Institut für Stadtgeschichte 
Karmeliterkloster, Frankfurt am Main

City Archives

The City Archives Department comprises all documents, files and official records of the City of Frankfurt am Main as well as of secularized convents and monasteries and of social establishments maintained or partially owned by Frankfurt . The borderline between the Old and New Archives is formed by the Prussian Annexation in 1866 and the subsequent restructuring of Frankfurt ’s administration, completed in 1868. However, to maintain continuity in the departmental organization beyond 1866/68, this borderline has been crossed in numerous areas.

Throughout their history old and relatively new archives were at times organizationally united and then separated again. From 1863 to 1904, City Archives I with their old stock existed side by side with City Archives II which comprised the filing cabinets of the time when Frankfurt was a Free City as well as the growing City Government filing cabinets from 1868. Later, this separation was abolished and the Free City records were placed into the City Archives, while the current filing cabinets of the local government stayed with the City Record Office. A major turning point occurred with the Second World War, when large volumes of documents were lost both in the archives and in administration. After the war an old and a new archiving department were set up again which were subsequently amalgamated for administrative restructuring purposes in 2004, though without changing the system which had been applied to the stocks.

The losses incurred during the war can be gathered from a comparison of old lists of stocks with more recent ones:
Rudolf Jung, Das Frankfurter Stadtarchiv. Seine Bestände und seine Geschichte, Frankfurt 1909.
Konrad Bund, 1436-1986. 550 Jahre Stadtarchiv Frankfurt am Main. Eine Kurzübersicht über seine Bestände, Frankfurt 1986.