Today, almost 20 years after the fall of the Iron Curtain, the Salzburg-based photographer Kurt Kaindl is traveling the borders to the former Communist neighbor countries, gathering photographic impressions from the borderlands.
Kaindl’s interest focuses on people, objects, and landscapes alongside what formerly was the Iron Curtain, putting what he finds in a present-day perspective with his camera.
“Aside from a geographical line, the Iron Curtain was, above all, an ideological boundary”, says Kaindl, “and for the people affected by it frequently has remained a dividing line.” However, the Generations born after the fall of the Iron Curtain, Kaindl says, have hardly any idea of what this border once meant.
Kaindl traveled the inner-European border from Lübeck to Trieste for his photo reportage: Kaindl “I approached the former border from both sides and tried to show that special atmosphere, the landscape created by the broad stretch of no-man’s land, and above all the people that still live, or live again, at that border”, Kaindl says.
Gojak Museum
Sandor Gojak’s private Iron Curtain museum in the Hungarian part of the Eisenberg (Hung. Csejke). The old warning sign says in three languages, Hungarian, German, and English: “You stepped on a mine. You are dead!”
Doctors’ advertising in Fertörákos
In the village of Fertörákos, dentists and cosmetic surgeons advertise their services.
At the Hungarian border near Fertörákos
Left: The “Opening Door” sculpture erected by the stonemasons of Fertörákos on the site of the “Pan-European Picnic”.
Right: The Huber couple showing a piece of Iron Curtain barbed wire in their Eisenberg garden right at the border to Hungary.
More about the “Pan-European Picnic”
Nikitsch im Burgenland
Preparations for an Croatian-Austrian feast in Nikitsch, Burgenland.
At Brennbergbánya
A boy in the Hungarian mining villiage of Brennbergbánya which is enclosed by the border on three sides.
At the Austrian-Hungarian border
Left: The mortuary of the cemetery of Stálky right at the border near the Drosendorf checkpoint.
Right: Two Austrian servicemen on patrol in the border village of Bildein in Burgenland.
On the ferry across Mur River
The Mur River ferry between Weiterfeld, Styria, and Sladki vrh, Slovenia, has plied between Austria and Slovenia since 2000. The wage cost of the ferryman Ploj Vinko is split between the two border communities.
Near Stadlberg
Border to the Czech Republic at Stadlberg near Karlstift.
At the Czech border
Left: Signs at the entrance of “Steirerbrücke” (Stajerski most bei Apače / Črnci) warning pedestrians not to walk in step when crossing the bridge. The footbridge, built 2005, is vibration-prone.
Right: Two Czech bicyclists visiting Riegersburg Castle right behind the border.
At Percy’s restaurant
The Czech chef Jan Voleck at the Austrian inn and restaurant Percy near Austria’s northernmost point.
Near Buchers and Slavonice
Left: The destroyed church of Buchers (Pohori na Sumave) with a World War I memorial (“No more war”) right behind the pedestrian border crossing seen from Karlstift on the Austrian side.
Right: In a refurbished old estate at Fratres directly at the Czec h border near Slavonice, Peter Coreth runs, as a cultural entrepreneur, the “Museum Humanum“ and the “Culture Bridge”