Holdings
The archival holdings include(d):
- 65,000 charters from 922 AD to the present
- 26,000 linear meters of records
- 104,000 maps and plans
- 50,000 posters
- 800 estates, literary remains and other special collections
Among the 700 private deposits are those of writer and Nobel laureate Heinrich Böll, and writers Jakob Ignaz Hittorf, Irmgard Keun, Vilma Sturm, Paul Schallück and Hans Mayer, architects Ernst Friedrich Zwirner and Sulpiz Boisserée, collector Ferdinand Franz Wallraf, composers Jacques Offenbach and Max Bruch, conductor Günter Wand, and philosopher Vilém Flusser. Plans and drawings of architects Hans Schilling, Oswald Mathias Ungers, Wilhelm Riphahn, Karl Band, Gottfried Böhm, and Dominikus Böhm were stored in the building.
All charters and privileges formerly stored in the town hall tower were catalogued in the first inventory (inv. no. "Alte Repertorien 6"). This collection, also known as "Haupturkundenarchiv" (main charters archive), is regarded as the core part of the archive and was hence given the inventory number I.
Until 2009, all registers of births, marriages and deaths were stored at the municipal civil registry offices regardless of their age. Following a reform bill of 13 March 2008, birth registers to 1898, marriage registers to 1928 and death registers to 1978 were transferred to the archives in 2009.
Many of the most important and unique holdings of the Cologne archives have been preserved on microfilm in the central safekeeping archive of Germany, the "Barbarastollen" caves in Oberried in the Black Forest region. The Barbarastollen holds around 638 microfilms with one million of images in varying grades of quality from the various Cologne collections, including the municipal archive. In addition, the 1400 medieval manuscript books of the Archives were microfilmed by the Hill Museum & Manuscript Library in the 1980s. However, recent acquisitions (including the Heinrich Böll collection) have not yet been microfilmed. According to director Schmidt-Czaia, the archive has only digitized a tiny fraction of its holdings.
The Marburg photo archive of old charters holds high-quality black and white photographs of 284 charters from the Cologne archive.
Read more about this topic: Historical Archive Of The City Of Cologne
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