The Princely Fürstenberg Archive is the private archive of the House of Fürstenberg and one of Germany’s largest aristocratic archives. It preserves the documents of the princely administrations and enterprises as well as the personal papers of members of the princely family. It is furthermore the archive of the Fürstenberg lands in Swabia up to 1806, the year the Principality of Fürstenberg was mediatised.

The Fürstenberg Archive is situated in one of Germany’s oldest autonomous archive buildings. It dates from 1756-1763, a time when it was still common practice to store archive material in a more or less makeshift manner in revamped buildings and rooms, in town hall basements, palace vaults and church towers. It has moreover retained its original form and purpose nearly unchanged to the present day and is now very likely a unique example of an early functional archive building.

The Fürstenberg Archive is also remarkable for the fact that it had already been expanded into a scholarly research centre and opened to the public for historical research by Prince Karl Egon III in 1862. Nothing has changed since then. The Fürstenberg Archive is headed by a full-time historian and is consequently among the best accessible aristocratic archives in Germany.