Buchen

Buchen stands on the eastern edge of the Odenwald. First recorded in a gift to Lorsch Abbey in 773 or 774, it became a town under the lords of Dürn and was sold to the archbishops of Mainz in the early fourteenth century. Its walls enclosed a market town known for annual fairs and for trade in yarn, cloth and horses. In 1346 Buchen joined a league of nine towns under Mainz.

During the Peasants' War in 1525, the knight Götz von Berlichingen was compelled to take command of a peasant force in the courtyard of the town's stone administrative building. After the rebels' defeat, Buchen lost its self-government. The Thirty Years' War brought Swedish and imperial troops and a plague that killed hundreds. In 1803 the town passed briefly to Leiningen, before becoming part of Baden in 1806.