From analysis of gravimetric data, comparisons of levelings, seismic profiling, paleostress analysis, and seismicity together with remotely sensed and morphological data, the Rhinegraben may be divided into several rhomb-shaped basins, separated by ENE trending basement highs. These data express neotectonic movements and slight spatial differences in the subsidence rate. These basins are asymmetrical: on one side they are bounded by a large (several kilometers of vertical throw) normal fault zone; on the opposite side there is a megaflexure, cut by smaller normal faults shaping tilted blocks. Since the middle Miocene, extensional directions are subparallel to the ENE trending basement highs that consequently may be interpreted as strike-slip fault zones of transfer type. Across the Erstein basement high, there is a reversal in the rift asymmetry (major bordering fault on the western side to the south, on the eastern side to the north). When considered in the context of the West European Rift, the Rhinegraben is interpreted in terms of a pull-apart depression formed during the horizontal movement of blocks guided by large ENE trending transcurrent faults. The normal faults that are curve shaped in may view may mark the boundaries between areas where the maximum component (&sgr;1) of the paleostress field developed in pull-apart patterns was changing from horizontal to vertical. ¿ American Geophysical Union 1993