Messel is a municipality in the district of

Darmstadt-Dieburg Darmstadt-Dieburg is a Kreis (district) in the south of Hesse, Germany. Neighboring districts are Offenbach, Aschaffenburg, Miltenberg, Odenwaldkreis, Bergstraße, Groß-Gerau, and the district-free city of Darmstadt, which it surrounds. Histo ...

Hesse Hesse or Hessen ( ), officially the State of Hesse (), is a States of Germany, state in Germany. Its capital city is Wiesbaden, and the largest urban area is Frankfurt, which is also the country's principal financial centre. Two other major hist ...

near

Frankfurt am Main Frankfurt am Main () is the most populous city in the States of Germany, German state of Hesse. Its 773,068 inhabitants as of 2022 make it the List of cities in Germany by population, fifth-most populous city in Germany. Located in the forela ...

Germany Germany, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It lies between the Baltic Sea and the North Sea to the north and the Alps to the south. Its sixteen States of Germany, constituent states have a total popu ...

. The village is first mentioned, as ''Masilla'', in the

Lorsch codex The Lorsch Codex (Chronicon Laureshamense, Lorscher Codex, Codex Laureshamensis) is an important historical document created between about 1175 to 1195 AD in the Lorsch Abbey, Monastery of Saint Nazarius in Lorsch, Germany. The codex is handwrit ...

. Messel was the property of the lords of Groschlag 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 ( or '; ), 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 hierarchy of the Catholic Church, the Archbishop-Elec ...

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, ; ; ; ; . was a member of a class of light cavalry, originally from the Kingdom of Hungary during the 15th and 16th centuries. The title and distinctive dress of these horsemen were subsequently widely adopted by light cavalry ...

s. In 1806, the village fell to the

Grand Duchy of Hesse The Grand Duchy of Hesse and by Rhine () 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 as the Grand Duchy of Hesse (). It assumed the name ...

. The nearby

Messel pit The Messel Formation is a Formation (geology), geologic formation in Hesse, central Germany, dating back to the Eocene Epoch (geology), epoch (about 47 Ma). Its geographic range is restricted to the Messel pit. There it unconformably overlie ...

is an important site for

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

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

References

Darmstadt-Dieburg {{Hesse-geo-stub