The castle, the landgrave's gardens and even the busy Louisenstraße: the traces of the years between 1622 and 1866 are omnipresent in Bad Homburg.

That's how long the Landgraviate of Hesse-Homburg existed.

"It is firmly anchored in our identity," said Mayor Alexander Hetjes (CDU) at the presentation of the anniversary program.

Its founding 400 years ago is celebrated with exhibitions and lectures, and the specially designed logo is evidence of fine differentiation.

It expressly mentions the foundation as the reason for the anniversary.

Because Landgrave Ferdinand died in 1866 without male descendants and the Landgraviate reverted to Hesse-Darmstadt (and the Prussians came shortly afterwards), "400 years of Landgraviate" cannot be celebrated.

Bernhard Biener

Correspondent for the Rhein-Main-Zeitung for the Hochtaunus district.

  • Follow I follow

The fact that legal subtleties matter is also the subject of the first exhibition entitled "On the demonstration of our brotherly love and affection", which begins on March 5 in the Villa Wertheimber with a lecture by the Marburg historian Holger Gräf.

The city archive shows three documents according to which in 1622 the youngest son of the Hesse-Darmstadt landgrave George I was resigned to the office of Homburg by his eldest brother.

Because only the firstborn succeeded his father in order to prevent a division of the country.

But he had to compensate his brothers for this.

Although, according to the city archivist Astrid Krüger, the contracts add up to whole volumes of parchment and contain many detailed regulations, Darmstadt and Homburg fought for 150 years about additional payments because the income to be achieved in Homburg came from the city and the four associated villages of Seulberg, Köppern and Gonzenheim and Oberstedten was not enough.

The office counted only 2500 inhabitants.

They all had to pay homage to Landgrave Friedrich I in the palace courtyard.

Krüger suspects that perhaps only the heads of household came together.

See Hölderlin's manuscript

In the room next door, visitors are introduced to the auxiliary sciences.

It is about the formal components of documents, heraldry and dating.

This harbors pitfalls: According to the documents, the Landgraviate was founded on March 6th.

The Reformed Hessians, however, lived according to the Julian calendar and not the new Gregorian decreed by a pope.

According to today's calendar, it was not founded until March 16, 1622. For the same reason, the Russian October Revolution began in November.

Because the city archives located in the Villa Wertheimber also have to book the lower event rooms, the exhibition will be shown for three weeks in March and from July 22nd.

On the upper floor, on the other hand, portraits of the landgraves can be seen throughout.

The same applies to Hölderlin's "Patmos" manuscript.

He dedicated the poem to Landgrave Friedrich V.

The original will be shown in the villa's Hölderlin cabinet from June 10th to 19th, said the head of the culture department, Bettina Gentzcke.

Then a facsimile for the rest of the time from March 6th to October 31st.

With an app to the "Places of the Landgraviate"

Further lectures by the legal historian Barbara Dölemeyer and Jürgen Rainer Wolf are dedicated to the hereditary succession and the development of the Landgraviate.

Both are represented along with others in the current volume of communications from the Association for History and Regional Studies, which deals with the anniversary.

Because the library and the picture room in the castle are still being renovated, an exhibition will not start there until October, which will focus on the most famous of the Homburg landgraves, Friedrich II.

He had the dilapidated castle expanded into a baroque palace.

His silver leg prosthesis is also shown.

As with the Hölderlin anniversary, an app for mobile phones will lead to the "places of the county".

60 are presented in this way with explanations.

However, as with the founding of the Landgraviate, there is no big celebration.

"At that time the places were looted in the Thirty Years' War," said Dölemeyer.

This time it's Corona.