The land known as the Hessian Hinterland (German: Hessisches Hinterland) lies within the region of Middle Hesse and is concentrated around the old county of Biedenkopf, that is the western part of the present county of Marburg-Biedenkopf, as well as elements of the present-day counties of Lahn-Dill-Kreis and Waldeck-Frankenberg. Formerly it snaked its way from Bromskirchen in the north to Rodheim (near Gießen), in the municipality of Biebertal.[1]
The Hinterland was originally territory belonging to Hesse-Darmstadt, from which it was almost completely isolated, and managed by the Ämter of Blankenstein (Gladenbach) with the Breidenbacher Grund, Biedenkopf and Battenberg (Eder). Later the description was just applied to the old county of Biedenkopf.
Today the term is used locally for those parts of the old county of Biedenkopf that were absorbed into the Marburg-Biedenkopf. The Hinterland Intercommunal Cooperative (Interkommunale Zusammenarbeit Hinterland, a special purpose association set up in 2006, has given the name for this small region a public institutional significance again.
In Hinterland a dialect of Low German known as Hinterländer Platt is spoken – albeit by fewer and fewer people, mostly just its older, local inhabitants.
- ^ Günter Bäumner: Skizzen aus dem Hinterland. Hinterländer Geschichtsblätter, No. 4 (December 1990), history supplement to the Hinterländer Anzeiger, Biedenkopf, pp. 51–53