Francisco de Goya, Hans Holbein the Younger, Michelangelo, Rembrandt, and Rubens.

There is also a large number of works by artists with strong connections to Dresden, such as Caspar David Friedrich, Ludwig Richter, Georg Baselitz and Johannes Heisig.

The Kupferstich-Kabinett is one of several German museums that are researching the art collector Carl Heumann (1886–1945), who after building in the 1920s and 1930s an important collection of prints of German and Austrian art of the 18th and 19th centuries, was persecuted because of his Jewish origins under the National Socialist regime.The Kupferstich-Kabinett approached Carl Heumann's descendants in order to find a just and fair solution regarding the artworks from his collection.