Hesse or Hessia, officially the State of Hesse, is a state in Germany. Its capital city is Wiesbaden, and the largest urban area is Frankfurt, which is also the country's principal financial centre. Two other major historic cities are Darmstadt and Kassel. With an area of 21,114.73 square kilometers and a population of over six million, it ranks seventh and fifth, respectively, among the sixteen German states. Frankfurt Rhine-Main, Germany's second-largest metropolitan area, is mainly located in Hesse.
A Regierungsbezirk means "governmental district" and is a type of administrative division in Germany. Currently, four of sixteen Bundesländer are split into Regierungsbezirke. Beneath these are rural and urban districts.
This article is about the history of Hesse. Hesse is a state in Germany.
Kassel is one of the three Regierungsbezirke of Hesse, Germany, located in the north of the state. It was created in 1866 when Prussia annexed the Electorate of Hesse, forming part of the new Province of Hesse-Nassau. It was enlarged following the incorporation of the former Free State of Waldeck in 1929. From 1944 to 1945 it formed its own province: Kurhessen. After World War II it became part of Greater Hesse within the American Occupation Zone, the precursor to the modern state of Hesse. In its modern form it consists of 138 municipalities.
The North German Confederation was initially a German military alliance established in August 1866 under the leadership of the Kingdom of Prussia, which was transformed in the subsequent year into a confederated state that existed from July 1867 to December 1870. A milestone of the German Unification, it was the earliest continual legal predecessor of the modern German nation-state known today as the Federal Republic of Germany.
The Province of Hesse-Nassau was a province of the Kingdom of Prussia from 1868 to 1918, then a province of the Free State of Prussia until 1944.
The Frontier March of Posen-West Prussia was a province of Prussia from 1922 to 1938. Posen-West Prussia was established in 1922 as a province of the Free State of Prussia within Weimar Germany, formed from merging three remaining non-contiguous territories of Posen and West Prussia, which had lost the majority of their territory to the Second Polish Republic and Free City of Danzig in the Treaty of Versailles. From 1934, Posen-West Prussia was de facto ruled by Brandenburg until it was dissolved by Nazi Germany, effective 1 October 1938 and its territory divided between the Prussian provinces of Pomerania, Brandenburg and Silesia. Schneidemühl was the provincial capital. Today, the province is entirely contained within the modern state of Poland.
The Provinces of Prussia were the main administrative divisions of Prussia from 1815 to 1946. Prussia's province system was introduced in the Stein-Hardenberg Reforms in 1815, and were mostly organized from duchies and historical regions. Provinces were divided into several Regierungsbezirke, sub-divided into Kreise (districts), and then into Gemeinden (townships) at the lowest level. Provinces constituted the highest level of administration in the Kingdom of Prussia and Free State of Prussia until 1933, when Nazi Germany established de facto direct rule over provincial politics, and were formally abolished in 1946 following World War II. The Prussian provinces became the basis for many federal states of Germany, and the states of Brandenburg, Lower Saxony, and Schleswig-Holstein are direct successors of provinces.
The Rhine Province, also known as Rhenish Prussia or synonymous with the Rhineland, was the westernmost province of the Kingdom of Prussia and the Free State of Prussia, within the German Reich, from 1822 to 1946. It was created from the provinces of the Lower Rhine and Jülich-Cleves-Berg. Its capital was Koblenz and in 1939 it had 8 million inhabitants. The Province of Hohenzollern was militarily associated with the Oberpräsident of the Rhine Province. Also, for a short period of time, the Province of Hohenzollern was indirectly and de-facto controlled by the Rhine Province.
Karl Gerland was a Nazi Gauleiter of Gau Kurhessen and Oberpräsident of the Prussian Province of Kurhessen. On 21 April 1945, Gerland was killed in action against the Soviet Red Army at Frankfurt (Oder).
The People's State of Hesse was one of the constituent states of Germany from 1918 to 1945, as the successor to the Grand Duchy of Hesse after the defeat of the German Empire in World War I, on the territory of the current German states of Hesse and the Rhineland-Palatinate. The State was established after Grand Duke Ernest Louis was deposed on 9 November 1918. The term "People's State" referred to the fact that the new state was a Republic and was used in the same manner as the term Free State, which was employed by most of the other German States in this period.
Greater Hesse was the provisional name given for a section of German territory created by the United States military administration in at the end of World War II. It was formed by the Allied Control Council on 19 September 1945 and became the modern German state of Hesse on 1 December 1946.
The Province of Nassau was a province of Prussia from 1944 to 1945.
The Gauliga Hessen was the highest football league in the German state of Hesse and the Prussian province of Hesse-Nassau from 1933 to 1945. From 1941, it was renamed Gauliga Kurhessen. Shortly after the formation of the league, the Nazis reorganised the administrative regions in Germany, and the GauElectoral Hesse replaced the Prussian province and the Peoples State.
The Wiesbaden Region was one of three administrative regions from which the state of Hesse was formed in 1945.
In the London Protocol signed on 12 September 1944, the Allies of World War II agreed on dividing Germany into three occupation zones after the war.
The abolition of Prussia took place on 25 February 1947 through a decree of the Allied Control Council, the governing body of post-World War II occupied Germany and Austria. The rationale was that by doing away with the state that had been at the center of German militarism and reaction, it would be easier to preserve the peace and for Germany to develop democratically.
The Gau Electoral Hesse was an administrative division of Nazi Germany from 1933 to 1945, initially known under the name Gau Hesse-Nassau-North, comprising the northern part of the Prussian province of Hesse-Nassau. Before that, from 1925 to 1933, it was the regional subdivision of the Nazi Party in that area.
Walter Schultz was an official of the Nazi Party who served as the Party Gauleiter in Hesse-Nassau, as well as in several governmental posts.
