Marburg

Marburg rises above the Lahn at a crossing of the old roads between Cologne and Prague and between the North Sea and Italy. A castle guarded the settlement and collected tolls, and the town passed to the landgraves of Thuringia in the twelfth century. In 1228 the widowed Elizabeth of Hungary chose Marburg as her residence and devoted herself to caring for the sick. Canonized after her death in 1231, she became one of the most renowned saints of her age.

Elizabeth's daughter Sophie secured the Landgraviate of Hesse for her son Henry in 1264, and Marburg became one of its principal seats alongside Kassel. It was twice the capital of a separate Hesse-Marburg, from 1485 to 1500 and from 1567 to 1605. Landgrave Philip founded the university in 1527, giving the Reformation a lasting home in the town. Two years later he brought Martin Luther and Huldrych Zwingli together at the Marburg Colloquy in an attempt to reconcile their differences.

After the ruling line of Hesse-Marburg died out in 1605, its inheritance became a source of conflict between Hesse-Kassel and Hesse-Darmstadt. The struggle continued through the Thirty Years' War, which devastated the country around Marburg. The university nevertheless endured, and in the early nineteenth century the Brothers Grimm studied here as the town became associated with German Romanticism.