The Warendorf archives contain the combined historical holdings of the county of Warendorf (Kreis) and of all its 13 cities and communes (Ahlen, Beckum, Beelen, Drensteinfurt, Ennigerloh, Everswinkel, Oelde, Ostbevern, Sassenberg, Sendenhorst, Telgte, Wadersloh, Warendorf).

Types of archival documents: parchments, files, newspapers, photographs, posters & maps

Historical periods: Late middle ages to the early 21st century.

The holdings of the archive refer to diverse groups of documents that have been combined into a unit according to logically comprehensible aspects such as their origin, their context of origin and their factual content according to formal characteristics. These include, for example, the files of city and district administrations, but also collections of photographs and newspaper clippings. Almost all documents in an archive are assigned to collections that structure the archive. The holdings of the archive are available online in this portal and can be researched here.

Note for genealogists and family historians: The Kreisarchiv contains all historical civil register of births, deaths and marriages from the municipalities of the modern Kreis Warendorf. New records are added to these on an ongoing basis. The retention periods are: 110 years for births, 80 years for marriages and 30 years for deaths.
The records have been fully digitised, but for legal reasons are only partially available online. Please do not hesitate to contact us if you have any genealogical enquiries.