The story
Bas-Rhin is one of the original 83 departments created on 4 March 1790, during the French Revolution.
On 14 January 1790 the National Constituent Assembly decreed:
"- That Alsace be divided into two departments with Strasbourg and Colmar as their capitals;
- That the Department of Strasbourg will be divided into three districts [...];
- That the land of the German princes, coming under the sovereignty of France will be included in the division of districts;
- That Landau, an enclave in the Palatinate, will have special justice [...]."
The borders of Bas-Rhin have changed many times:
In 1793 it absorbed the following territories newly annexed by France:
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The County of Sarrewerden;
The County of Drulingen;
The lordship of Diemeringen;
The lordship of Asswiller of the Steinkallenfels family;
Several communes from the Palatinate
In 1795 the region of Schirmeck, where the people did not speak Alsatian, was detached from the district of Sélestat and attached to Vosges (District of Senones);
In 1808 some territories east of the Rhine were annexed, especially the city of Kehl;
In 1814, after the first Treaty of Paris, France gained the territories north of the Lauter from the former department of Mont-Tonnerre and including the city of Landau, but lost all the territories east of the Rhine;
In 1815, following the second Treaty of Paris, France lost all the territories north of the Lauter and the department was occupied by troops from Baden and Saxony from June 1815 to November 1818.
In 1871 Bas-Rhin was annexed by Germany (by the Treaty of Frankfurt) and then became Bezirk Unterelsass in Reichsland Elsaß-Lothringen;
In 1919 Bas-Rhin became French again (Treaty of Versailles) and retained the territories that Germany had taken from the department of Vosges in 1871 (the Canton of Schirmeck and Canton of Saales);
Between 1941 and 1944, the Natzweiler-Struthof concentration camp was in operation
In 1944 Kehl was attached to Bas-Rhin before being reassigned to the new West Germany in 1953;
In 1982 the department was included in the newly created Alsace region;
On 7 April 2013 a referendum was held on the creation of a single community in Alsace for joining the Alsace region and the two departments of Haut-Rhin and Bas-Rhin.
Strasbourg, the chef lieu (principal city) of Bas-Rhin is the official seat of the European Parliament as well as of the Council of Europe.
From Wikipedia’s article on Bas-Rhin, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.5