Starkenburg Castle was erected about 1065 to protect the estates around
Lorsch Abbey, which itself were held by the
Prince-Archbishopric of Mainz from the 13th century onwards. Upon the
German mediatisation of 1803, the southern territories of the
Landgraviate of Hesse-Darmstadt—including the former Mainz lands on the Bergstraße—were incorporated into the newly established Principality (from 1816: Province) of Starkenburg. Elevated to the
Grand Duchy of Hesse in 1806, the possessions in Starkenburg, as well as in the provinces of
Upper Hesse in the north and
Rhenish Hesse in the west were confirmed by resolution of the 1815
Vienna Congress. From 1832 the administration was subdivided into seven districts (
kreise): •
Bensheim •
Heppenheim, with the
exclave of
Wimpfen both districts were merged into
Bergstraße in 1938 •
Erbach, renamed
Odenwaldkreis in 1972 •
Darmstadt, divided into an urban and a rural district in 1938 •
Dieburg, merged with the Darmstadt rural district in 1977 •
Groß-Gerau •
Offenbach, from 1874 with the Upper Hessian exclave of
Steinbach, divided into an urban and a rural district in 1938. With the establishment of the present State of Hesse, Wimpfen and Steinbach were separated from the Starkenburg region; in turn, the
Bischofsheim and
Ginsheim-Gustavsburg quarters of the City of
Mainz, located east of the Rhine River, passed to the Groß-Gerau district. A former administrative union of the Starkenburg districts was dissolved in 2007.