During the 1960s and 1970s Heldra became a favoured spot with West German visitors who came to peer across the closed and by this time fortified frontier into East Germany.

Local topography made the frontier between the two Germanys irregular at this point, which became known as the “Heldrauer Zipfel”, and for East German border guards charged with preventing their fellow citizens from escaping to the west.

Because of a small intervening mountain and the level of the road in relation to the position of the frontier, a 150-meter length of the border could not be seen from the observation towers set up to look out for possible escapees, and the section was therefore dependent on regular foot patrols.

When an East German truck driver who knew the area well, managed to smuggle a long metal tube hidden as part of a small crane fitted to his truck, and use it to get over the first of the two fences divided by the “no-man’s land” frontier strip on the eastern side of the frontier, and to cross an unmined section of the territory only to find, when he reached the second fence, that it was too high for him to get over it.

He then spotted that the roof on the dog's kennel was coming loose, and by detaching it was able to improvise a step that enabled him to clear the second fence and quickly disappeared into the wooded area on the Hessian (western) side of the border.

The village contains many traditional style half-timbered houses including the ancestral homes of the philanthropist and scholar August Hermann Francke and of the Prussian hero of the American Independence War, Friedrich Wilhelm von Steuben.

Heldra was the birthplace of a notorious bandit (Räuber) called Florien Henning, whose notoriety was enhanced by a song (in German): [2]