examples – 12 – shifting of borders and a miners house

shifting borders and a Miner’s House –

In 1886, German miner Heinrich Müller and his wife Liesbeth emigrated from Hesse to the steel town of Rombas on the Moselle. They were strict, but honest and decent people. They built a two-story house in the town of Rombas, a French territory that had been annexed de facto and de jure by the German Empire in 1870–71. Under the Treaty of Versailles in 1919, the territory became part of France once again. The house was called the Mueller House.

The now french Henri Mueller in the year 1933 with his french grandchildren

Henri Mueller, the elderly miner, with his grandson Renauld in the vegetable garden behind his house shortly before his death in 1938

In the photo on the right: A group portrait in front of the Müller House—the Müllers and German recruits who were quartered there in 1915 during World War I. The Verdun front was not far away.