During the establishment of chemistry as a science and the beginnings of the chemical industry in Germany, Carl Remigius Fresenius launched a new venture in 1862: the first journal for analytical chemistry. Fresenius had recognized that all major advances in chemistry were directly related to new or improved analytical methods and therefore regretted the fact that analytical chemistry was only given a few columns in the general chemistry journals. In Fresenius' opinion, the textbooks in which analytical methods had previously been collected and disseminated could only be places for collecting material that had already been organized, but not the place where the constant flow of new knowledge in analytics was organized and sifted. This was the task of periodicals, and so the new journal was to provide a forum independent of the prevailing doctrine.

Among the authors of the first issues were great names in chemistry such as Gustav Kirchhoff, Robert Wilhelm Bunsen, Friedrich Mohr, Heinrich Rose, Hugo Trommsdorff, Otto Linné Erdmann, Gustav Bischof and Johan Kjeldahl.

The first half of the Zeitschrift für Analytische Chemie contained original papers or complete translations; the second part was a continuous report covering all significant achievements in the entire field of analytical chemistry, with comments by the reporter. One of the main reasons for the journal's success was certainly the fact that the editors checked many of the articles published in the journal themselves in the laboratory before printing.

Originally, the Zeitschrift für Analytische Chemie was published four times a year by Christian Wilhelm Kreidel's Wiesbaden publishing house; after his death, it was published by Fritz Bergmann. In 1914, he took on Ferdinand and Julius Springer as partners, who took over the publishing house after Bergmann's death. After Fresenius' death, his descendants took over the editorship.

From 1990, the journal for analytical chemistry was published exclusively in English under the title "Fresenius' Journal of Analytical Chemistry" due to its international importance. In the course of the European merger of numerous chemical journals, the long-established publication was merged with the journals "Analusis", "Química Analítica" and "Chemical Analysis/Chemia Analityczna" in 2001 and now appears under the sponsorship of various European specialist societies under the name "Analytical and Bioanalytical Chemistry (ABC)".