Authors

Discussion

This paper investigates how memory of the Iron Curtain is mediated through material culture along the Czech-Austrian border. During the second half of the twentieth century, this frontier was defined by barbed wire, watchtowers, and military patrols. Today, fragments of these structures coexist with museums, memorials, and trails that invite visitors to engage with the border’s past. The paper asks how these material remnants and curated sites shape the ways in which the past is encountered, remembered, and contested in the present.

Rather than treating the Iron Curtain as a purely symbolic marker of Cold War division, the study foregrounds the material agency of border sites and artefacts. Abandoned guard buildings, reconstructed fences, and even small fragments of barbed wire and dragon’s teeth act not merely as static traces but as affective triggers that provoke embodied responses. Entering a cramped recreation of a border guard building, walking along a decommissioned patrol road, or standing before a museum exhibit of life behind the Iron Curtain impresses history upon the body. Visitors may feel discomfort, curiosity, or pride, and in doing so, they co-produce the affective texture of memory.

To capture this dynamic, the paper develops a three-part conceptual framework that integrates: (1) the agency of material heritage, (2) embodied and affective encounters, and (3) the politics of borderlands as contested memory spaces. Drawing on critical heritage studies, memory theory, and affect studies, the framework positions border heritage sites as active participants in the production of memory. Focusing on Czech sites along the Czech-Austrian border, the paper shows how the materiality of the Iron Curtain continues to mediate political debates about history, identity, and European integration.

Empirically, the analysis considers a range of sites, from abandoned or rehabilitated guard buildings to memorials commemorating the Iron Curtain and museums dedicated to its history. These examples illustrate the diversity of how Cold War memory exists, is curated, and experienced. Some sites emphasise tragedy and repression, while others highlight overcoming the division by presenting the border as a space of reconciliation and European belonging. Each mode of presentation and reception demonstrates that the politics of memory is negotiated not only through texts and exhibitions, but also through embodied encounters with spaces, objects, and landscapes.