Rhine Province
The Rhine Province (German: Rheinprovinz), also known as Rhenish Prussia (Rheinpreußen) or synonymous to the Rhineland (Rheinland), was the westernmost province of the Kingdom of Prussia and the Free State of Prussia, within the German Reich, from 1822 to 1946. It was created from the provinces of the Lower Rhine and Jülich-Cleves-Berg. Its capital was Koblenz and in 1939 it had 8 million inhabitants. The Province of Hohenzollern was militarily associated with the Oberpräsident of the Rhine Province.
The Rhine Province bounded on the north by the Netherlands, on the east by the Prussian provinces of Westphalia and Hesse-Nassau, and the grand duchy of Hesse-Darmstadt, on the southeast by the Palatinate (controlled by Bavaria), on the south and southwest by Lorraine, and on the west by Luxembourg, Belgium and the Netherlands.
The small exclave district of Wetzlar, wedged between the grand duchy states Hesse-Nassau and Hesse-Darmstadt was also part of the Rhine Province. The principality of Birkenfeld, on the other hand, was an enclave of the Grand Duchy of Oldenburg, a separate state of the German Empire.
