Baden (bäˈdən) [key], former state, SW Germany. Karlsruhe was
the capital. Stretching from the Main River in the northeast
across the lower Neckar valley and along the right bank of the
Rhine to Lake Constance (Bodensee), the former state of Baden
bordered on France and the Rhenish Palatinate in the west,
Switzerland in the south, Hesse in the north, and Bavaria and
Württemberg in the east. It included the cities of Mannheim,
Pforzheim, Heidelberg, Baden-Baden, Freiburg, and Rastatt and,
in the south, most of the Black Forest. Until the French
Revolution the area was a confusing jigsaw puzzle of petty
margraviates and ecclesiastical states (the bishoprics of Mainz,
Speyer, Strasbourg, and Konstanz). The Breisgau belonged to the
Hapsburgs, the Mannheim-Heidelberg area to the Rhenish
Palatinate. In 1771 the margraviates of Baden-Baden and Baden-
Durlach were united as Baden under the same branch of the house
of Zähringen. Margrave Charles Frederick of Baden, raised to the
rank of elector at the beginning of the