Historic Border Marker at Gisingen

Border at GisingenAfter the Peace of Rijswijk in 1697, in which the Lorraine duke got his ancestral land, including Gisingen, back, Saarlouis remained under French rule with half a mile of Lorraine. From a French point of view, this Saarlouis ban mile also included the Wallerfangen district, which has bordered on the Gisingen district here since time immemorial. Negotiations continued for years about the exact course of the Saarlouis ban mile and thus the French border. In order to curb further expansion of the French territory, the border villages on the border to this ban mile, such as Gisingen, Kerlingen and Düren, were funded by the Duke of Lorraine (new parcels of tax incentives), as well as others such as Neuforweiler, Felsberg, St Barbara, Limberg and Niederlimberg newly founded. Only after the death of Louis XIV and the end of the War of the Spanish Succession was the Lorraine Duke Leopold able to negotiate a favorable contract in Paris on June 30, 1718 in which the Saarlouis ban mile was reduced accordingly, now officially defined, the French border into the valley, into the so-called "Mookenloch" was relocated. A border stone built in 1719 with a Lorraine cross and a French royal lily can be seen today in the Historical Museum in Wallerfangen. The course of the border changed again in 1766 with the death of the last Duke of Lorraine, which also made Lorraine French. Source: Text Theodor Liebertz: "Catfish catching and its history"