Rhineland

The Rhineland (German: *Rheinland*; Dutch: *Rijnland*; Kölsch: *Rhingland*; Latin: *Rhenania*) is a broadly defined region in western Germany that follows the Rhine River, especially its central stretch, and occasionally extends into parts of Belgium. It serves as Germany’s primary industrial hub, packed with factories, and has deep historical connections to the Holy Roman Empire, Prussia, and the German Empire. **Term**

Originally, the term “Rhinelands” described a vague area along the Rhine’s banks settled by Ripuarian and Salian Franks, later part of Frankish Austrasia. During the High Middle Ages, many Imperial States emerged here from the former stem duchy of Lotharingia, but they never formed a shared political or cultural identity. The concept of a “Rhineland” took shape between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries, when the Holy Roman Empire grouped its territories into Imperial Circles for defense and justice. Three of the ten circles through which the Rhine flowed bore the river’s name: the Upper Rhenish Circle, the Electoral Rhenish Circle, and the Lower Rhenish-Westphalian Circle (roughly matching today’s state of North Rhine-Westphalia). Near the Empire’s end, after the War of the First Coalition, the short-lived Cisrhenian Republic existed from 1797 to 1802, covering French-annexed land west of the Rhine plus a few bridgeheads on the east bank. Following the French empire’s defeat, the regions of Jülich-Cleves-Berg and Lower Rhine were annexed by Prussia. In 1822, Prussian authorities reorganized the area into the Rhine Province (also called Rhenish Prussia), a naming tradition that carried into the modern states of Rhineland-Palatinate and North Rhine-Westphalia. In the early 1800s, Rhinelanders founded the Missouri Rhineland in the U.S. state of Missouri, a German cultural and wine region named for its soil and landscape similarities to the European Rhineland; by 1860, nearly half its settlers came from Koblenz, the Rhine Province’s capital. After World War I, Entente forces occupied the western Rhineland until 1930. The 1919 Treaty of Versailles banned German troops from the area, a promise the Weimar Republic upheld in the 1925 Locarno Treaties. Nazi Germany remilitarized the territory in 1936, testing diplomatic resolve three years before World War II began. **Geography**

To the west, the region reaches the borders of Luxembourg, Belgium, and the Netherlands; to the east, it includes towns and cities along the Rhine plus the Bergisches Land area up to Westphalia (Siegerland) and Hesse. It extends south to the North Palatine Uplands, and except for the Saarland, this roughly matches the modern usage of the term. The southern and eastern parts are mostly hilly (Westerwald, Hunsrück, Siebengebirge, Taunus, and Eifel), cut by river valleys—mainly the Middle Rhine up to Bingen (or rarely between the Neckar confluence and Cologne) and its tributaries the Ahr, Moselle, and Nahe. The lower Ruhr marks the border of the North German plain. In the south, the Rhine cuts through the Rhenish Massif. The area includes the western Ruhr industrial region and the Cologne Lowland. Major cities include Aachen, Bonn, Cologne, Duisburg, Düsseldorf, Essen, Koblenz, Krefeld, Leverkusen, Mainz, Mönchengladbach, Mülheim an der Ruhr, Oberhausen, Remscheid, Solingen, Trier, and Wuppertal. Place names and local family names often reflect Frankish heritage. Lands on the Rhine’s western shore show strong Roman influence, including wine-growing. In the core areas, much of the population belongs to the Catholic Church. **History**

*Pre-Roman*: In earliest recorded times, the lands between the Ardennes and the Rhine were home to the Treveri, Eburones, and other Celtic tribes, all somewhat influenced by neighboring Germanic groups. On the east bank, between the Main and Lahn rivers, lived the Mattiaci (a branch of the Germanic Chatti), while farther north were the Usipetes and Tencteri. *Romans and Franks*: Julius Caesar conquered the Celtic tribes on the west bank, and Augustus set up fortified posts along the Rhine, but the Romans never firmly held the east bank. As the Roman Empire weakened, the Franks advanced along both Rhine banks, and by the end of the 5th century they had taken all lands once under Roman influence. By the 8th century, Frankish rule was solid in western Germania and northern Gaul. When the Carolingian Empire was divided by the Treaty of Verdun, the part east of the Rhine went to East Francia, while the west remained with the kingdom of Lotharingia. *Holy Roman Empire*: By the time of Emperor Otto I (d. 973), both Rhine banks were part of the Holy Roman Empire. In 959, the Rhenish territory split into the duchies of Upper Lorraine (on the Moselle) and Lower Lorraine (on the Meuse). As the emperor’s central power weakened, the Rhineland fragmented into many small independent principalities, each with its own history.