It is the largest museum of graphic art in Germany,[1] with more than 500,000 prints and around 110,000 individual works on paper (drawings, pastels, watercolours, oil sketches).

[3] It was first housed in the Altes Museum beside the collections of Old Master paintings and Classical sculpture from ancient Greece and Rome, as exemplars of "High Art".

The collection grew throughout the 19th and 20th centuries, with the addition of Medieval, Renaissance and later works, including drawings by Albrecht Dürer and Matthias Grünewald, Sandro Botticelli's illustrations of Dante's Divine Comedy (purchased in 1882), and the estate of Adolph Menzel.

In 1986 the Kupferstichkabinett took over the graphics collection of the National Gallery of Berlin, whose emphasis was on 20th-century prints, including Expressionist works that the Nazis had classified as "degenerate" and confiscated.

The older artists include Dürer, Grünewald, Botticelli and Menzel, as well as Altdorfer, Bosch, Bruegel, Chodowiecki, Friedrich, Mantegna, Rembrandt, Schinkel, and Tiepolo.