On the Glan's right bank (Theisberg), the southwest slope of the Potzberg with its extensive forest within municipal limits – and a castle that is now nothing more than a heap of stones in the woods – rises up steeply to an elevation of 480 m above sea level.

Left of the Glan looms the 368 m-high Remigiusberg with its castle ruin and church, presenting a picturesque view, which was immortalized as long ago as the early 19th century in a now famous steel engraving.

The built-up area lies on the comb of a high ridge that drops off smoothly into the dale, while also forming the southern flank of another side valley, through which two more brooks flow on their way to empty into the Glan.

Buildings are grouped loosely about a staggered crossroads formed by Bergstraße (“Mountain Road”) coming down the slope and Hauptstraße (“Main Street”) running over the dale's western flank.

Next to that, over time, parallel streets arose, one of which runs up to the mountain, reaching the former Theisberg Evangelical school and the Protestant parish church.

On the mountain slope at the side of Kuseler Straße stands the Art Nouveau former Catholic rectory with its built-on chapel.

As in Kübelberg and Wolfstein, it could be that a castle was built at Theisbergstegen in Emperor Barbarossa's time to safeguard the western frontier; it also, as “Deinsburg”, gave a family of lesser nobility its name.

Standing in Theisberg in the mid 19th century were mostly great, individual estate complexes, for instance, the huge Quereinhaus (a combination residential and commercial house divided for these two purposes down the middle, perpendicularly to the street) at Hauptstraße 17 and the Quereinhaus built in 1835 at Friedhofweg 7/9, whereas over in Stegen stretched a whole row of small, even tiny, properties.

Although a number of estates with forward gables had already been springing up along the road that leads to Theisbergstegen, the village actually first began spreading out from the schoolhouse, built in 1829, towards the south.

At Hauptstraße 67 stands the Godelhausen Mill, which was renovated in 1788 and in 1903 converted to a waterworks for Kusel according to plans by Regional Master Builder (Bezirksbaumeister) Kleinhans.

Theisberg's 992 first documentary mention was in a document issued by Emperor Otto III in which Bishop Hildibald of Worms transferred to Count Wolfram the tithes from all the bishopric's holdings in the wooded lands on the Rhine’s left bank against which the bishopric took ownership of commodities in the area of the villages of Altenglan and Deinesberge (Theisberg).

What the record does show, however, is that Theisberg was not only an ecclesiastical centre but also the seat of an Amt in an Unteramt of the free Imperial Domain, possibly taking turns in that function with Reichenbach.

Since the so-called Remigiusland was always endangered by neighbouring free nobles’ encroachment, it was given over in the early 12th century to Count Gerlach from the Nahegau as a lordly protectorate, a Vogtei.

In 1543, in the so-called Treaty of Marbach, Duke Wolfgang of Zweibrücken transferred to his uncle Ruprecht lands for the founding of his own County Palatine.

The new County Palatine, which later also included Lützelstein (now called La Petite-Pierre) in Alsace, bore the name Palatinate-Veldenz, and later Palatinate-Veldenz-Lützelstein.

In 1788, the geographer Goswin Widder wrote of Theisbergstegen, now in the Electorate of the Palatinate Oberamt of Lauterecken: “Deinsberg and Stegen together make up a municipality and are commonly written Theisberg-Stegen.

Nevertheless, 1 church, 1 rectory, 2 schools, 22 townsmanly and mean houses are on hand.” The French Revolution swept the old order of feudal lordships away.

After the founding of the French Department of Sarre with its capital at Trier in 1801, Theisbergstegen lay in the Canton of Kusel in the Arrondissement of Birkenfeld.

[10] Both Theisberg and Stegen were originally farming villages, but in the latter half of the 19th century, the number of working families was already growing quickly with the opening of the quarries on the Remigiusberg.

The ending —berg still means “mountain” in Modern High German, and as for the syllable prefixed to it, writer Martin Dolch traces this to a personal name, Degin or Dagin.

The Reverend Johannes Röber (from Rehborn), at first still a Catholic priest, was mentioned in a 1538 church Visitation protocol as “Lutheran pastor on the Petersberg”.

While the Lutherans of the Duchy of Palatinate-Zweibrücken had to convert to Calvinism in 1588 on Duke Johannes I's orders, this change did not come off in the County Palatine of Veldenz-Lützelstein.

Since the inhabitants of Stegen were only annexed to Veldenz-Lützelstein in 1600, they were obliged to reconvert to Lutheranism, since the conversion to Calvinism had been completed in the intervening twelve years.

After the Thirty Years' War, the principle of cuius regio, eius religio, which had, among other things, brought about the bizarre series of forced conversions in Stegen, was abolished, and once again, Catholic settlers could be found in the villages.

The priest's lonely life up on the mountain was not always easy for him, and at the turn of the 20th century, the wish arose within the Catholic parish to move the seat to Theisbergstegen.

[16] The municipality's arms might in English heraldic language be described thus: Argent a barrulet wavy azure, in dexter chief a mitre gules garnished Or, in sinister chief issuant from the barrulet a waterbearer unvested proper crined of the fourth pouring water of the second from a jug of the third, issuant from base a mount of three vert upon which a church of the second with windows and cross of the fourth.

The mitre is a reference to the Bishops of Reims, the former owners of the Remigiusland, within which the formerly self-administering municipality of Stegen and the outlying centre of Godelhausen lay.

[22] Theisberg and Stegen were originally held to be farming villages, even if the slopes of the Potzberg and also the steep sides of the Remigiusberg in the Glan valley here were not considered particularly fertile.

In 1862, the government in Speyer gave its approval for the opening of a quarry, which began work forthwith, although in the beginning it was not run very efficiently.

By the early 19th century, though, there was a Lutheran-Evangelical school in the village on Kirchstraße, below the Evangelical rectory, and then there was the Catholic schoolhouse on the Glan's right bank near the bridge.