Giessen

Giessen lies on the Lahn amid a network of streams and waterways from which its name is thought to derive. Its origins are associated with a moated castle built by Count Wilhelm of Gleiberg in 1152. The town later belonged to Hesse-Marburg and, from 1604, to Hesse-Darmstadt.

In 1607 Landgrave Louis V founded a Lutheran university here after the university at Marburg had adopted the Reformed faith. The new institution trained pastors and officials for Hesse-Darmstadt. Teaching moved to Marburg during the Thirty Years' War, but returned to Giessen in 1650 after the Peace of Westphalia. In the eighteenth century the university introduced practical studies including forestry and veterinary medicine. The chemist Justus von Liebig joined its teaching staff in 1824, bringing a new energy to the natural sciences.