Master baker Adam Maldaner had initially run a bakery in the lower Friedrichstraße since 1859. Shortly afterwards, he took over the Jung bakery in Marktstraße next to the "Hirschapotheke" and also opened a small café. His son Wilhelm continued to run the business. In 1908, he bought the site with the inn "Zum Rappen" on the other side of the street (Marktstraße 34). He built a new "Maldaner" there. The bakery and café were located on the second floor. A tailor's and ready-to-wear tailor's shop was set up on the first floor, while the rear building housed a corn mill and a rusk factory. Around 1910, the Maldaner traded under the names "Kaffee Imperial", "Kaffee Habsburg" and "Kaffee Hohenzollern". In 1918/19, the French occupation confiscated the buildings, set up the "Cooperative française" press office and used the café as a department store for food and wine, which was only accessible to the French military and French civilians.

After Wilhelm Maldaner's death in 1917, his widow married the restaurateur Carl Schwerdtfeger, who gave Café Maldaner the style of a Viennese coffee house. In 1923, the café and pastry shop were established on the first floor, while the "Konzert - Café" was created on the first floor and the "Arcadia - Diele" on the second floor. In 2001, Michael Schulz and his wife Renate Winkel took over the café from Josefine Jeuck, who had run it since 1956. Today you can still enjoy the Viennese-style coffee house tradition on two floors. In 2011, Café Maldaner was the first café in Germany to receive the "Original Viennese Coffee House" award.