Institut für Stadtgeschichte 
Karmeliterkloster, Frankfurt am Main

The Institut für Stadtgeschichte (Frankfurt Institute of Local History) does far more than archive files produced by the City Council. To provide a comprehensive overview of the city’s historic heritage and to ensure its widest possible coverage, the Institute also collects all the documentation material that is of relevance to the city’s history. It aims to record everything that is worth preserving for posterity – from the world of politics as well as from everyday life and from its vast spectrum of different social manifestations.

The scale ranges from entire archives of companies, clubs and private individuals, as well as posters, maps, postcards and photographs to chronicles and manuscripts, down to films and videos. All this material, which can differ so widely, has been consolidated into a Collections Department.

• The  Contemporary History Collection comprises local history collection no. S3 (ca 27,500 portfolios with newspaper cuttings and other documents), as well as newspapers and magazines (ca. 550 items) and the poster collection (ca. 27,000 items).
• The  Person-Specific Collection comprises histories of individuals, S2 (ca. 17,500 portfolios), information on 19th and 20th-century personalities and a collection of 18,000 portraits.
• The  Map Collection, with some 70,000 items, provides material on the history of Frankfurt and of the surrounding area.
• The  Postcard Collection covers over 15,000 postcards and 110 concertina cards.
• The  Audiovisual Media Collection comprises about 2,500 films, video cassettes and audio recordings as well as ca. 2 million photographs and about 70,000 slides (views of the city, contemporary photos and collections of individual photographers).
• As well as developing the Person-Specific Collection, the Institute also tries to secure the  bequests of a range of important Frankfurt celebrities. It is currently managing over 400 bequests.
• The  Frankfurt Industry Archive collects and develops important Frankfurt company and club archives. At the moment, it is managing 40 archives.
• To cover areas where people engage on a political, cultural or social level, the Institute purchases archives from  clubs and societies. It currently has over 100 archives of this kind.