County of Hanau-Münzenberg
| County of Hanau-Münzenberg | ||||||||||
| Grafschaft Hanau-Münzenberg | ||||||||||
| State of the Holy Roman Empire | ||||||||||
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 Coat of arms
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| Capital | Hanau | |||||||||
| Languages | Hessian | |||||||||
| Government | County | |||||||||
| History | ||||||||||
| • | Established | 1458 | ||||||||
| • | Disestablished | 1785 (1821) | ||||||||
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| Roman Catholic; from 16th-century Calvinist, from mid 17th-century mixed Calvinist and Lutheran; ruled by counts; language: German | ||||||||||
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The County of Hanau-Münzenberg was a territory within the Holy Roman Empire. It emerged when the County of Hanau was divided in 1458, the other part being the county of Hanau-Lichtenberg. Due to common heirs both counties were merged from 1642 to 1685 and from 1712 to 1736. In 1736 the last member of the House of Hanau died and the Landgrave of Hessen-Kassel inherited the county.
The county of Hanau-Münzenberg was positioned to the north of the river Main stretching from the West of Frankfurt am Main eastwards through the valley of the river Kinzig to Schlüchtern and into the Spessart mountains to Partenstein. Capital was the town of Hanau. The counts had also castles in Windecken (disused after the 16th century) and Steinau an der Straße.
For the following years population counts of Hanau-Münzenberg do exist:
In 1452, after a reign of only one year, Count Reinhard III of Hanau (1412–1452) died. The heir was his son, Philip I (the Younger) (1449– 1500), only four years old. For the sake of the continuity of the dynasty after years of political fighting, his relatives and other important decision-makers in the county agreed not to turn to the 1375 primogenitur statute of the family – one of the oldest in Germany – but to separate the administrative district of Babenhausen from the county of Hanau and let the heir's uncle and brother of the deceased, Philip I (the Elder) (1417–1480), have it in his own right as a county. This arrangement of 1458 allowed him to have a befitting marriage and offspring entitled to inherit, and so increased the chances of survival of the comital house. This created the Line of Hanau-Lichtenberg. Later on – to distinguish the "old" county from Hanau-Lichtenberg – the part of the county which stayed with Philip I (the Younger) was called Hanau-Münzenberg.
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