The foundation of this convent remains rather obscure. According to Ludwig Arntz, Heinrich Neu and Hans Vogts in Die Kunstdenkmaeler der Stadt Koeln, the convent was first mentioned in documents of 1220 and 1226, which suggest that the convent's first site had been in Riehl, a suburb of Cologne, and that the convent was moved to the city before 1220. According to Stein, this information is unverifiable. The earliest mention of the convent which is verifiable is in 1233 when half of the convent's nuns left to found the Cistercian nunnery of Burbach in another suburb of Cologne. The document confirming this translation suggest that Mariengarten was incorporated into the Cistercian order in 1233.
In 1233 thirty nuns left Mariengarten to found the convent of Burbach. This was reputedly half of the convent.
The house was a mix of patrician and middle-class nuns. Of the thirty nuns identified, twenty-two were patrician and eight were middle-class.
In 1243 the nuns of Mariengarten petitioned the Cistercian General Chapter for permission to transfer their convent to property acquired from Cologne's Franciscans.
[1] Arntz, Ludwig, heinrich Neu and Hans Vogts. Die Kunstdenkmaeler der Stadt Koeln. Vol 2, part 3: Die ehemaligen Kirchen, Kloester, Hospitaeler und Schulbauten der Stadt Koeln, in Die Kunstdenkmaeler der Rheinprovinz, vol. 7. Dusseldorf: L. Schwann, 1937.
The origins of this convent still remain obscure.
