The City Archive and the City History Library are open to the public on Tuesdays and Wednesdays from 10 am to 4 pm and on Thursdays from 10 am to 6 pm.

An appointment is required for a visit. The e-mail address for registration is  lesesaal.stadtarchivbonnde The following information is required for a visit: Name, expected duration of your visit, reason for your visit or topic of your research.

To promote the local culture of remembrance, the city archive keeps a historical calendar of events. It summarizes important anniversaries for the year 2024 and provides an outlook for the years 2025 and 2026.

Volume 71 of the "Bonner Geschichtsblätter" has just been published as a joint project by the city archives and the Bonn Heimat- und Geschichtsverein. The current 300-page volume contains a total of ten articles on very different topics. It ranges from the iconography of the Jesuit Adam Schall von Bell (1591-1666), who came from our region and rose to become an imperial advisor in China (author: Wolf D. Penning), the years of August Heinrich Hoffmann von Fallersleben (1798-1874) as an employee of the Bonn University Library (Georg Schwedt) and the early decoration of the chapel of Johannes Hospital (Angela Berlis), the history of the Duisdorf Lapitesta works (Christoph Keller) and the fate of the former Bonn savings bank director Emil Weischenberg (Matthias Bertram), who was persecuted by the National Socialists.

There is also a biography of the Bonn "revolutionary", Kinkel friend and publisher Wolfgang Sulzbach (1809-1883) (Hermann Rösch). A look at equestrian sport in Bonn in the 19th and 20th centuries breaks new ground in terms of the city's history (Christoph Rauscher). The horrors of the First World War are once again recalled in an article on the transport of the wounded in Bonn (Bernd Birkholz), and the inexhaustible topic of Ludwig van Beethoven is covered with a compilation of Beethoven sculptures in Bonn, from the monument currently under repair on Münsterplatz to current productions and images (Winand Kerkhoff). The most extensive essay is dedicated to the ten adventurous and travel-loving children of Wilhelm Bleek, professor of Protestant theology in Bonn since 1818, and his wife, a contribution to the history of an important Bonn family (Wilhelm Bleek).

The volume is available from the city archive for 25 euros. Orders can also be placed electronically via the Bonn Heimat- und Geschichtsverein (www.bhgv.de) (opens in a new tab). Members of the Bonn Heimatverein can obtain the book free of charge.

In a Berlin antiquarian bookshop, a real rarity was acquired for the Graphic Collection of the City Archive and City History Library. It is a slightly larger than A4-sized advertising leaflet for one of the most prestigious accommodation establishments in Bonn at the time.

The copperplate engraving by an unknown artist from around 1780 shows the "Court of England" ("Cour d`Angleterre"). The building stood opposite the main entrance to the former residential palace and today's main university building on the corner of Fürstenstraße (left wing) and Am Hof (right wing). Friedrich Joseph Eigelmayer and his mother acquired the large estate in 1767. Eigelmayer was married to Adelheid Ries, the sister of one of Ludwig van Beethoven's most important musical teachers, Franz Anton Ries.

In its own description, the inn was described as "the most elegant in this town", "with many living rooms furnished in the latest taste, comfortable apartments, a large Redouten Saal, stables and coach houses". With its size of around 250 m² and an orchestra stage, the Redouten Saal played an important role in the cultural and musical life of the city, not least in the time of the young Ludwig van Beethoven.

Incidentally, the rear exit of the building led onto today's Remigiusplatz, the former parish cemetery of Bonn's largest parish, St. Remigius.

This very well-preserved print, which extols the virtues of the house in two languages (German and French), adds considerably to our knowledge of Bonn's topography at the end of the 18th century. Until now, only a small corner of the house from that era has been seen in an etching by Franz Rousseau (on the left of the picture), which shows the fire at Bonn Castle in 1777 in dramatic form. A photograph taken by photographer Carl Rumpf in 1907 shows that the house was only partially still standing and had a completely different use. The building was destroyed in 1944.

The City Archive has acquired 16 views of prominent Bonn buildings created by Hamburg artist Wolfgang Götze (*1906, †1988) in 1975, including motifs such as the Palais Schaumburg, the Kommende Ramersdorf and the Redoute in Bad Godesberg.

Wolfgang Götze initially studied architecture in the USA; following his real interests, he soon trained as an illustrator and commercial artist. He worked for the Chicago Tribune and in the advertising industry. After the Second World War, Götze lived in Hamburg, where he worked as a freelance draughtsman and illustrator. He made his drawings with a special ballpoint pen, which gives his drawings a special charm. It is his fine line and his precise eye for detail that make Götze's drawings so attractive and worth preserving.

Götze received the commission for his views of Bonn from the well-known photographer Sven Simon (*1941, †1980), whose real name was Axel Springer and who was the son of the newspaper publisher Axel Caesar Springer (*1912, †1985). Sven Simon was at times editor-in-chief of "Welt am Sonntag", but above all he made a name for himself as a sports and press photographer.

It was probably no coincidence that Simon commissioned the illustrator Götze to create views of Bonn in 1975 of all years. The provisional city of Bonn was on a direct path to becoming the permanent capital of the Federal Republic of Germany. It was the year in which the first capital city treaty was signed between the city, state and federal government to further develop Bonn as the seat of government. In 1975, for example, the first section of the subway was officially inaugurated.

A particular indication of Bonn's increased importance is the fact that the daily newspaper Die Welt moved its central editorial office from Hamburg to Bonn in May 1975. Perhaps this is the reason for the Springer family's particular interest in high-quality views of the German capital. The sheets are kept in the Graphic Collection of the Bonn City Archives.

A descendant of the Streck family in Bonn has donated a collection of valuable and rare documents relating to 19th century club life in Bonn to the city archives. The items come from Wilhelm Streck (* Bonn 1845, † Bonn 1898), who founded the timber business of the same name at the age of 30, which still exists today. His father had come to the Rhineland from the Rhön at the beginning of the 19th century, his mother came from (Leverkusen-)Lützenkirchen.

As a glance at the surviving documents shows, Wilhelm Streck was a man of many interests, presumably open-minded and sociable. Without exception, the material handed over to the city archives contains printed matter from Bonn clubs and social events, such as the ticket for the coronation ball of the Bonn Sebastianus-Schützen in 1869, tickets for "lectures" of the Bonn Citizens' Association or for the flag consecration of the Bonn Men's Choral Society, which he had joined as an active singer in 1868.

From 1871, Wilhelm Streck was also a member of the Bonn Gymnastics Club, for which he took part in many gymnastics days and gymnastics trips in Bonn and the entire region, as evidenced by the numerous tickets he received. The printed statutes of the Bonn Gymnastics Club and a set of gymnastics rules have also survived. The same applies to the participation card for the unveiling ceremony of the Arndt monument on the Alter Zoll in 1865. There are numerous cards for summer festivals, balls or dances organized by Bonn innkeepers or social associations such as the Butchers' Guild or the Bonn Warriors' Association.

There is a particularly rich tradition of the Bonn carnival, with a large number of relevant tickets, programs and dance cards. The fact that humor and cheerfulness played a major role in Wilhelm Streck's life is shown by his membership of the "Fröselkasten" club, whose sole purpose was "to give the members a fun evening every week".

The collection of small printed publications owned by Wilhelm Streck offers a remarkable insight into the diversity of civic association life in the Rhenish university town in the 1860s and 1870s.

The "Zeitungsportal NRW" project funded by the state of NRW digitizes local newspapers from NRW in the period from 1801 to 1945 and presents them to the general public.

In 2018, the City Archive and the City History Library provided the microfilms for the digitization of the "Godesberger Volkzeitung".

Now the "Godesberger Volkszeitung" is the first newspaper that has also been run through OCR recognition as part of the project. Around 60,000 pages from the years 1913 to 1941 are now searchable in full text. An important period of Godesberg history has thus been made more accessible.

Further information can be found here:  https://zeitpunkt.nrw/ulbbn/periodical/titleinfo/4554838 (opens in a new tab)

The Bonn City Archive offers a wide range of source material for local personal or family research. Information and copies from archived civil status and registration documents can now also be requested using an online form:

 Archived civil status and registration documents (information/copy) (opens in a new tab)

The main aim of the digital service is to facilitate inquiries and simplify their processing. An overview of central sources relevant to personal and family research in the city archive can be found on the  personal and family research (opens in a new tab) page.