Haut-Rhin (French pronunciation: [oʁɛ̃], lit. 'Upper Rhine'; Alsatian: Owerelsàss or ‘s Iwerlànd;^[3] German: Oberelsass, lit. 'Upper Alsace') is a département in the Grand Est region, France, bordering both Germany and Switzerland. It is named after the river Rhine. Its name means Upper Rhine. Haut-Rhin is the smaller and less populated of the two departments of the former administrative Alsace region, the other being the Bas-Rhin (Lower Rhine). Especially after the 1871 cession of the southern territory known since 1922 as Territoire de Belfort, although it is still rather densely populated compared to the rest of metropolitan France. It had a population of 767,083 in 2021.^[4]

You can help expand this article with text translated from the corresponding article in French. (November 2009) Click [show] for important translation instructions. View a machine-translated version of the French article. Machine translation, like DeepL or Google Translate, is a useful starting point for translations, but translators must revise errors as necessary and confirm that the translation is accurate, rather than simply copy-pasting machine-translated text into the English Wikipedia. Do not translate text that appears unreliable or low-quality. If possible, verify the text with references provided in the foreign-language article. You must provide copyright attribution in the edit summary accompanying your translation by providing an interlanguage link to the source of your translation. A model attribution edit summary is Content in this edit is translated from the existing French Wikipedia article at [[:fr:Haut-Rhin]]; see its history for attribution. You should also add the template {{Translated|fr|Haut-Rhin}} to the talk page. For more guidance, see Wikipedia:Translation.

Quick Facts 's Owerlànd, Owerelsàss, Country ...

Haut-Rhin 's Owerlànd, Owerelsàss
Département
Prefecture building of the Haut-Rhin department, in Colmar
Flag Coat of arms
Location of Haut-Rhin in France
Coordinates: 47°57′51″N 7°19′11″E
Country	France
Region	Grand Est
Prefecture	Colmar
Subprefectures	Altkirch Mulhouse Thann
Government
• Prefect	Louis Laugier[1]
Area 1
• Total	3,525 km2 (1,361 sq mi)
Population  (2021)[2]
• Total	767,083
• Rank	29th
• Density	220/km2 (560/sq mi)
Time zone	UTC+1 (CET)
• Summer (DST)	UTC+2 (CEST)
Department number	68
Arrondissements	4
Cantons	17
Communes	366
^1 French Land Register data, which exclude estuaries, and lakes, ponds, and glaciers larger than 1 km2

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On 1 January 2021, the départemental collectivities of Bas-Rhin and Haut-Rhin were merged into the European Collectivity of Alsace.

Haut-Rhin is one of the original 83 départements, created during the French Revolution, on 4 March 1790 through the application of the law of 22 December 1789 in respect of the southern half of the province of Alsace (Haute-Alsace).

Its boundaries have been modified many times:

• 1798, it absorbed Mulhouse, formerly a free city, and the last Swiss enclave in the south of Alsace;
• 1800, it absorbed the whole département of Mont-Terrible;
• 1814, it lost the territories which had been part of Mont-Terrible, which were returned to Switzerland, except for the former County of Montbéliard;
• 1816, it lost Montbéliard, which was transferred to the département of Doubs;
• 1871, it was mostly annexed by the German Empire (Treaty of Frankfurt); the remaining French part formed the Territoire de Belfort in 1922;
• 1919, it was reverted to France (Treaty of Versailles) but remains administratively separated from Belfort.
• 1940, it was annexed de facto by Nazi Germany.
• 1944, it was recovered by France.

Haut-Rhin is bordered by the Territoire de Belfort and Vosges départements and the Vosges Mountains to the west, the Bas-Rhin département to the North, Switzerland to the south and its eastern border with Germany is also the Rhine. In the centre of the département lies a fertile plain. The climate is semi-continental.

Population development betwene 1801 and 2016:

More information Year, Pop. ...

Historical population

Year Pop. ±% p.a. 1801 272,334 —     1806 299,877 +1.95% 1821 326,633 +0.57% 1831 375,473 +1.40% 1841 409,683 +0.88% 1851 436,744 +0.64% 1861 459,554 +0.51% 1871 458,873 −0.01% 1880 461,942 +0.07% 1890 471,609 +0.21% 1900 495,209 +0.49% 1910 517,865 +0.45% 1921 468,943 −0.90%	Year Pop. ±% p.a. 1931 516,726 +0.98% 1936 507,551 −0.36% 1946 471,705 −0.73% 1954 509,647 +0.97% 1962 547,920 +0.91% 1968 585,018 +1.10% 1975 635,209 +1.18% 1982 650,372 +0.34% 1990 671,319 +0.40% 1999 708,025 +0.59% 2006 736,475 +0.56% 2011 753,056 +0.45% 2016 762,743 +0.26%
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source:[5][6]

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Haut-Rhin is one of the richest French départements. Mulhouse is the home of the Stellantis Mulhouse Plant automobile factory, where the Peugeot 2008 and Peugeot 508 are currently built. The lowest unemployment rate in France can be found in the Southern Sundgau region (approximately 2%). The countryside is marked by hills. Many Haut-Rhinois work in Switzerland, especially in the chemical industries of Basel, but commute from France where living costs are lower. However, the region does have some of France's worst socio-economic inequalities; Mulhouse has long been one of France's poorest major cities.

Alsace and the adjacent Moselle department have a legal system slightly different from the rest of France. The statutes in question date from the period 1871–1919 when the area was part of the German Empire. With the return of Alsace-Lorraine to France by the Treaty of Versailles in 1919, Paris accepted that Alsace and Moselle should retain some local laws in respect of certain matters, especially with regard to hunting, economic life, local government relationships, health insurance and social rights. It includes notably the absence of any formal separation between church and state: several mainstream denominations of the Christian church benefit from state funding, in contrast to principles applied in the rest of France.

• Mulhouse town hall
• Colmar
• Riquewihr
• View from the Ballon d'Alsace
• Hunawihr and Alsatian vineyards

• Alsatian language

• Cantons of the Haut-Rhin department
• Communes of the Haut-Rhin department
• Arrondissements of the Haut-Rhin department