The fort was built as part of France's Séré de Rivières system of fortifications to defend France against a recurrence of the Prussian invasion of the 1870-71 Franco-Prussian War. The fort was among the most strongly armed forts in the northeast in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. It received the first revolving armored turrets to be installed in a land fortification in France. The fort's official name, Fort Dorsner, commemorates General Jean Philippe Raymond Dorsner, who fought in the French Revolutionary Wars and the Napoleonic Wars.