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Paper short abstract

At the Czech-Austrian border, the overgrowth of the former Iron Curtain within Podyjí National Park creates a “mnemonic ecology,” where ruins of guard posts, conservation practices, and human–nonhuman narratives intertwine, transforming dark heritage into a layered landscape of recovery.

Paper long abstract

Along the Czech-Austrian border, the remnants of the Iron Curtain are slowly vanishing under trees, shrubs, and moss, blending into the protected landscapes of Podyjí National Park. Yet in the stories told by local residents, former border guards, and park rangers, the traces of this once lethal barrier resurface in unexpected ways. The “green border” becomes a stage for memories that meander like the Dyje river itself—shifting between pain and nostalgia, mourning and renewal.

This paper explores how narratives of overgrown fences, ruined barracks, or rewilded shooting ranges intertwine with ecological processes of succession and conservation. What was once an infrastructure of surveillance and exclusion is retold as a landscape of biodiversity, tourism, and recovery. These layered stories reveal how human and non-human actors together shape a mnemonic ecology (Pieck), in which memories do not remain fixed in the past but transform alongside the changing environment. By attending to these storytelling practices, I show how the “greening” of the border is not only a natural process but also a narrative one: a way of healing, reimagining, and renegotiating the meaning of a contested landscape.