On 18 December 1890, a group of 13 sisters led by their prioress Mother Josefine von Fürstenberg-Stammheim arrived in Cologne from Tegelen in Holland and founded the first Benedictine monastery here in Cologne since the secularisation. The community initially found a temporary home in a rented house in the Domstrasse. In August 1895, they were able to move to Raderberg, which in those days lay outside the city gates. A new monastery building had meanwhile been built there, financed with Mother Josefine's maternal inheritance.

Immediately after that, the young, rapidly growing community suffered a bitter blow with the death of its first prioress. In the years that followed the work inside and out which was needed to develop the community often took the sisters to the limits of their strength and beyond. Added to this was the growing economic hardship, which was made still worse by the inflation of the 1920s. During this period the monastery had its largest number of members: more than 70 sisters.

The monastery was threatened with closure during the reign of the national socialist regime, but by taking on so-called important war work the threat was warded off. As Cologne was increasingly destroyed by the bombing, the sisters were obliged to leave the monastery in the autumn of 1944. The first ones returned in April 1945, before the official end of the war. Besides the normal share of work to be done, the work of reconstruction in the post-war years required additional labour. The community had tried to earn its way from the early years by baking communion hosts, through a workshop for ecclesiastical vestments, and through agriculture.

The community was increasingly characterised by an ageing population and in the 1960s there were hardly any newcomers. But then from 1974 onwards, women who were interested in becoming nuns again began to make contact with the monastery. During the years that followed some of them entered the monastery and the number of members has remained constant since then at about 30 sisters. The textile restoration workshop set up in 1989 provided an additional source of income. The community acknowledged the growing demand for pastoral care by training some sisters in this work and by setting up several guestrooms. Today the monastery numbers 25 sisters who have made their solemn profession.