While the latter two fell into disrepair, the district that is now part of the village of West celebrated its first mention in 2022. The village was first mentioned in documents as Heridishem in a document from 1022 that has only survived as a copy, in which a large number of places are listed in which Emperor Henry II had transferred property to the Hildesheim Michaelis Monastery.
The head tax description of the Principality of Braunschweig-Wolfenbüttel from 1678 shows that there were 182 taxable persons living in Heerte. There were only three farmers and four half-timers compared to 34 farmers and three cottagers - the social structure of the village was dominated by the less wealthy classes.
The founding of the private Braunschweigische Landes-Eisenbahn-Gesellschaft (BLE) in the summer of 1884, which aimed to build rail connections in the Duchy of Braunschweig, had a major impact on the small village of Heerte. Not only was it located on the newly built railroad line from Braunschweig to Derneburg, it also received its own station, where the first passenger train stopped on July 18, 1886. In the mid-1950s, the route between Drütte and Lichtenberg was changed and Heert station was closed. Today, only the street name Bahnhofsallee is a reminder of the time when trains stopped in Heerte.
The construction of the Reichswerke just a few kilometers from Heerte had drastic consequences for the once agricultural village: farmers were expropriated and resettled, several barrack camps were built around Heerte to house the initially recruited and later increasingly conscripted workers, a bunker was built in the middle of the village in 1942 and the population tripled.
Even in the post-war period, the barrack camps, in which refugees and displaced persons were now housed, dominated the image of Heerte. This only changed in the 1950s and 1960s, when the camps were demolished as part of the barrack clearance programs.
Since 2007, the once man-made sewage pond to the south of the village has been owned by the NABU National Natural Heritage Foundation and serves as a habitat for endangered animal and plant species.
The very active village community in Heerte celebrated the 1,000th anniversary of its district's name in 2022 with many events. The highlight of the anniversary year was a ceremony on the premises of the agricultural machinery company Rudolph & Sohn GmbH, which has been at home in Heerte for 100 years.
SV Viktoria Heerte and the volunteer fire department are part of the social life.
