On March 3, 2009 the Cologne City Archives collapsed, burying thousands of precious historical documents under layers of muck and rubble.. The Archives building was destroyed as well as two apartment buildings next door and two lives were lost.

The collections held at the Archives dated back to 922 AD. It held 65,000 documents, 104,000 maps and a half-million photographs. The manuscripts and letters of Nobel Prize winner Heinrich Böll and Jacques Offenbach, a 19th century cellist and opera composer, were stored at the Archives as well as those of Weimar Republic politician Wilhelm Marx and German-Jewish composer Ferdinand Hiller.

At the end of April 2009 Vicki Lee, the head conservator at the Archives traveled to Cologne to assist in the recovery accompanying a group of Blue Shield participants, primarily from The Netherlands.