The northern and southern sections were separated by a narrow stretch of territory, which belonged to Prussia after 1866 and before that to Duchy of Nassau, the Free City of Frankfurt, and the Electorate of Hesse.

[28] The members of the civil service who led the reforms were:[29] In 1816, a three-man legal commission was established to craft a constitution and other necessary laws, composed of Floret and Carl Ludwig Wilhelm Grolman.

Thus, for example, the entrepreneur Ernst Emil Hoffmann [de] received the most votes in Darmstadt two times, but the mayoralty was assigned to the second or third place candidates.

[49] A political crisis was already broiling in Hesse at the time of the July Revolution in 1830: when Louis II succeeded as grand duke after the death of his father in 1830, he had a total debt of two million guilder, which he expected the state to pay for.

[51] The government initially maintained its relatively open policy towards the press,[52] but reacted harshly to the distribution of The Hessian Courier, a pamphlet by Georg Büchner calling for social revolution.

After March 1848, there was a reshuffle of the ministries, since Heinrich von Gagern was elected president of the Frankfurt Parliament and therefore had to resign from his role as a minister in the grand duchy.

[65] Louis III, who "imitated the image of a paternalistic ruler projected by his grandfather, without achieving his significance,"[66] and Dalwigk shared a conservative outlook and were both opposed to liberalism and democracy.

[67] These led to the election of the 14th (extraordinary) Landstände, in which pro-government representatives had a majority, and marked the beginning of comprehensive efforts to dismantle the achievements of the revolution.

A few weeks later, the crown prince Louis IV married Princess Alice of the United Kingdom (1843–1878), the second eldest daughter of Queen Victoria at Osborne House on the Isle of Wight.

[76] While Baden advocated "armed neutrality" in the brewing conflict between Austria and Prussia, von Dalwigk entered the war on the Austrian side immediately after hostilities broke out in June 1866.

[77] In anticipation of the Austro-Prussian War, command of the 8th Army of the confederation (around 35,000 men) was entrusted to Prince Alexander, brother of Grand Duke Louis III.

The treaty on the grand duchy's admission to the Confederation was signed on 15 November 1870, without Hesse receiving any reserved powers, unlike the other negotiating states.

At the Proclamation of the German Empire on 18 January 1871 in the Hall of Mirrors at the Palace of Versailles, the grand duchy was represented by crown prince Louis.

This led to the development of a glorified image of him and, at the death of "Uncle Louis" in 1877, it was largely forgotten that his rule had consisted of a series of political conflicts and missteps.

These included: The grand duchy's most significant loss was concealed to some extent by dynastic connections: Crown Prince Louis was the son-in-law of Queen Victoria.

This ensured the continued existence of a liberal internal policy, unlike the neighbouring Prussian Province of Hesse-Nassau, where the district councillors often came from the east of the kingdom and were politically conservative.

In 1912, the Centre joined with the aviation pioneer, August Euler (1868–1957), in his aircraft the Gelber Hund and with the LZ 10 Schwaben zeppelin to organise the Postcard week of the Grand Duchess and Airmail in Rhein and Main, which raised 100,000 marks for the cause.

Hessischer Zentralverein zur Errichtung billiger Wohnungen), in which the Wormser industrialist, Cornelius Wilhelm von Heyl zu Herrnsheim [de] played a leading role.

[131] In addition, the grand duke had the power to issue emergency decrees (including substantive laws) in urgent situations if the Landstände could not be gathered quickly enough.

A clear end point is 1 January 1900 when the extremely fragmented private law systems in Germany were replaced by the Bürgerliches Gesetzbuch, which applied to the Empire.

Thus, in the most progressive province, Rhine-Hesse, the clergy agreed a union in 1817, but bureaucratic obstacles meant that the state did not bring that agreement to fruition until Easter 1822.

After the Kingdom of Bavaria sealed its own concordat with the Catholic Church in 1817, the other states of southwestern Germany began negotiations in 1818 in Frankfurt am Main to come up with a solution for their territories, which resulted in the papal bull Provida solersque [de] of 1821.

This was allowed despite the reservations of the Hessian government and the Landstände, and the faculty of Roman Catholic theology at the University of Giessen was closed, after the retirement of the final professor.

While there were some very progressive theoretical approaches, such as a report by the young councillor Karl du Thil in 1809, advocating legal equality for Jews, only very small steps were taken in practice.

In the following years, the government in Darmstadt made a series of attempts to make deals with its neighbours to reduce tolls, all of which failed due to fears about the loss of sovereignty.

In the Hessian region, the right to mint was lost by the Diocese of Fulda, the noble houses of Isenburg, Solms, and Erbach, and the city of Friedberg.

However, forgeries of these notes were created in Philadelphia and brought into circulation in Hesse, leading to a new emission of paper money in 1864, consisting of over 4.3 million guiler (law of 26 April 1864).

[189] In 1836, only half a year after the establishment of the first railway in Germany, the grand duchy's parliament passed a law, which enabled the expropriation of land for private companies building railroads.

In Bad Nauheim, a unique collection of spa facilities, mostly designed by these artists, was created: Sprudelhof [de], drinking water fountains, bath houses, parks, pumps, and a laundry.

Until the beginning of the 20th century, the grand duchy retained different spelling rules from the neighbouring states of Prussian and Bavaria, which continues to have an impact today.