“Greetings from the Zonal Border”

Abstract

This chapter considers tourism to the Iron Curtain as a means by which West Germans and their visitors sought to make sense of the global Cold War through local activity. As early as the 1950s, the Iron Curtain attracted curiosity seekers and eventually turned into a well-developed tourist attraction. An elaborate tourist infrastructure emerged on the western side that allowed visitors to peek into socialist East Germany. The Iron Curtain was put on display in a way that prompted East German authorities to make efforts to render such visits less attractive for western tourists. Especially during the 1950s and 1960s, border tourism offered an outlet for West German anti-Communism and was frequently framed as a demand for German unity. The chapter reads border tourism as a skewed form of communication between West and East that stabilized the political and territorial status quo and helped West Germans become accustomed to partition.