The city consists of the districts Brandenburg, Enzen-Hobbensen, Hörkamp-Langenbruch, Krebshagen, Obernwöhren, Probsthagen, Reinsen and Wendthagen-Ehlen.

After the successful clearances of the Dülwald forest around 1224, a new settlement by the name of indago comitis (the count's enclosure - the same name as The Hague) was first recorded in 1244 when it was described as a city and fort.

His predecessor Count Adolf XI had commissioned the current castle from architect Jörg Unkair of Tübingen.

The year 1609 saw the erection of the count's mausoleum at the back of the St Martini church, a domed heptagon with a famous resurrection group by Adriaen de Vries.

About 1700, at the ducal court of Hanover, in the presence of the duke, the dowager duchess, the princes, clergy, and all the distinguished personages of the city, Landesrabbiner Joseph Stadthagen (born in Metz about 1645, died in Stadthagen in 1715), disputed against the conversionist purposes of Eliezer Edzard, who had been the instigator of the disputation.

The rabbi refuted all the arguments of Edzard from Jewish Scripture and the Midrash and under full approval of the court declined to answer under oath the question as to which religion was the best: "We condemn no creed based upon the belief in the Creator of heaven and earth.

As in many German towns, on 9 November 1938, the "Kristallnacht", the Nazis burnt down the synagogue of the Jewish community in the Lower Street, which had been built in 1857.