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Darmstadt, Germany

Darmstadt is a city on the Main and Rhine Rivers in Hesse in south-central Germany, south of Frankfurt and southeast of Mainz. From the sixteenth through the early twentieth centuries, Darmstadt was the seat of the ruling family of Hesse-Darmstadt, which became a Grand Duchy in 1806.

Darmstadt's greatest period was during the reign of Ludwig X (1790-1830), a hundred-foot statue of whom still stands in modern Darmstadt. During his regin the city was largely rebuilt. Through much of the nineteenth century, Darmstadt was known for its importance as a center of the chemical industry, especially after the founding of the technical university in 1836.

A Frankenstein Castle stood in Nieder-Beerbach, a village near Darmstadt, but there is no evidence that the Shelleys knew of it: see title page and note.