The beginnings of the Frankfurt (Oder) city archives date back to the 13th century, when the Brandenburg Margrave Johann I elevated the market town on the Oder to the status of a city. In the 14th century, the electors of the House of Wittelsbach chose the town hall archive as the repository for important documents of Brandenburg's sovereignty. As a council house organizational unit, the archive primarily served the municipal government and administration. Next to the council chamber were “eleven lockable lockers, ‘in which the files were kept according to the ABC’”. The documents were stored in a locked iron privilege box. With the introduction of the “Town Hall Regulations” in 1719, a linguistic distinction was made for the first time between currentscript and older archive material. While the “Registratur bey dem Rathause” had previously been the responsibility of the Secretarius, a registrar was appointed in addition, who was responsible for ensuring that the “Alte als Neue Sachen” did not fall into “confusion and disorder”. There have always been efforts to catalog them. The oldest archival register available today dates back to 1546. In 1653, the Brandenburg Elector and Prussian Duke Friedrich Wilhelm ordered “all registries, books and documenta [...] to be recorded with diligence [...]”. The first external user was the Frankfurt university professor Johann Christoph Beckmann (1641-1717), who analyzed the city's archives as part of his work as a city and regional historian.
The professionalization of the municipal archive system only began in the 19th century. In 1822, judicial commissioner Heinrich Karl Ludwig Bardeleben (1775-1852) found the archive material in the attic of the town hall “as a pile of books and loose papers mixed with dirt”. Professional indexing and storage took place at the end of the 1880s, after Mayor Hermann Friedrich Wilhelm von Kemnitz offered the municipal archives to the Prussian Geheimes Staatsarchiv in Berlin for transfer. Director General of the Prussian Archive Administration Heinrich Karl Ludolf von Sybel convened an archive commission in agreement with the Frankfurt government to examine the city's archive system. Although the commission's final report also suggested handing them over as a deposit, both the city councillors and the members of the Historical Society were in favor of the archives remaining in Frankfurt. As a result, the Prussian archive administration obliged the magistrate to provide suitable rooms and trained staff. Dr. Robert Arnold from the Prussian Geheimen Staatsarchiv was seconded to Frankfurt several times for several months to carry out the cataloging work. Arnold drew up the first archive regulations, oversaw the relocation of the archives from the town hall to the sacristy of the Franciscan monastery church and opened the archive to external users. He also instructed employees of the city administration in the sorting and archiving of documents that were no longer required. The first archivist paid by the city was the grammar school professor Dr. Adolf Gurnik. Under his successors, grammar school professor Dr. Reinhold Kubo (city archivist 1903-1925) and Dr. Bruno Binder (city archivist 1925-1945), the city archive first moved to the rectorate building of the old Frankfurt University and finally to the converted tower of the Marienkirche.