History of Hesse

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origin of the name

The name Hessen can be traced back to the gradual change of word of the tribal name of the Germanic Chattas , over several intermediate steps, to today's name Hessen. The chats are said to have developed from several Germanic population groups and remnants of Celtic ethnic groups and were mainly located in what is now northern and central Hesse before the turn of the century. The center of the Chatti settlement zone was the Fritzlar - Gudensberg - Wabern area , the Kassel basin and the West Hessian depression landscape. To the south, the settlement area extended into the area between Gießen and Marburg, as recent excavations (e.g. Niederweimar) show. Althessen is roughly equivalent to the northern half of today's state of Hesse. Besides the Frisians , the Chatti are the only West Germanic tribe whose presumed descendants are still resident today on the same historical territory as around the birth of Christ and have kept their names. Since the tribe was last mentioned in AD 213, this ancestry cannot be proven beyond doubt. It is conceivable that the chats were displaced by other tribes in the course of the migration period or were absorbed by them.

Hessian states

Since the division of the estate from 1567 until the end of the Second World War, the territory of Hesse has always been ruled by more than one state. The following timeline shows all major state structures of the political division of Hesse in the course of history. The Prussian provinces from 1868 to 1945 (non-independent Hessian states) are marked in red. The upper timeline shows the career from the Landgraviate of Hesse via Hesse-Darmstadt to the State of Hesse, because this state was the only one that remained independent after the German War in 1866.


Provinz Nassau

Provinz Kurhessen Volksstaat Hessen Volksstaat Hessen Groß-Hessen Hessen


prehistory

Old Stone Age

The sites of Reutersruh (near Ziegenhain ) and Münzenberg , which were dated to around 600,000 to 800,000 years ago, refer to the presence of people for the first time . The tools there, including a cleaver , were made in the Günz-Mindel interglacial , which is part of the Cromer complex . Reutersruh was later called the quartzite 'factory' of the Neanderthals .

Due to the favorable climate, people lived there around 50,000 years ago during the Würm Ice Age, as cemetery grounds from this era show. Finds of end-palaeolithic tools in the southern Hessian area near Rüsselsheim am Main ( Rüsselsheim 122 ) suggest ice age hunters around 13,000 years ago who must have come from the area of ​​hunters and gatherers north of Düsseldorf.

Neolithic

Extensive excavations along the Lahn in Wetzlar-Dalheim have produced large 7000-year-old settlement remains of a ceramic band culture . The at least twelve long houses have a floor plan up to 30 meters long. They are protected by a ditch around two meters deep and a wall in front of them. To ensure the water supply, there were two independent wells within the fortification. In the vicinity of Fritzlar you can find the one from the 4th or 3rd millennium BC. Stone chamber grave from Züschen dating from the 3rd century BC . In Lohra, district of Marburg-Biedenkopf, another stone chamber grave from the same period was discovered in 1931 while plowing .

Further along the Lahn, archaeological excavations near Limburg have uncovered traces of a hamlet-like settlement from the Neolithic Age . The found fragments of pots date from approx. 5000 BC. BC and are the oldest traces of a settlement in the fertile Limburg area that have been discovered so far.

In 2006, a 7,000 year old mass grave was discovered in Kilianstädten , from which the bones of 26 apparently murdered people (including 12 children), mostly with broken shins, were recovered. The researchers suspect that an entire settlement was attacked and destroyed.

The fertile Wetterau has also been visited as a settlement area by all other prehistoric cultures since the Neolithic Age. End neolithic settlement material is documented for the southern Hessian area. Bell beaker shards were found in Rüsselsheim, Offenbach , Griesheim and Wiesbaden and suggest that southern Hesse was settled around 4500 years ago. A cord ceramic influence is suspected in particular in the Offenbach finds, while dates from the Wiesbaden excavations point to the older Wartberg culture .

Bronze Age grave from Wölfersheim (BZ level Wölfersheim) in the Wetterau Museum Friedberg.

Bronze age

Grave finds from the Bronze Age dominate, often hill graves such as those found in Wetzlar (in Finsterloh ), settlement finds from this era are much rarer. There are several grave finds from Wölfersheim from this time, one of which was an eponymous place of discovery for the Wölfersheim stage . There were three Celtic settlements in the Wetzlar district. The nearby Dünsberg was a Celtic refuge, a so-called oppidum . Here happened around the year 6 BC. A battle, as found among other things from slingshots of the Roman auxiliary troops. After the battle, the oppidum was destroyed . Nothing is known about the fate of the remaining Celts, but it can be assumed that they mixed with the migrating Germanic tribes .

Iron age

At least as early as the Celtic Latène period , iron ore was extracted from roller bearings in and around Wetzlar and smelted into wrought iron on site in racing furnaces . Iron processing has a 2500-year tradition there.

Antiquity

The Romans had a military camp in Dorlar , and in Waldgirmes, directly on the eastern city limits of Wetzlar, a civilian settlement was under construction ( Roman Forum Lahnau-Waldgirmes ). The provincial administration for the occupied areas of Germania on the right bank of the Rhine was probably planned here. It can be assumed that the governor of Germania resided here at least temporarily. The settlement seems to have been abandoned after the Varus Battle, which was devastating for the Romans, in 9 AD. The place name base word “-lar” possibly refers to a settlement of Celtic origin with a founding date up to the 3rd century (see also Wetzlar , Fritzlar , Dorlar etc.). Another interpretation of the place name ending “-lar”: - Old Franconian “hlar / hlari” and means something similar to “hurdle” or “scaffolding / frame”.

The reconstructed Saalburg

The Upper Germanic-Raetian Limes then ran through what was later to become Hesse , of which numerous remains can still be seen, especially in the Taunus ( Saalburg ). By the end of the 1st century, what would later become southern Hesse became Roman, while the north (Lower and Upper Hesse) remained under the influence of the Chatti. In the hinterland of the fort chain, a civilian settlement developed from the end of the 1st century AD, of which numerous villae rusticae are known. In today's Hessian area there were two main administrative areas: Nida-Heddernheim , the main town of the Civitas Taunensium and the Roman Dieburg (main town of the Civitas Auderiensium ).

In the course of the Roman occupation of parts of Germania, there were several armed conflicts with the Germanic Chatti. The Roman historian Tacitus depicts them as prototypes of the defensive Germanic and as equal to the Roman legions. The chats were among other things involved in the Arminius revolt around 9 AD ( see also Varus Battle ) and in 69 AD in the Batavian revolt.

Mattium , the political and cultural center of chatting, is believed to be on the Mader Heide near Gudensberg south of Kassel . The political continuity of this location is still in effect in 1654, i.e. in modern times, when the Hessian estates are summoned by their landgrave for the last time to the place of the Germanic thing of chatting in the open air.

middle Ages

In Hesse, as in Saxony, Bavaria and Swabia, it was not possible to establish a separate tribal duchy. Hesse was largely colonized by the Franks and annexed as a kingdom. It was divided into gaue and administered by counts on behalf of the respective king. Hesse came under Frankish influence as early as the 6th century .

Apparently, the "Old Hessen" area retained a certain independence within the Franconian Empire for a long time. The border to the regions of origin of the Franks was probably on the Diemel and in the area of ​​the Rothaargebirge . The border with Thuringia seems to have been between Werra and Fulda . A letter from the Pope to Bonifatius in 738 gives an insight into the regional ethnic groups in the early Middle Ages . The Hessi at Eder , Schwalm and lower Fulda , the Nistresi between Diemel and Eder, the Wedrecii between Eder and Lahn , the Lognai at the upper Lahn, the Suduodi on the upper Fulda and the Graffelti in the grave field .

Before Boniface , the "Apostle of the Germans" (from the point of view of the Catholic Church) built a new church organization based on the Roman model on behalf of the Pope, missionaries from Ireland and Scotland had been missionary in Hesse and Thuringia since the beginning of the 7th century (see Chatten , Missioning the chats) and built churches and bases there (including Hersfeld , Fulda , Büraberg , Amöneburg , Wetter , Schotten and in the Wetterau ). In letters from the Pope to Boniface reference is made to Hessians and Thuringians who were already more or less converted to Christianity. During his renewed mission, strongly supported by the Franconian nobility, Boniface met an Irish-Scottish church organization when he felled the Donariche near Fritzlar in 723 . In 724 he founded the Fritzlar monastery and the neighboring diocese of Büraburg , and in 744 he had the Fulda monastery founded by Sturmius . Since the 8th century, the Via Regia developed in the later south-eastern part of the country , which connected the Archdiocese of Mainz with the royal palace of Frankfurt , the abbeys of Fulda and Hersfeld and the trading and missionary base of Erfurt within the Franconian tribal duchy .

Under King Konrad II , the Count Werner family from Swabia gained influence in the empire. From 1027 they were owners of the county of Maden in Niederhessen and gained other counties on the Lahn. Count Werner I fell as a royal standard bearer in Bohemia in 1040, his son Werner II fell in Civitate in 1053 during the Norman Battle, also as a standard bearer of the imperial troops. In the Annals of Lampert von Hersfeld it is said that Werner III. was, together with Archbishop Adalbert von Bremen , more powerful than Heinrich IV . The Counts Werner were also governors of a number of monasteries, so u. a. von Hasungen and Kaufungen and the Breitenau monastery founded by Werner IV. in 1113 . This made them almost as powerful as the Konradines had been in Hesse before. In 1121 Werner IV died, who had also become Burgrave of Worms .

By inheritance, the Hessian counties (Maden / Gudensberg, Marburg area, as far as the Westerwald) initially fell to the Gisonen , who already had extensive property on the Lahn and had acquired considerable parts of the Bilsteiner property through marriage and inheritance . Eventually all these areas fell by marriage to the Ludowinger Counts, who were raised to Landgraves of Thuringia in 1131 . The ruling Ludowinger Landgraves handed over the administration of their Hessian territories to their younger brothers, who resided in Gudensberg as "Counts of Gudensberg" or "Counts of Hesse" . Best known among them was Konrad von Thuringia , who later became Grand Master of the Teutonic Order .

The Rhine-Main area and the Wetterau were initially more tied to the king in the Middle Ages. Under the Salians, counts like the Counts of Nürings and von Selbold-Gelnhausen acted as royal officials, and the Archdiocese of Mainz also had great influence. The Hohenstaufen made the region largely an imperial estate , which manifested itself in the promotion of the city of Frankfurt and the establishment of new imperial cities such as Gelnhausen (1170), Friedberg (between 1171 and 1180) and Wetzlar (1180). Reich ministers more dependent on the king, such as the Lords of Hagen-Munzenberg and the Lords of Büdingen , now acted as administrators . When the Hohenstaufen power collapsed in the middle of the 13th century, a territorial fragmentation began in southern Hesse, which remained formative for the history of the region until the end of the old empire. The Landgraviate of Hesse only gained influence here in the late Middle Ages, when many of the small territorial lordships that had arisen joined forces in the Wetterau Counts Association .

Creation of the Landgraviate of Hesse

After the male line of Ludowingers died out in 1247, the daughter of the last Thuringian landgrave, Sophie , married to Duke Heinrich II. Von Brabant , fought for her son Heinrich, later Heinrich I von , in the War of the Thuringian-Hesse Succession (1247–1264) Hesse , also known as "Heinrich the Child" or the "Child of Brabant", regained its independence from the Thuringian legacy of the Ludowingers, which fell to the Saxon Wettins . The war was ended by the Langsdorf Treaty , in which in 1263 the Archbishop of Mainz, Werner von Eppstein, agreed to the division of the Landgraviate of Thuringia. Heinrich moved his residence from Gudensberg and Marburg to Kassel in 1277 .

In 1292 King Adolf von Nassau enfeoffed Landgrave Heinrich with the Reichsburg Boyneburg and with the city of Eschwege , which Heinrich had previously assigned to him, and raised the Landgraviate of Hesse to the status of an imperial principality . In the Holy Roman Empire , at least since the late Middle Ages, land counts , margraves and palatine counts were part of the princes and were in fact equal to the dukes. However, at that time the Landgraviate consisted of only two comparatively small former districts, the former counties of Count Werner in the Kassel- Melsungen - Homberg - Wolfhagen area and the Gisonen in the Marburg area, as well as numerous free float and various bailiwicks. With the death of the last Count of Ziegenhain, Johann II. , In 1450, the County of Ziegenhain fell to Hesse, creating a direct connection between the previously separate parts of Lower Hesse (around Kassel) and Upper Hesse (around Marburg). With the inheritance of the rich county Katzenelnbogen in 1479, Landgrave Heinrich III fell. von Hessen to the necessary fortune in order to be able to assert the southern part of Hesse. This included in particular the income from the Rhine toll of the Katzenelnbogischen Rheinfels Castle . The House of Hesse ruled in Hesse-Kassel until 1866 ( German War ) and in Hesse-Darmstadt until 1918 ( November Revolution ).

(See also the detailed explanations under Central Hesse history ).

Renaissance

Map of Hassia Superior from 1646

Philip the Magnanimous made Hesse into a power that had a major influence on German history during the Reformation . At this point in time, the territory of Hesse had already undergone noteworthy extensions in the Rhine-Main area through inheritance (especially the County of Katzenelnbogen ).

After the death of Philip I the Magnanimous , Hesse was divided into four principalities in the so-called Four Brothers Comparison in 1567 according to the ancient hereditary rules of the house: Wilhelm IV received half of the state with Hessen-Kassel , Ludwig IV received Hesse-Marburg , Philip II . Hesse-Rheinfels and George I of Hesse-Darmstadt . Hessen-Rheinfels fell in 1583, Hessen-Marburg in 1604 by inheritance to Hessen-Kassel and Hessen-Darmstadt. Later the Landgraviate of Hessen-Rotenburg, which was only partially independent within Hessen-Kassel, with various subsidiary lines - called Rotenburger Quart - was created, again through the division of the estate . Hesse-Homburg gradually split off from Hesse-Darmstadt and was annexed by Prussia in 1866, the year Hesse-Darmstadt fell back .

In 1689 the Imperial Court of Justice , the highest court in the Holy Roman Empire , was relocated to Wetzlar . The reason for the relocation was the devastation of the former seat of the court, Speyer , during the Palatinate War of Succession . It existed in Wetzlar until the dissolution of the Holy Roman Empire in 1806.

19th century

Hessen in the German Empire

In 1803 the Landgrave of Hessen-Kassel was upgraded to the personal dignity of a "titular elector" through the Reichsdeputationshauptschluss . After 1806 there was no longer an emperor to elect the elector. He was thus ranked on an equal footing with the grand dukes. Hesse-Kassel remained a landgraviate with an elector as sovereign, even if the name Electorate of Hesse (Kurhessen) became common in common parlance . Kassel remained a royal seat. The former prince-bishopric of Fulda became part of the Landgraviate of Hessen-Kassel in 1816 as the Grand Duchy of Fulda . The Landgraviate of Hesse-Darmstadt was upgraded to the Grand Duchy of Hesse in the Confederation of the Rhine in 1806, in exchange for high military contingents to France . During this time, Hessen-Darmstadt also received larger areas of the Principality of Mainz ( Rheinhessen ), which had become "leaderless" due to the secularization .

In the Austro-Prussian War of 1866, the Elector Friedrich Wilhelm I sided with Austria . After the victory of Prussia , the elector fled and Prussia incorporated the Landgraviate of Hesse-Kassel. It was similar in Nassau , although it had remained formally neutral; the last Duke of Nassau, Adolph , became Grand Duke of Luxembourg by way of succession in 1890 . Close ties to the Russian Tsar kept the Darmstadt Grand Duke, who was also allied with Austria, and his country from the same fate, because Prussia did not want to challenge a confrontation with Russia. However, the Grand Duchy of Hesse (Hesse-Darmstadt) had the peace agreement dated September 3, 1866 some (relatively modest) field loss in favor of Prussia suffered so among other things, until the spring after the extinction of Homburger line of Hesse-Darmstadt escheated Landgraviate Hesse Homburg. At the same time, entry into a close alliance with Prussia was forced ( North German Confederation ). During this war, Prussia also conquered and annexed the Free City of Frankfurt am Main , which had still existed until then . From the newly conquered areas (Electorate of Hesse, former Landgraviate of Hesse-Homburg, Duchy of Nassau, City of Frankfurt, some areas of the Grand Duchy of Hesse (Hessen-Darmstadt) (so-called " Hinterland " with Biedenkopf and Vöhl an der Eder) and two small Bavarian border areas ) became the Prussian province of Hessen-Nassau in 1868 .

20th and 21st centuries

Even in the Weimar Republic , Hessen-Nassau continued to exist as the Prussian province and Hessen-Darmstadt as the people's state of Hessen . In 1929 the Free State of Waldeck was incorporated into the province of Hessen-Nassau. The district of Wetzlar followed in 1932 (previously in the Rhine province ). In 1944, the province of Hessen- Nassau was divided into the provinces of Kurhessen and Nassau based on the Reich defense districts. The province of Nassau now also comprised the Main-Kinzig area ( district of Hanau , district of Gelnhausen and district of Schlüchtern ) , which was once the Hesse region .

After the Second World War , the area of ​​today's Hessen was in the American zone of occupation . Immediately after the end of the war, the political parties formed anew, initially without the permission of the Americans. On September 19, the American united military government through the proclamation no. 2, the Prussian provinces Kurhessen and Nassau and the People's State of Hesse to the country Greater Hesse excluding the areas in the west, the part of the French occupation zone had become. These were, on the one hand, the Nassau districts of Sankt Goarshausen , Unterlahn , Oberwesterwald , Unterwesterwald and, on the other hand, Rheinhessen , the left-bank province of the former People's State of Hesse, whereby the districts of the cities of Mainz and Worms on the right of the Rhine in the American occupation zone remained in the occupation zone and therefore today (still) belong to Hessen. The French-occupied areas became part of the State of Rhineland-Palatinate in 1946 as the administrative districts of Montabaur and Rheinhessen . The former exclave of Wimpfen became part of the newly founded state of Württemberg-Baden against the majority resistance of the population and Hesse .

The Hessian constitution was passed by the constitutional state assembly in Wiesbaden on October 29, 1946, entered into force on December 1, 1946 by referendum, making it Germany's first post-war constitution. The name of the state was also changed from "State of Greater Hesse" to "State of Hesse". The capital is the former Nassau residence Wiesbaden . Simultaneously with the adoption of the constitution, the first state election, which the SPD won, took place. They formed a grand coalition with the CDU . Christian Stock (SPD) was the first elected Prime Minister . Several progressive decisions were made under him, particularly in social policy. Hessen was the first state to have a vacation law and a law on works councils in companies. The country took in around one million displaced persons .

After the state elections in 1950, the SPD ruled the country without a coalition partner. The new Prime Minister was Georg-August Zinn , who held this office until 1969. One of the most important problems, especially at the beginning of his term of office, was the division of Germany , from which the East Hessian border area in particular was economically affected by the separation from its neighboring regions and which led to a wave of refugees. Since the worsening of the Cold War in the early 1950s, Hesse has developed into an important stationing area for NATO troops due to its location on the inner-German border . Mainly parts of the 5th corps of the 7th US Army , some Belgian and until the mid-1950s French units and, since the establishment of the new West German armed forces, a considerable number of garrisons of the Bundeswehr were located here . In 1962, the SPD secured an absolute majority for the first time in the state elections. In the following legislative period, Zinn presented the Great Hesse Plan , a ten-year investment program for infrastructure and social issues worth 33 billion D-Marks. During this time, Frankfurt am Main established itself as the German financial metropolis, and Frankfurt Airport became Germany's most important air traffic hub.

Prime Minister Holger Börner (SPD)

At the end of the 1960s, Frankfurt emerged as the most important focal point of the Extra-Parliamentary Opposition (APO) alongside Berlin. When Albert Osswald (SPD) was elected as the new Prime Minister in 1969 after a stroke by Georg-August Zinn, the demands of the APO found their way into state politics in Hesse. In 1970 the self-administration of the Hessian universities was introduced. New school laws encouraged the creation of comprehensive schools . In the state elections in 1974, the CDU won a relative majority of the votes. However, through a coalition with the FDP , Osswald remained in office as Prime Minister. In 1976, Osswald took over political responsibility for risky credit transactions at the Hessische Landesbank and, ironically enough, resigned a few minutes after the polling stations had closed for the Bundestag election that took place on the same day. His successor was Holger Börner (SPD).

In the late 1970s and 1980s, especially from the protests against the West Runway, an active environmental movement emerged in Hesse. Because of the uncertain majority after the state elections in 1982 and 1983, Börner initially continued to rule until 1985 in Hesse the first nationwide red-green coalition was formed. In 1987 this coalition broke up in the dispute over nuclear policy. For the first time in Hessian history, a CDU-led government under Walter Wallmann emerged from the elections that followed. After the German reunification , the Hessian state government became heavily involved in the economic promotion of the neighboring state of Thuringia . The 1991 state elections resulted in a change of government towards a red-green coalition with Hans Eichel as prime minister. In the course of the 1990s, the economic crisis also made itself increasingly noticeable in Hesse, which had been prospering up until then. Unemployment rose significantly.

Roland Koch was Prime Minister from 1999 to 2010 . His CDU initially ruled with the FDP, from 2003 with an absolute majority , which was lost again in the 2008 election. Since after the 2008 election, due to the strong loss of votes by the CDU and the first time the left entered the state parliament, neither of the two camps consisting of the SPD and the Greens or the CDU and FDP had a majority, Koch continued to govern in accordance with the state constitution. Top candidate Andrea Ypsilanti tried to form a red-green minority government with the tolerance of the left, but failed because of resistance from within her own ranks. For this reason, the state parliament dissolved at the end of 2008 and new elections took place in early 2009. In these, the SPD had to accept heavy losses of votes. Since the FDP recorded strong gains in votes, the CDU and FDP now had a majority, despite only minimal gains by the CDU, and formed a coalition again, as they had between 1999 and 2003.

After Roland Koch announced his resignation from all state and party offices in 2010, the CDU appointed the Hessian Interior Minister Volker Bouffier as his successor. He was elected as the new Prime Minister by the Hessian state parliament on August 31, 2010.

literature

Web links

Commons : History of Hesse  - collection of images, videos and audio files
Wikisource: Pre-constitutional state law (Hessen)  - sources and full texts

Remarks

  1. ^ Clive Gamble: The Palaeolithic Societies of Europe , Cambridge University Press, 1999, p. 210.
  2. ↑ Jürgen Hubbert, Stefan Loew: online at www.koenigstaedten.de The two end-palaeolithic storage areas Rüsselsheim 122A and 122B , 2002.
  3. ↑ Irene Jung: Wetzlar. A little city history. Sutton Verlag, Erfurt 2010 ISBN 978-3-86680-715-0 , p. 10.
  4. ↑ Albrecht Jockenhövel: Lohra - megalithic grave. In: Fritz-Rudolf Herrmann & Albrecht Jockenhövel (eds.): The prehistory of Hesse. 1990, pp. 435-436.
  5. ^ Christian Meyer et al .: The massacre mass grave of Schöneck-Kilianstädten reveals new insights into collective violence in Early Neolithic Central Europe. In: PNAS . Online advance publication of August 17, 2015, doi: 10.1073 / pnas.1504365112
    Archaeologists uncover a Neolithic massacre in early Europe. On: sciencemag.org from August 17, 2015
  6. ↑ cf. Dirk Hecht: The end-Neolithic settlement of the Atzelberg near Ilvesheim (Rhein-Neckar-Kreis). A contribution to the end-Neolithic settlement system on the northern Upper Rhine . Books on Demand, 2003. ISBN 3-8330-0778-8 . P. 88ff. Preview on Google Books
  7. ↑ For the Wölfersheimer graves see Wolf Kubach: Graves between tumulus and urn field culture. The Bronze Age grave finds from Wölfersheim. In: Vera Rupp (Hrsg.): Archeology of the Wetterau. Bindernagel, Friedberg 1991, ISBN 3-87076-065-6 , pp. 175–186 ( special edition of Wetterauer Geschichtsblätter 40/1991 ).
  8. ^ Eugen Ewig : The Merovingians and the Franconian Empire . 5th edition, Kohlhammer, Stuttgart 2006. ISBN 3-17-019473-9 , p. 73
  9. ^ Karl Ernst Demandt: History of the State of Hesse , 2nd edition, Bärenreiter, Kassel and Basel 1972, p. 458.
  10. ^ Designation of the state of Hesse from December 12, 1946 . In: The Prime Minister - The Head of the State Chancellery (Ed.): State Gazette for the State of Hesse. 1947 no. 2 , p. 9 , item 11 ( online at the information system of the Hessian state parliament [PDF; 963 kB ]).