In the 8th century,
Treise was owned by the Abbots of
Hersfeld. The Counts of
Cigenhagen were named in a document for the first time in 1144. In 1186, Treysa was taken over by the Counts and fortified. Treysa's landmark, the Martinskirche (Church of St. Martin), nowadays known as the Totenkirche (Church of the Dead), was built in 1230. Treysa was granted town rights sometime between 1229 and 1270, and the same rights were bestowed upon Ziegenhain in 1274. After the last Count's death in 1450, the county passed to Hesse. The
Landgraves of Hesse had the
castle in Ziegenhain remodelled into a stately home in 1470, and then between 1537 and 1548,
Philip I, Landgrave of Hesse had it built into a fortification with a
moat. In August 1945, the proceedings to establish the
Evangelical Church in Germany (EKD) took place in Treysa in an event known as the Church Conference of Treysa. The meeting brought about the merger of the
Lutheran,
Reformed and United state churches. Two further church gatherings in May 1946 and June 1947 tried to start discussion about divergent perceptions of the
Eucharist, and also dealt with
Denazification. As part of Hesse's municipal reforms, the two towns of Treysa and Ziegenhain, along with their outlying villages, were united in 1970 into the Town of Schwalmstadt, and ever since then they have existed only as constituent communities of a larger municipality. In 1995, with the motto "Hessisch Willkommen", Schwalmstadt hosted the 35th
Hessentag state festival.
Rommershausen In the Marburg State Archive, Rommerhausen is first mentioned under the name "Rumershusen" in 1243. In 1360 it was called "Romirshusin" and in 1365 "Rumershusen", but it has gone by its current name since 1419. On 3 April 1916 at 15:30, a cosmic lump of
iron fell to earth in a woodlot near Rommershausen. This was later named, after the place where it was found, the
Meteorite of Rommershausen, and it has gone down in German
astronomic history as Germany's greatest verifiable observed meteorite impact. Rommershausen has been part of Schwalmstadt since the municipal reforms in the 1970s.
Trutzhain During the
Second World War, Ziegenhain was home to a
prisoner of war camp,
Stalag IX-A (one of the French prisoners there,
François Mitterrand, later became
President of France), and after the war, also to a
displaced persons camp at the same facility. The camp is now the constituent community of Trutzhain. Some of the barracks still stand and have been converted into houses. ==Politics==