A01=Yuliya Komska
art
Author_Yuliya Komska
belonging
bohemian forest
borderlands
borders
Category=NHD
Category=NHTW
cold war
czechoslovakia
eq_bestseller
eq_history
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
exile
forced migration
geography
heritage tourism
history
iconoclasm
iron curtain
landscape
lookout towers
memory
monuments
narrative
nonfiction
nostalgia
partition
pilgrimage
politics
prayer wall
religion
sudeten germans
trauma
travel
travelogues
visual culture
west germany
wilderness
woods
Product details
- ISBN 9780226154190
- Weight: 539g
- Dimensions: 16 x 24mm
- Publication Date: 02 Feb 2015
- Publisher: The University of Chicago Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Hardback
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The Iron Curtain did not exist - at 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 landscape - the woods between Czechoslovakia and West Germany - to debunk our misconceptions about the iconic partition. Yuliya Komska transports readers to the western edge of the Bohemian Forest, one of Europe's 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 longstanding German obsessions, forest and border, at the heart of the century's 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 Germany's quiet sylvan periphery to the tragic pitch prevalent along the Iron Curtain's 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 Curtain pushes disciplinary boundaries and opens new perspectives on the study of borders and the Cold War alike.
Yuliya Komska is assistant professor of German studies at Dartmouth College. She lives in Plainfield, NH.
