Messel is a municipality in the district of Darmstadt-Dieburg in

Hesse Hesse (, , ) or Hessia (, ; german: Hessen ), officially the State of Hessen (german: links=no, Land Hessen), is a States of Germany, state in Germany. Its capital city is Wiesbaden, and the largest urban area is Frankfurt. Two other major histor ...

near

Frankfurt am Main Frankfurt, officially Frankfurt am Main (; Hessian: , "Frank ford on the Main"), is the most populous city in the German state of Hesse. Its 791,000 inhabitants as of 2022 make it the fifth-most populous city in Germany. Located on its na ...

Germany Germany,, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It is the second most populous country in Europe after Russia, and the most populous member state of the European Union. Germany is situated betwe ...

. The village is first mentioned, as ''Masilla'', in the Lorsch codex. Messel was the property of the lords of

Groschlag Groschlag was a family of German nobility of the County of Mark, extinct in 1799. History The knights of Groschlag were vogts (reeves) at Eppertshausen in the Carolingian Empire. In the 14th century, they were employed as castle officials in Dieb ...

from ca. 1400 to 1799. After the extinction of the Groschlag male lineage, the village would have passed to the

Archbishopric of Mainz The Electorate of Mainz (german: Kurfürstentum Mainz or ', la, Electoratus Moguntinus), previously known in English as Mentz and by its French name Mayence, was one of the most prestigious and influential states of the Holy Roman Empire. In the ...

but the population refused to accept this transition and paid homage to the daughters of the Groschlag family instead. The minister of the archbishopric, von Albini, consequently occupied the village with a force of 50

hussar A hussar ( , ; hu, huszár, pl, husarz, sh, husar / ) was a member of a class of light cavalry, originating in Central Europe during the 15th and 16th centuries. The title and distinctive dress of these horsemen were subsequently widely ...

s. In 1806, the village fell to the

Grand Duchy of Hesse The Grand Duchy of Hesse and by Rhine (german: link=no, Großherzogtum Hessen und bei Rhein) was a grand duchy in western Germany that existed from 1806 to 1918. The Grand Duchy originally formed from the Landgraviate of Hesse-Darmstadt in 1806 ...

. The nearby Messel pit is an important site for

Eocene The Eocene ( ) Epoch is a geological epoch (geology), epoch that lasted from about 56 to 33.9 million years ago (mya). It is the second epoch of the Paleogene Period (geology), Period in the modern Cenozoic Era (geology), Era. The name ''Eocene' ...

fossils. File:Messel (3).JPG, Signpost at the entrance File:Messel (2).JPG, Evangelical Church of 1545

References

Darmstadt-Dieburg {{Hesse-geo-stub