Hesse-Darmstadt

Hesse-Darmstadt, German Hessen-darmstadt, former landgraviate, grand duchy, and state of Germany. It was formed in 1567 in the division of old Hesse; after Hesse-Kassel was absorbed by Prussia in 1866, Hesse-Darmstadt was usually known simply as Hesse.

Hesse-Darmstadt was originally only the small territory of Upper Katzenelnbogen with Darmstadt, being situated in what is now the extreme southern portion of the present-day Land (state) of Hessen. But the landgraviate received significant accretions of territory during the 17th and 18th centuries, partly owing to its steadfast loyalty to the Habsburg Holy Roman emperors. Hesse-Darmstadt entered Napoleon’s Confederation of the Rhine in 1806 and was consequently raised to the status of a grand duchy in that year. Hesse-Darmstadt joined the allies in 1813 and entered the German Confederation in 1815. The Congress of Vienna ceded some of Hesse-Darmstadt’s lands to Prussia and Bavaria but in compensation gave the duchy, among other territories, a district on the west bank of the Rhine containing the important cities of Mainz and Worms. The grand duke Louis I (reigned 1768–1830) granted Hesse-Darmstadt a constitution in 1820, carried through other reforms, and made the grand duchy the first of the southern German states to join the Prussian Zollverein (Customs Union). Hesse-Darmstadt thereafter oscillated between liberalism and conservatism. The duchy sided with the Austrians in the Seven Weeks’ War (1866) and consequently lost its territory north of the Main River to the Prussian-sponsored North German Confederation. But when the German empire was founded in 1871, Hesse-Darmstadt became one of its constituent states.

Following the abdication of the last grand duke, Ernest Louis, in 1918, Hesse became a republic and one of the constituent states of the Weimar Republic of postwar Germany. In 1945 the territory east of the Rhine was in the U.S. occupation zone and became part of the Land of Greater Hesse (later called simply Hessen), while the rest became part of the Land of Rhineland-Palatinate.