HILDBURGHAUSEN, a town of Germany, in the duchy of Saxe-Meiningen, situated in a wide and fruitful valley on the river Werra, 19 m. S.E. of Meiningen, on the railway Eisenach-Lichtenfels. Pop. (1905) 7456. The principal buildings are a ducal palace, erected 1685–1695, now used as barracks, with a park in which there is a monument to Queen Louisa of Prussia, the old town hall, two Evangelical and a Roman Catholic church and a theatre. A technical college occupies the premises in which Meyer’s Bibliographisches Institut carried on business from 1828, when it removed hither from Gotha, until 1874, when it was transferred to Leipzig. A monument has been erected to those citizens who died in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870–71. The manufactures include linen fabrics, cloth, toys, buttons, optical instruments, agricultural machines, knives, mineral waters, condensed soups and condensed milk. Hildburghausen (in records Hilpershusia and Villa Hilperti) belonged in the 13th century to the counts of Henneberg, from whom it passed to the landgraves of Thuringia and then to the dukes of Saxony. In 1683 it became the capital of a principality which in 1826 was united to Saxe-Meiningen.
See R. A. Human, Chronik der Stadt Hildburghausen (Hildburghausen, 1888).