The Icon Curtain: The Cold War's Quiet Border [Hardcover]

The Iron Curtain did not existat least not as we usually imagine it. Rather than a stark, unbroken line dividing East and West in Cold War Europe, the Iron Curtain was instead made up of distinct landscapes, many in the grip of divergent historical and cultural forces for decades, if not centuries. This book traces a genealogy of one such landscapethe woods between Czechoslovakia and West Germanyto debunk our misconceptions about the iconic partition.

Yuliya Komska transports readers to the western edge of the Bohemian Forest, one of Europes oldest borderlands, where in the 1950s civilians set out to shape the so-called prayer wall. A chain of new and repurposed pilgrimage sites, lookout towers, and monuments, the prayer wall placed two long-standing German obsessions, forest and border, at the heart of the centurys most protracted conflict. Komska illustrates how civilians used the prayer wall to engage with and contribute to the new political and religious landscape. In the process, she relates West Germanys quiet sylvan periphery to the tragic pitch prevalent along the Iron Curtains better-known segments.

Steeped in archival research and rooted in nuanced interpretations of wide-ranging cultural artifacts, from vandalized religious images and tourist snapshots to poems and travelogues,The Icon Curtainpushes disciplinary boundaries and opens new perspectives on the study of borders and the Cold War alike.

Yuliya Komskais assistant professor of German studies at Dartmouth College. She lives in Plainfield, NH.