Attempted to climb the Eiger north face in 1935
The attempt to climb the north face of the Eiger in 1935 was considered to be one of the first serious attempts to climb the north face of the Eiger in the Bernese Alps . In the summer of 1935, the Munich mountaineers Max Sedlmayr and Karl Mehringer were killed in a storm that lasted several days .
prehistory
In the 1930s, the north faces of the Eiger , Matterhorn and Grandes Jorasses were considered by mountaineers to be the “last three problems of the Alps” , and the climbing elite developed a race to climb them. The north face of the Matterhorn was finally climbed in 1931, that of the Grandes Jorasses in 1935. Now interest fell on the Eiger north face, which at around 1,800 meters was also the highest of the three north faces.
The first description of the Eiger north face appeared in 1850 in the book Das Panorama von Bern by Governor Gottlieb Studer . In 1883 the German mountain guide Johann Grill is said to have been prevented from climbing the north face by his English companion, John Farrar. In 1911 the Swiss mountain guides Christen Almer and Joseph Schaler as well as an English customer succeeded in climbing the lower third of the north face. They were pulled up to the railway with a rope below the Eigerwand station.
In July 1934, the Germans Willy Beck and Kurt and Georg Löwinger climbed the lower third of the north face again and got off at the Eigerwand station.
Attempted ascent in 1935
Max Sedlmayr and Karl Mehringer from Munich drove to Grindelwald on August 16, 1935 in Mehringer's BMW 3/15 and stayed in a hay barn in Alpiglen. Both were members of the high tourist group of the Oberland section and had already climbed some difficult routes together in the Eastern Alps . In the following days they observed the wall, explored the western flank as a descent route and set up food and material depots at the foot of the wall and on the summit. These preparations also made the media aware of the two climbers. For example, they were asked by a reporter for the Oberland Volksblatt for their opinions on the feasibility of an inspection.
On August 21, 1935 at around two o'clock in the morning they set out for the foot of the Eiger north face, which they reached after about two hours. They chose a direct route and, in good weather, first climbed the approximately 500 m high wall before they reached one of the Jungfrau Railway tunnels in the late afternoon and bivouacked there . They were observed with telescopes by summer guests of the hotels and guest houses at the foot of the Eiger. Ernst von Allmen, who himself managed to climb the north face of the Eiger in 1970, also observed the climbers with a telescope from the Kleine Scheidegg .
On August 22nd, Sedlmayr and Mehringer climbed the steep and partially overhanging First Volume , which was awarded the VI. Difficulty level was assessed and thus represented the technically climbable upper limit of that time. In the evening they reached the first ice field and set up the second bivouac on a ridge. So far they had already made 700 m and about 1100 m to go.
For almost the whole of August 23, the two fought their way through the second ice field when a sudden fall in the weather broke out and the observers were unable to see. Only on August 26th did the fog curtain part and allow a view into the now deeply snow-covered wall. Sedlmayr and Mehringer were seen fighting their way up above the center of the wall in the area of the iron . After that the visibility worsened again and it continued to snow.
On August 28, the wall was searched for the two climbers with a military plane, but no one could be found. The SAC rescue center in Grindelwald then notified their mountain rescue colleagues in Munich. It was raining in the valley, there was snowfall on the Kleine Scheidegg and around half a meter of fresh snow was lying on the north face of the Eiger.
Rescue attempts
The four German mountain rescuers Franz Hausstätter, Rudolf Peters , Ludwig Gramminger and Heini Sedlmayr, brother of Max Sedlmayr who was lost in the wall, then drove to Grindelwald to support their colleagues. Haber and Pösel from Munich joined them on site. The mountain rescuers found some of their equipment in the Sedlmayr and Mehringer hay barn. Apparently they had expected a climb time of no more than three days.
On August 30, when the weather was fine, the mountain rescuers took the Jungfrau Railway to the Eigergletscher station. Four of them made their way through the tunnel to the tunnel, from where Peters stepped into the wall. Haber and Pösel climbed over the northwest flank to look into the wall at a suitable point. The rock was covered with a thick layer of ice and there were constant snow slides. After several hours they had to give up their search without success. Even the crew of another military aircraft could not find the climbers. A gamekeeper then reported that he had seen the two of them under a rock pillar at the Second Ice Field. There they are said to have tried to climb this difficult pier passage without their backpacks, but later gave up this endeavor and returned to their equipment. In the evening, the two climbers from Munich, Albert Herbst and Hans Teufel, joined the rescuers to support them from the next day.
On August 31, the eight Germans climbed into the wall early in the morning in four two-person ropes to reach the point indicated by the ranger. However, there were avalanches and the ascent was made more difficult by ice and snow. The fissures at the edge were filled with avalanche snow. In the early afternoon the avalanches increased and the climbers had to seek shelter in niches and under overhangs until late in the evening. Tired and exhausted, they got off at around 7 p.m.
On September 1, they climbed the western flank to the summit. They kept close to the west ridge and searched the north face with a telescope at suitable points. A descent from above was impossible under the prevailing conditions. On September 2nd, they tried again unsuccessfully to climb the wall from the tunnel. With a heavy heart, they finally broke off the search and started their journey home.
Find the bodies
During a reconnaissance flight on September 19, the pilot Ernst Udet and the mountain guide Fritz Steuri discovered a lifeless body in the snow, roughly at the height of the Third Ice Field at 3300 m. They couldn't tell whether it was Sedlmayr or Mehringer. Since then, the place has been called the death bivouac .
In July, the tragedy occurred around Toni Kurz, Andreas Hinterstoißer, Willy Angerer and Eduard Rainer , who perished in another first attempt at the Eiger north face. They had not followed the Sedlmayr and Mehringer route, but opened the line of the ascent, later known as the Heckmair route, over the Hinterstoißer cross-corridor, and got a little beyond the death bivouac . During the search for the fallen on July 23, Max Sedlmayr's body was also found on an avalanche cone at the edge of the wall. Mehringer's body was spotted by two Geneva mountaineers on the edge of the Second Ice Field in early September 1962 . However, it has not yet been saved.
More finds
In early March 1976, four Czech climbers found a yellowed cigarette packet with a note written by Mehringer. It said "Bivouac", the names of the two climbers and the date of August 21, 1935.
In autumn 2011, two mountaineers found a well-preserved mountaineering boot from the 1930s at the foot of the wall, in the fall line of the death bivouac . Kurt Schwendener, the long-time rescue chief from Grindelwald, believes that the shoe most likely came from Sedlmayr or Mehringer, as the two people from Munich were the only ones who died around 1000 meters above where the shoe was found. The drama about Toni Kurz, for example, had taken place further to the right in the wall when viewed from below.
The shoe and also the cigarette packet are exhibited in the Grindelwald Museum.
Movie
The 2008 film Nordwand by Philipp Stölzl is about the attempt to climb the mountain in July 1936. The film deals with the tragedy of Sedlmayr and Mehringer several times, including a scene that shows one of the two Munich residents being rescued by the climbers 1936 shows.
literature
- Rainer Rettner: Eiger - Triumphs and Tragedies 1932–1938.
- Otto Zwahlen: The battle for the north face of the Eiger.
- Peter Gillman, Leni Gillman: Extreme Eiger: The Race to Climb the Direct Route up the North Face of the Eiger.
- Anderl Heckmair , Tim Carruthers: My Life: Eiger North Face, Grandes Jorasses, & Other Adventures.
- Ludwig Gramminger : The saved life: from the history of mountain rescue.
Web links
- Is it the Mehringer shoe? In: Jungfrau Zeitung of November 22, 2011