German Nanga Parbat Expedition 1937

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The German Nanga Parbat Expedition in 1937 was the third expedition by a team from the German Reich to the “ German mountain of fate”, the Nanga Parbat (8125 m). The aim was to climb the mountain after the German-American Himalaya Expedition in 1932 and the German Nanga Parbat Expedition in 1934 had failed.

prehistory

The first attempt by a German team to climb Nanga Parbat for the first time took place in 1932 as part of the German-American Himalayan expedition . Due to the bad weather conditions, however, this was not possible and the expedition was canceled at about 7400 m. Two years later, the German Nanga Parbat Expedition made the next attempt in 1934 , but this led to a drama. In the course of the expedition, the four mountaineers Alfred Drexel , Willy Merkl , Uli Wieland and the alpine pioneer Willo Welzenbach , as well as six Sherpas died. The Nanga Parbat then became the “Germans' mountain of fate”, which had to be conquered.

Expedition team

Karl Wien , who had already managed the first ascent of Lenin Peak in 1928, took over the leadership of the expedition . He was assisted by Günther Hepp , Adolf Göttner , Martin Pfeffer , Hans Hartmann, Pert Fankhauser and Peter Müllritter , one of the survivors of the Nanga Parbat expedition in 1934. The climbers were accompanied by two scientists, Ulrich Cameron Luft and Carl Troll , the British Liaison Officer DBM Smart and nine Sherpas.

Hartmann, Hepp, Pfeffer and Vienna were members of the Academic Alpine Association in Munich , which played a key role in the two previous Nanga Parbat expeditions in 1932 and 1934.

course

An avalanche on Nanga Parbat

The ascent route followed the same path through the Rakhiot side that had been taken in 1932 and 1934. Camp IV was established on June 7, 1937. Due to the heavy snowfall and the constant avalanches, it was moved to a higher location on June 11th. A Sherpa who had stayed before nightfall due to a sore throat reported that the Sherpas had resisted the proposed campground because they had recognized the danger. The Sāhibs , who were not familiar with the threatening night avalanches, would have existed at this camp site.

On the night of June 14th to 15th, a huge ice and snow avalanche descended from the Séracs of the Rakhiot Glacier, which surprised the climbers in their sleep. All seven expedition members and nine Sherpas were dead on the spot. The surviving scientists Luft and Troll, who were conducting research in the nearby valley, discovered the catastrophe on June 18 when they ascended to Camp IV.

Salvage expedition

When the devastating news reached the German Reich, Paul Bauer , Karl von Kraus and Fritz Bechtold immediately organized a search and rescue expedition. They wanted to be certain of the fate of their comrades, to recover their corpses, and to investigate the course of the accident. This expedition reached the site of the accident after only a few weeks. One month after the drama, they were able to recover all but two bodies between July 18 and 21. The watches that some mountaineers wore had stopped at 12:30 a.m. The death notices of the unfortunate mountaineers were only printed in the Völkischer Beobachter after a telegram from Bauer . The texts had already been formulated in advance, but they waited until the situation was clear before publication. Bauer had informed Peter Aufschnaiter , who was the interim director of the German Himalaya Foundation during Bauer's absence , that, as feared, none of the missing climbers had survived.

literature

  • Paul Bauer (Ed.): On a Kundfahrt in the Himalayas. Siniolchu and Nanga Parbat - the deed and fate of German mountaineers. Knorr & Hirth, Munich 1937.
  • German Himalaya Foundation (ed.): Nanga Parbat - Mountain of Comrades. Report of the German Himalaya expedition in 1938. From the diaries of Bruno Balke et al. a. Union Deutsche Verlagsgesellschaft, Munich 1943.
  • Hans Hartmann: Destination Nanga Parbat. Diary sheets from a Himalayan expedition. Wilhelm Limpert-Verlag, Berlin 1944 (EA Berlin 1938)
  • Lutz Chicken : Through the century. My life as a doctor and a mountaineer . Edition Raetia, Bozen 2003, ISBN 88-7283-198-9 .
  • Paul Bauer: The struggle for the Nanga Parbat. 1856-1953. 100 years of mountaineering history . Süddeutscher Verlag, Munich 1955
  • Helfried Weyer, Norman Dyhrenfurth : Nanga Parbat, the Germans' mountain of fate . Badenia-Verlag, Karlsruhe 1980, ISBN 3-7617-0171-3 .
  • Hermann Schaefer: The white cathedral. Adventure Nanga Parbat. Nymphenburger, Munich 1987, ISBN 3-485-01697-7 .
  • Helmuth Zebhauser: Alpinism in the Hitler State. Thoughts, memories, documents (documents of alpinism; 1). Bergverlag Rother, Ottobrunn 1998, ISBN 3-7633-8102-3 .
  • Peter Mierau: The German Himalaya Foundation from 1936 to 1998. Its history and its expeditions (documents of alpinism; 2). Bergverlag Rother, Ottobrunn 1999, ISBN 3-7633-8108-2 .
  • Horst Höfler (Ed.): Nanga Parbat. Expeditions to the “German Mountain of Fate” 1934–1962. AS-Verlag, Zurich 2002, ISBN 3-905111-83-7 (with a foreword by Reinhold Messner ).
  • Ralf-Peter Märtin: Nanga Parbat. Truth and Delusion of Alpinism (Malik National Geographic; 533). Malik Verlag, Munich 2014, ISBN 978-3-492-40533-1 (EA Berlin 2002)
  • Peter Mierau: National Socialist Expedition Policy. German expeditions to Asia 1933–1945 . Herbert Utz Verlag, Munich 2006, ISBN 3-8316-0409-6 (also dissertation, University of Munich 2003).
  • Nokmedemla Lemtur: " Locating Himalayan porters in the archival documents of the expedition companies of the German Alpine Club (1929–1939) ." in: MIDA Archival Reflexicon (2020), ISSN 2628-5029 , 1–11.

Web links

Footnotes

  1. ↑ Akademischer Alpenverein München (Ed.): 45th Annual Report 1936/37. Pp. 2–12, 15 ( digitized version )
  2. ↑ See Herbert Tichy: On distant summits. Vienna 1976, p. 214f.
  3. ↑ See “National Socialist Expedition Policy” (PDF; 308 kB) ( Memento of the original from October 20, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Reading sample for the book @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.utzverlag.de