The origins of the Kölner Werkschulen can be found in the Sunday school established by the painter Egidius Mengelberg in 1822 at the Jesuit buildings.
This was incorporated into the "Royal Prussian Provincial Vocational School Cologne" founded in 1833.
In 1910 Emil Thormählen came to Cologne to develop a School of Applied Arts as part of the German Werkbund movement.
In 1926 the school was reorganized and the Mayor Konrad Adenauer, designated it the "Cologne Werkschulen", in accordance with the Bauhaus point of view.
Under the rule of the NSDAP the German Werkbund movement was dissolved and the name of the Werkschulen was changed to Kölner Meisterschule (Cologne Master School).