Albert Mummery
Albert Frederick Mummery (born September 10, 1855 in Dover , England , † probably August 24, 1895 at Nanga Parbat ) was a British alpinist .
Life
Albert Frederick Mummery was born in Dover on September 10, 1855. He was the younger son of William Rigden Mummery and his wife Esther. His older brother was William Gange Mummery. Around 1850 his parents bought the Stembrook dye works and the father immediately started modernizing it. From an early age, William and Albert had to help in the family business. That was seen as part of their upbringing.
Albert's father was elected mayor and held this office in 1865, 1866 and 1867. He died suddenly at the age of 48 and William jun. was 22 and Albert 13 years old. After the funeral, her mother Esther sent the two brothers on vacation in the Alps. On their return they agreed that William should run the dye works with Albert's help, even though Albert was still in school. William happily took over the management of the dye works and bought new machines that had only recently been patented, so the dye works flourished. Albert, however, longed for the Alps and he got the opportunity in 1871. It was during this visit that he saw the 4,478 m high Matterhorn for the first time.
It is possible that Albert met J. Norman Collie and William Slingsby at the time, who were pioneers in mountaineering without a guide. Instead of quitting, he was handcuffed by mountaineering. The three became specialists in the mountains and Albert finally climbed the Matterhorn seven times.
Albert Mummery managed solo and first ascents in degrees of difficulty that were considered insurmountable in his time. At the age of 19 he repeated Whymper's route to the Matterhorn . In 1879 he was back in Zermatt and climbed with the mountain guide Alexander Burgener over the Zmuttgrat to the Matterhorn. Even after this first ascent, he was not granted membership in the renowned Alpine Club .
On August 5, 1881, he climbed the Aiguille du Grépon for the first time with the mountain guides Alexander Burgener and Benedict Venetz . The key point of the climb was later called the Mummery Rift.
On one of his trips to the Alps, Albert met Mary Petherick, the daughter of a lawyer from Exeter, who also loved mountaineering. They married in 1883 and their honeymoon included climbing the Matterhorn together. Their daughter Hilda was born in 1885. Albert bought a house on Leyburne Road, Dover. After his mother's death, he helped his brother William in the dye works. The 1881 census shows that the family business employed 27 men and 3 boys. His brother William was a Liberal and a councilor. Albert observed the city government and wrote with his friend John Atkinson Hobson (1858-1940) the book The Physiology of Industry (1889). It was a seminal theory of economic under-consumption that concluded that the macro-economy needed intervention to achieve stability. This point of view was highly controversial at a time when classical macroeconomics was centered on economy.
In 1888 Mummery and his only companion, Heinrich Zurfluh from Meiringen, made the first ascent of Dychtau in the Caucasus. That year he became a member of the Alpine Club and started thinking about guideless mountaineering. In the following years he repeated numerous mountain tours - including some of his first ascents - without a mountain guide (including the first guideless ascent of the Brenva flank on Mont Blanc ).
In June 1895 Albert Mummery set out with Geoffrey Hastings and Norman Collie towards Nanga Parbat . The first attempt to reach the summit was made via the Rupaltal and the southern flank. The three climbers realized that it was not possible to climb this wall. They crossed the Mazenopass into the Diamirtal and tried to find a possible ascent. On August 24, 1895 , Mummery tried with two Gurkhas (Ragobir and Goman Singh) to cross a high-altitude transition to the Rakhiot Glacier and on to Nanga Parbat - they were never seen again afterwards. They are considered to be the first victims on Nanga Parbat.
The Mummery cliff in Antarctica is named in honor of Mummery .
Mountain guide monument
The mountain guide monument in St. Niklaus Dorf honors u. a. Albert Mummery as a guest of the St. Niklaus mountain guides.
Works
- AF Mummery and JA Hobson: The physiology of industry: being an exposure of certain fallacies in existing theories of economics Publisher: John Murray London 1889
- My Climbs in the Alps and Caucasus. Drawings and Photographs by Joseph Pennell, A. HOLMES, J. WOOLEY, Sella, and other artists. Publisher TF Unwin London, 1895
- (In German: My mountain trips in the Alps and in the Caucasus (= Alpine Classics. Vol. 9). New edition, introduced, commented and supplemented by bio-bibliographical data by Martin Lutterjohann. Bruckmann, Munich 1988, ISBN 3-7654-2159 -6 )
Web links
- Literature by and about Albert Mummery in the catalog of the German National Library
- The Dover Historian - Albert Mummery
- Tiger in the snow-The man who loved Nanga Parbat-Albert F. Mummery by Walter Unsworth
Individual evidence
- ↑ Photo of Dych Tau in: AF Mummery: My climbs in the Alps and Caucasus. Publisher TF Unwin London; C. Scribner's sons New York, 1895
- ^ The death of the alpinist AF Mummery. ( Memento from January 31, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Source: Österreichische Alpenzeitung 1895, page 307
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Mummery, Albert |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Mummery, Albert Frederick (full name) |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | British alpinist |
| DATE OF BIRTH | September 10, 1855 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Dover , England |
| DATE OF DEATH | uncertain: August 24, 1895 |
| Place of death | Nanga Parbat |