Saint Pirmin), Kusel’s Remigiusberg Monastery and Disibodenberg near Odernheim am Glan. It is also to this time that the Counts of Veldenz could trace their history, for the Frankish Bishopric of Veldenz acquired the area around Veldenz on the Moselle from the then Frankish king "for the wine". The bishops then enfeoffed the Counts of Veldenz with this holding. This brought the estate of St. Medard am Glan with Lauterecken and Odenbach together under the Counts of Veldenz. Early times Just when Lauterecken was founded is something that cannot be determined with any certainty today. Assuming that the town sprang up alongside a castle, it might have been founded about the year 1000. Older than Lauterecken and of particular importance in the Early Middle Ages was the neighbouring village of Medard, which was held by the Bishopric of Verdun, and which apparently was given by King Childebert II about 580 as a donation to one of the Bishops of Verdun. Within this Verdun holding of Medard rose a castle; a settlement near it came next. It is unknown whether the castle was built on a hill or in a dale (nothing is left of it), but either way, it seems likely that it was built by secular lords, unlawfully. In the early 12th century, it was generally customary to turn the care of relatively unprotected ecclesiastical holdings over to a secular Vogt. It was then that Gerlach I, a scion of the Counts of the Nahegau, who owned little of his own in the way of landholds but held several ecclesiastical Vögteien from the Bishoprics or Archbishoprics of Reims, Mainz and Verdun, founded his own county, which he named after the Verdun landhold of Veldenz on the Moselle. Right from the beginning, a rift opened in these lands between the original ecclesiastical landholders and the counts, who were striving to hold the lands as their own. The bishops’ power steadily ebbed, although it theoretically remained in place until the old lordly structures were swept away in the time of the French Revolution. Veldenz times In 1157, Lauterecken had its first documentary mention as Tiefburg dem von der Domkirche Verdun abhängigen Hofe St. Medard kirchlich zugehörig ("lowland castle belonging ecclesiastically to the estate of St. Medard, which is independent of Verdun Cathedral"). The Counts held sway in four consecutive lines: The Old Veldenz Line (1140-1259) The Veldenz-Gerolseck Line (1259-1444) The Zweibrücken