How large was the small town of Cetviny/Zettwing?/Zettwing in roughly 20-year intervals. The figures do not include the stationed border soldiers whose number was around 50 since the 1950-ies.
 

What did Cetviny/Zettwing look like?

The small town extended to the North of the border river Malše/Maltsch. It consisted of two parts. The upper part had a market place formed by some 25 houses. Church located in the lower part of the market place was preserved until today. The lower part, located closer to the border, was traditionally called Prägarten and was formed mostly by smaller houses.

What was the national and religious structure of Cetviny/Zettwing?

Cetviny/Zettwing was inhabited primarily by Catholic German population. 1930 census recorded in Cetviny/Zettwing, including Lhota/Neustift, 523 German nationals and 29 Czechoslovak nationals. All of these residents declared themselves Catholic.

What did the residents of Cetviny/Zettwing do for living?

The residents lived primarily from farming and forestry work. Many of the residents were craftsmen and some even commuted to work in other regions. Having no industry and relatively difficult conditions for farming, Cetviny/Zettwing was a reasonably well functioning place, but certainly not an affluent one.
Cetviny/Zettwing farmers raised cattle and other domestic animals. Census undertaken in May 1945 recorded the following numbers of domestic animals:
 

Cattle	Pigs	Sheep	Horses	Goats	Hen	Geese
433	111	68	31	154	881	219

This table a.o. suggests that there was on average one cow and two hen per resident.
In approximately same period of time a census was undertaken for the farmland. A significant part of the farmland was dedicated to provide food to the domestic animals above:

As the exhibit above suggests, there were on average less than 2 hectars of land, of which one would be fields, per resident. The fields grew mostly rye and oats.
A wide array of crafts was represented in the pre-war Cetviny/Zettwing: a dyer, a cooper a smith, a clock maker, a shop keeper, a barber, a pub owner, a potter, a currier, a hatter, a wheel-wright, a tailor, a doctor, a letter painter, a miller and a lumber-mill operator, a brewery operator, a baker, an insurance agent, a village store owner, a butcher, a saddler, a glassman, a shingle maker and a cabinet maker (all of these crafts are listed on the information panel of the topical biking trail "Crafts on the river" located in Cetviny/Zettwing).

What was the development after WW2 like?

The first Soviet troops arrived to Cetviny/Zettwing in May 1945. In July 1945 the members of the Czech border patrol who served in Cetviny/Zettwing before WW2 began resuming their posts. Most of them were appointed members of the Local Administrative Committee which was in put in charge of the municipality (Germans were stripped off their voting rights and hence were not allowed to elect their own representation). Soon, the expatriation of the German population became the priority on their agenda. Under these very difficult circumstances, both the local residents and the border patrol members deserve the credit for maintaining fair relationships. That way, both parties managed to avoid occurrences of violence and unlawful conduct which relatively frequently plagued other places in that time.
Although the eviction and expatriation of the German population was decided relatively early after the end of the war, the fate of the municipality was remaining unclear. Even three years after the war it was still unclear whether or not will the municipality be re-populated. The Local Administrative Committee was making a genuine effort to bring in new residents - as proven by their correspondence with the Czech re-emigrants from Ukraine - however, to no avail. Its remote location (the closest railway station 15 km away) and tough conditions for living did not make it overly attractive to the immigrants. On the other hand, this may have contributed to the fact that Cetviny/Zettwing escaped the raids of the "gold miners" (opportunistic individuals who were moving into the deserted border regions to accumulate wealth quickly only to move on to the next place). Supposedly, there was only one individual of that kind arriving to Cetviny/Zettwing. According to one of the eyewitnesses, "U. was the single biggest thief living there. He arrived with nothing, but a bike and left with seven truckloads full of possessions. He would freely brake into the deserted buildings and take whatever he wanted. Caught multiple times by the border patrols, he would come again and again for more…".
As the time progressed, the chances to re-populate the municipality were diminishing significantly. The first barrier to that was the establishment of the pasture cooperative in the summer of 1946. The coop took ownership of all land abandoned by the expatriated German population in Cetviny/Zettwing as well as in the neighborhood villages of Mikulov/Boehmdorf and Ticha/Oppolz. That implied that there was no land to be provided to the potential immigrants to farm on. The second barrier, emerging even more formidably, was the political development in the post-war Czechoslovakia towards confrontation with the free world. This development resulted in toughening of the administrative conditions for living in the border regions with Germany and Austria. Since Cetviny/Zettwing was located directly on the Czech-Austrian border, the consequences of this development were particularly strong here.
Through a combination of these circumstances, the municipality remained largely deserted after the expatriation of the original German residents. In the middle of 1948, shortly after the Communist coup d'etat, the municipality had some 60 Czech residents, primarily government employees and their families (border patrol, police, teacher, post clerk) and a few German and Austrian families who were not expatriated yet. Besides, Cetviny/Zettwing became home to some three to five families of immigrants from Slovakia, Romania and Bulgaria. Most of these immigrants (around one hundred), however, were accommodated in Tichá/Oppolz and found their jobs in the local pasture cooperative.
Cetviny/Zettwing population kept going down. The final call was made in 1951 when all remaining residents (8 families according to the military records) were moved away. This was a prelude towards enforcing a restricted border zone to which there was no access for ordinary citizens. In the meantime, the farmlands changed considerably. The pasture coop stood by its name and turned the whole farmlands into sheep pastures. A new sheep stall was built outside the small town. Coop´s financial results, however, were dismal. Lack of labor and poor skills pushed the coop into red ink year by year. From this prospective it is not difficult to see the decision about the destruction of the municipality as a mere decision to abolish an unprofitable enterprise…

How and why was Cetviny/Zettwing destroyed?

The first steps towards the destruction were made right after the expatriation of the German population of the small town. The house furnishings have been partially sold out and partially robbed, despite some genuine efforts on the side of the border patrol members to protect it. According to the records were the empty houses - although locked - plundered primarily by the employees of the cooperative, some recall also activities of the local "gold miner". Due to the fact that the thieves were stealing away even the windows and the doors, the abandoned buildings were deteriorating relatively quickly.
In 1951, Cetviny/Zettwing was made part of the so-called forbidden zone and the border soldiers became the only inhabitants of the small town. Then from August 1955 to April 1956, the small town was - according to memories of people and archive records - systematically liquidated. The order and finances for the demolition works came from the Ministry of Interior represented by its district department in Kaplice/Kaplitz. The demolition works were carried out by a Prague based company called Zemstav (a predecessor to today's IPS Skanska a.s.) and supported by the border soldiers stationed in Cetviny/Zettwing. Houses were blown up one by one and the terrain was subsequently leveled by the bulldozers. On Eastern in 1956, the destruction works were completed and the remains of the houses were set on fire. The fire fed by wooden beams and dry grass spread to the banks of the river Malše/Maltsch and there was a serious threat that it would even extend over the river to Austria.
The official reasoning for the work of destruction was probably the same as for a number of villages and places which shared the fate of Cetviny/Zettwing. The Communist propaganda claimed that the abandoned buildings in the forbidden zone could potentially provide protection and shelter to the enemy and that way make the border protection difficult. Similar demolitions of the abandoned houses in the re-populated areas had a different line of reasoning: deteriorating buildings were spoiling the face of the municipality, sometimes even being hazardous to its residents.
Several other villages which belonged to Cetviny/Zettwing church district were destroyed along with it or right after it. Those were: Mikulov (Böhmdorf), Janova Ves (Johannesdorf) and Horní- and Dolní Příbrání (Ober-/Untersinnetschlag). In total, this represented houses for more than 1000 residents. During 1955-58, more than 600 houses were destroyed in the Kaplice/Kaplitz district alone.

What was the life in Cetviny/Zettwing like after its destruction?

A relatively strong unit of border soldiers was stationed in Cetviny/Zettwing to guard the forbidden zone. In the official classification, this was the 9th unit of the 2nd brigade seated in Kaplice/Kaplitz. The entire brigade counted around 200 soldiers and was responsible for guarding some 60 km of the border line. 9th unit was located at least until 1958 in the old customs office house, virtually on the border, but later was moved somewhat further from the border into the army barrack still standing today.
Border soldiers serving in Cetviny/Zettwing lived after the destruction of the small town virtually in isolation. The closest inhabited village was more than 10 km far away. Most border soldiers were serving their 2-year mandatory service there trained and supervised by a few professionals. To professionals, service in Cetviny/Zettwing was a sort of punishment.
There were escape attempts to Austria, but these were more frequent at the neighboring 8th unit which was responsible for guarding the border around the border crossing at Dolní Dvořiště/Unterhaid.