Historical Archive of the City of Cologne included copies of the protocols of the diets of the Hanseatic League. With the 1594 transfer, the Cologne archive became the most important repository of historical material concerning the Hanseatic League and thus concerning the history of Northern Germany in general, only matched by the municipal archives of Lübeck. On 27 February 1602, the city council ordered that books on jurisdiction and administration were to be systematically bought at the regularly held Frankfurt Book Fair. These were subsequently stored in the municipal archive and became the basis of the Cologne municipal library. The "Ratsbibliothek" was one of the few Cologne
Historical Archive of the City of Cologne municipal archive and library was erected between 1894 and 1897 to a Gothic revival design by Friedrich Carl Heimann: it was inaugurated in December 1897. The new building was large enough to accommodate the archive at a time of accelerated growth when the city of Cologne was absorbing many previously independent towns and villages. During World War II the building suffered damage from bombing. However, since all records and manuscripts had been moved into secure storage from as early as September 1939, the archive did not suffer any substantial loss. Since the archive moved to its new location in 1971,