The municipality lies in the Vulkaneifel, a part of the Eifel known for its volcanic history, geographical and geological features, and even ongoing activity today, including gases that sometimes well up from the earth.

In 1222, steffele was listed in Prüm Abbey’s directory of holdings, the Prümer Urbar: The Count of Hochstaden held Steffeln as a fief.

The castle, mentioned in 1282, on the tuff crags overlooking the village was converted in the 15th or 16th century into a compulsory-labour and toll estate for the Manderscheid toll station on the long-distance trade road running from Liège by way of Malmedy to Koblenz, and into a seat for the comital Schultheißen.

After a years-long lawsuit against the landlord, Count Karl of Manderscheid, a compromise was reached in 1638 before the High Court in Luxembourg, which secured what is today the extensive municipal forest for the dwellers of Steffeln.

After the occupation of the lands on the Rhine’s left bank by French Revolutionary troops in 1794 and the French annexation of the Austrian Netherlands between 1795 and 1797, Steffeln became the seat of a mairie (“mayoralty”) in the Canton of Kronenburg, the Arrondissement of Malmedy and the Department of Ourthe, whose seat was in Liège.

In the course of the sweeping political changes in Europe in the wake of the Congress of Vienna in 1815, Steffeln passed as the seat of a Bürgermeisterei (“mayoralty”) to the Prüm district in Prussia’s new Rhine Province.

In the course of administrative restructuring in Rhineland-Palatinate on 7 November 1970, Steffeln was grouped into the Daun district, which has since been given the name Vulkaneifel.

[1] The German blazon reads: In Silber eine blaue, von je einem sechsstrahligen blauen Stern flankierte Spitze; in der Spitze ein aufrechtes, silbernes Flammenschwert mit goldenem Griff.

The municipality’s arms might in English heraldic language be described thus: Argent two mullets azure in chief flanking a pile transposed of the same charged with a sword raguly of the field hilted Or.