Käthe Kollwitz Museum Köln

The Käthe Kollwitz Museum Köln is a single-artist museum in Cologne, Germany, that holds the largest collection of works by German artist Käthe Kollwitz (1867-1945). Located in the Altstadt-Nord district at Neumarkt, the museum is owned and operated by the Kreissparkasse Köln savings bank and has maintained close ties with the Kollwitz family since its founding. The institution is recognized as the most comprehensive repository of Kollwitz's work worldwide, encompassing approximately 300 drawings, more than 500 prints, all of her posters, and all sculptural works that can be exhibited as museum pieces.

The museum was founded on 22 April 1985, the 40th anniversary of Kollwitz's death, when the Kreissparkasse Köln first presented its Käthe Kollwitz Collection in the former boardroom of the bank. The collection itself originated in 1976, when the bank acquired two lithographs during a Kollwitz exhibition in its foyer. A decisive expansion came in 1983 with the purchase of 60 drawings from the Kollwitz family, forming the foundation of what would become the world's most comprehensive Kollwitz collection. The bank's involvement reflects historical connections between Kollwitz's themes of poverty, hunger, and suffering and the 19th-century German savings banks movement, which sought to address such hardships. Since 1989 the museum has occupied its current location, and in 1994 it began charging admission as a solidarity contribution to support the Käthe-Kollwitz-Haus Moritzburg. Jutta Bohnke-Kollwitz, Käthe Kollwitz's granddaughter, served as founding director from 1985 to 1990, followed by Hannelore Fischer from January 1990 to March 2022, and subsequently Katharina Koselleck. The museum closed for extensive renovation from 2022 until autumn 2025, reopening on 11 October 2025 with the special exhibition KOLLWITZ NEU SEHEN, marking both the 80th anniversary of Kollwitz's death and the museum's 40th anniversary.

The collection spans the full range of Kollwitz's media and thematic concerns. In printmaking, it contains all of her major cycles: the early etching cycles Ein Weberaufstand (The Weavers, 1893-1897) and Bauernkrieg (Peasant War, 1901-1908), the woodcut cycles Krieg (War, 1921/22) and Proletariat (1925), and the late lithographic cycle Tod (Death, 1934-1937). The drawing holdings emphasize pen and ink works from her early period, charcoal drawings for the satirical magazine Simplicissimus, three of the ten extant colour pastels, and later works on the theme of death, including pencil and charcoal drawings on family, politics, and war, erotic scenes and nude studies from the Secreta portfolio, self-portraits, and portraits of workers. The museum also possesses Kollwitz's complete poster output from the 1920s, created under her motto I am determined to have an impact in these times, as well as nearly all of her book illustrations.

Among singular works, the museum holds the large-scale colour lithograph Selbstbildnis en face (full face self-portrait, 1903/04), an experimental piece that remained without an edition, and her final lithograph Saatfrüchte sollen nicht vermahlt werden (Seed fruit is not to be ground down, 1941), conceived as a legacy against soldier death and war. Theuria holds particular importance for the sculptural collection, which comprises all 15 bronze sculptures that can be shown as museum pieces, almost all in rare early casts. The collection also includes numerous preparatory sketches for the memorial Die trauernden Eltern (The Grieving Parents, 1918-1932) at the war cemetery in Vladso, as well as sketches for the Bauernkrieg and Krieg print cycles with particular focus on their genesis. Together with the copy of The Grieving Parents in the church ruin of Alt St. Alban (1956, created in Ewald Mataré's workshop by his students Erwin Heerich and Joseph Beuys) and the Grabrelief Levy (funerary relief for Levy, 1938) at the Jewish cemetery in Cologne-Bocklemünd, visitors can survey Kollwitz's entire sculptural oeuvre within the city.

Since 1989 the museum has been housed on the top floor of the Neumarkt Gallerie, a shopping arcade at Cologne's Neumarkt designed by Hans Schilling. The exhibition area encompasses 1,000 square metres. This location replaced the museum's initial home in the former boardroom of the Kreissparkasse Köln, where the collection was first presented in 1985.

The Käthe Kollwitz Museum Köln is located in the Neumarkt area of Cologne's Altstadt-Nord district. The museum is owned and operated by the Kreissparkasse Köln savings bank and continues to function as a public institution dedicated to presenting and researching Kollwitz's work. In addition to its permanent collection, the museum stages primarily monographic special exhibitions featuring artists whose work is historically or thematically related to Kollwitz, as well as exhibitions focused on artistic techniques. Since 2006 it has also presented photographic exhibitions in conjunction with photokina, the world's largest trade fair for the photographic and imaging industries held in Cologne. The museum maintains a specialist library for academic research and documentation on Kollwitz's life and work, supporting scholarly publication including revised catalogues of prints and sculptures.