History of Cologne City Archive, which was the largest in Germany. Its building collapsed during the construction of an extension to the underground railway system on 3 March 2009. History of Cologne The German city of Cologne was founded in the 1st century as the Roman Colonia Claudia Ara Agrippinensium. It was taken by the Franks in the 5th century and became an important city of Medieval Germany, the seat of an Archbishop and a Prince-Elector. As the Free Imperial City of Cologne it was one of the centers of the Hanseatic League in the early modern period. Most of the city was
History of the Jews in Cologne 6 synagogues and other community and meeting places in Cologne, which were all violated in the Kristallnacht on 9 November 1938 and were completely destroyed after the war, until the reconstruction of the synagogue in Roonstraße. Also in Cologne there were Nazi and antisemitic attitudes in the population and society. In fact Cologne politicians like Konrad Adenauer or writers like Heinrich Böll demonstrated a spirit of defiance and sovereignty that "no tyrant, no dictator can feel well in Cologne". A few Cologne people made an open opposition to Nazism or hid Jews (a known example of this is the Ehrenfeld