Building from source using Torsten's exact command sequence worked for me with one simple modification: I replaced "core" in both places with "cmtk-3.3.1" as this was the name of the decompressed source directory.

OS: Scientific Linux 7.4
cmake version: 2.8.12.2

I did this build and install in my home directory on a cluster, i.e. I don't have write permission for /usr/local/bin or similar OS directories. I added the absolute path to ~/cmtk/build/bin to my path:

cd ~/cmtk/build/bin
PATH=${PATH}:$( pwd )

and

cmtk --help
cmtk TOOL --help

seem to work fine. I've now added

PATH=${PATH}:/PATH/TO/CMTK/BINARIES

to my ~/.bashrc.