Babenhausen (Hessen)

Babenhausen
Witch's tower
Coat of arms
Babenhausen
Location of Babenhausen within Darmstadt-Dieburg district
Coordinates: 49°58′0″N 8°57′0″E / 49.96667°N 8.95000°E / 49.96667; 8.95000Coordinates: 49°58′0″N 8°57′0″E / 49.96667°N 8.95000°E / 49.96667; 8.95000
Country	Germany
State	Hesse
Admin. region	Darmstadt
District	Darmstadt-Dieburg
Government
• Mayor	Achim Knoke
Area
• Total	66.87 km2 (25.82 sq mi)
Elevation	127 m (417 ft)
Population (2015-12-31)
• Total	16,728
• Density	250/km2 (650/sq mi)
Time zone	CET/CEST (UTC+1/+2)
Postal codes	64832
Dialling codes	06073
Vehicle registration	DA or DI
Website	www.babenhausen.de

Babenhausen (  ) is a town in the Darmstadt-Dieburg district, in Hesse, Germany.

It is situated on the river Gersprenz, 25 km southeast of Frankfurt, and 14 km west of Aschaffenburg. South of its general borders, the mountain range of the Odenwald is situated about 15 km away. The landscape is rather flat due to the landscape forming process of the Gersprenz and other small rivers. Some sections along the Gersprenz are set aside as nature reserves with valuable plants and animals, e.g. the white stork or the kingfisher. The forests in the municipal area are mostly pine woods on ice-age dunes with heath fields. The sandy soil is regionally famous for growing white asparagus.

The town of Babenhausen includes a medieval core with a castle (12-13th century), numerous old houses and a large part of the city wall (1445). Babenhausen was chartered as a town in 1295. It belonged first to the Lords of Hagen-Münzenberg and was – after the last male descendant of this family died - inherited by the Lords of Hanau in the 13th century. In 1458 a minor line of them (first called Hanau-Babenhausen, later called Hanau-Lichtenberg ) founded a county (they had received the title of Graf [Earl] in 1429) on its own within the town and its district. In 1736 the last of the family died and the two potential inheritors, the Landgrave of Hesse-Darmstadt and the Landgrave of Hesse-Kassel (or Hesse-Cassel) nearly went into a war over this inheritance. It took 35 years to settle the conflict and to arrange a compromise under which the town of Babenhausen came to Hesse-Kassel. But this was soon revised by the territorial rearrangements during and after Napoleonic times: From the beginning 19th century Babenhausen belonged to Hesse-Darmstadt. In the aftermath of World War II Babenhausen was the site of a UNRRA-sponsored DP camp.