It became famous during the Cold War for two mass escapes in 1961 and 1963 involving a total of 65 inhabitants – a quarter of the village's population – across the heavily fortified inner German border.

[1] After the end of the Second World War the village found itself just inside the Soviet occupation zone, which became the German Democratic Republic (East Germany) in 1949.

Many inhabitants, particularly farmers who had resisted the forced collectivization policies of the GDR regime, feared that they were on Stasi blacklists of those slated for expulsion.

[4] Detailed information about the mass escapes can be found at the Borderland Museum Eichsfeld which deals with different themes and aspects of the German division and the life in the GDR.

On 24 September 2009, the German television channel Sat.1 broadcast The Night a Village Vanished [de], a dramatised version of the 1961 mass escape.