The termUpper Hesse (German:Provinz Oberhessen) originally referred to the southern possessions of theLandgraviate of Hesse, which were initially geographically separated from the more northerlyLower Hesse by theCounty of Ziegenhain [de].
Later, it became the name of one of the three provinces in theGrand Duchy of Hesse (and thePeople's State of Hesse after World War I), which was located within the historical region; the other two wereStarkenburg (capital:Darmstadt) andRhenish Hesse (capital:Mainz). Its territory covered the area of land north of the RiverMain. The provincial capital and largest town of the rural provinces was the university town ofGießen.
Upper Hesse lies in the German state ofHesse. It is bounded in the south by theWetterau andRhine-Main Region, in the east by theVogelsberg, and theKnüll, in the north by theKellerwald and in the west by theGladenbach Uplands. The landscape is characterised bylow mountains. Today thenature parks of the Lahn-Dill Uplands and theHigh Vogelsberg as well as the regions ofMarburg andGiessen belong to the Upper Hesse.[1]
Due to the practice ofpartible inheritance, the lands of Upper and Lower Hesse were partitioned into separate states several times. All of the rulers of the partitions were considered to beLandgraves.
The first was between the sons ofHenry I "the Child" in 1308, when Henry's older sonOtto I received Upper Hesse, or the "Land on theLahn"; his younger siblingJohn received Lower Hesse. The two partitions were reunited three years later when John died without an heir.
The second partition occurred in 1458 following the death ofLouis I of Hesse: his first son,Louis II, received Lower Hesse, while his second son,Henry III, received Upper Hesse. The partitions remained separate until the death ofWilliam III of Upper Hesse in 1500, when it was inherited byWilliam II of Lower Hesse.
The third partition took place after the death ofPhilip I in 1567. This time, rather than being divided in two, Hesse was divided into four:Hesse-Kassel,Hesse-Rheinfels,Hesse-Marburg andHesse-Darmstadt.
On the eve of the French Revolution (1789), most of historic Upper Hesse lay within northern Hesse-Darmstadt, except for the area around Marburg, which was part of Hesse-Kassel. During the course of theGerman mediatization andNapoleonic wars, Hesse-Darmstadt gained territory from several former states contiguous with Upper Hesse, primarily fromSolms-Laubach and thePrincipality of Isenburg. These territories were reorganised into the Province of Upper Hesse. Also during this period Hesse-Darmstadt became theGrand Duchy of Hesse.
The provinces of the Grand Duchy were dissolved on 31 July 1848 and replaced by administrative regions (Regierungsbezirke); this was reversed on 12 May 1852.
Following theAustro-Prussian War in 1866,Prussia annexed all of theElectorate of Hesse (the former Hesse-Kassel), which included some Upper-Hessian areas such as Marburg, as well as all of Lower Hesse. They also annexed the Grand Duchy's north-westernpanhandle aroundBiedenkopf. These territories, along with those gained from theDuchy of Nassau and theFree City of Frankfurt, become the Prussian province ofHesse-Nassau in 1868. However, the bulk of Upper Hesse remained with the Grand Duchy.
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