Attempt to climb the north face of the Eiger in 1936

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Eiger north face

The attempt to climb the north face of the Eiger in 1936 was considered to be one of the first serious attempts to climb the north face of the Eiger in the Bernese Alps . Two rope teams were killed in the summer of 1936. The tragedy is one of the most famous in the history of the Alps and was the basis for numerous books and films.

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 climbed in 1931, that of the Grandes Jorasses in 1935. Interest then 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 and an English customer succeeded in climbing the lower third of the north face. They were pulled up to the railway by means of 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. A first serious attempt at ascent by Max Sedlmayr and Karl Mehringer from Munich failed in the summer of 1935 when the two climbers died at the height of the death bivouac .

In the summer of 1936 three promising rope teams reached the foot of the Eiger north face:

They were all considered to be very experienced and skilled mountaineers who had already managed the most difficult first ascents.

Because the conditions were not yet available for an ascent, Herbst and Teufel undertook a preparatory tour from the Guggihütte to Schneehoren (3400 m), where they succeeded in the first ascent of the north face. During the descent, the two had an accident, Teufel was killed and Herbst was seriously injured. In the meantime, Angerer and Rainer explored the lower third of the wall and had discovered a path west of the route from Sedlmayr / Mehringer that is still used today. They climbed the difficult crack to an inaccessible slab shot, where they got no further and descended again.

Attempted ascent in 1936

Stops on the Heckmair route, the route of the first climbers from 1938

Early in the morning on July 18, 1936, Kurz and Hinterstoißer as well as Rainer and Angerer climbed the wall as separate two-person ropes on the route explored by the Austrians. The ascent was followed by the media, the SAC rescue center in Grindelwald and the summer guests of the hotels and pensions at the foot of the Eiger and from the Kleine Scheidegg .

At the difficult slab shot , on which the Austrians had previously failed, Hinterstoißer was able to perform a pendulum traverse to the lower part of the First Ice Field . They had already tried this pioneering mountaineering achievement on the Große Zinne and the Untersberg . The place still bears the name Hinterstoißer-Quergang today . The three other mountaineers conquered this 40 meter wide, flat area using the mounted rope. Then the handrail rope was pulled off, probably because they needed it for the further ascent.

Over the first ice field they climbed higher to below a vertical rock step, above which the second ice field begins. They overcame this difficult passage over a narrow and steep strip of ice, which was later called the ice tube . After they had climbed the second ice field , they set up their first bivouac on the bordering rocks at dusk . Amazingly, they had already climbed half of the wall on the first day, later rope teams usually had to set up their bivouacs much earlier.

On July 19th, wisps of mist hung from the wall; Nevertheless, the mountaineers could be observed from the Kleine Scheidegg as they crossed the second ice field at around 7 a.m. Then there was a bad weather and the viewers were deprived of sight. On July 20, the fog cleared and the four climbers were spotted in the Iron area where they appeared to be bivouacked. The day before they had only crossed the second ice field and hardly gained any height. Hinterstoißer and Kurz are said to have got past the place of the death bivouac before they went back to the Austrians.

But then it became apparent that she was dismounting and one of them must be injured. Because while one was going down, two were trying for the other. It is believed that Willy Angerer's head was injured by falling rocks on the first day, which is why the Austrians moved a lot more slowly. The four climbers climbed to the lower end of the Second Ice Field and roped down the ice tube to the First Ice Field , where they set up a bivouac. Then the weather worsened, a storm came up and it began to snow.

In the afternoon, a Jungfrau Railway walker was able to set up a call connection to the climbers from the tunnel. He wants to have understood an almost cheerful sounding “Everything is okay”. However, when he called out into the wall again about two hours later, he heard clear calls for help and asked for help via the Eigerwand station. The three Swiss mountain guides Adolf Rubi , Christian Rubi and Hans Schlunegger happened to be at the Eigergletscher station and immediately took a special train to the Stollenloch.

Toni Kurz's agony

At the beginning of the night, in a raging storm, they climbed from the tunnel hole about 150 to 180 meters to the overhanging rocks below the Hinterstoisser cross-corridor . They were able to establish a call connection to Toni Kurz, who urgently needed help. As it was already night and a storm was raging, the mountain guides were unable to attempt a rescue. They called out to Toni Kurz that they would come back tomorrow morning to help him. Hans Schlunegger later reported that Kurz then shouted “No” several times, shaking the bone and marrow.

At dawn on July 21st, the mountain guides climbed out again from the Stollenloch into the wall and were now supported by the legendary mountain guide Arnold Glatthard . Toni Kurz was still standing on a ledge, the rope ran up to Edi Rainer and down to Willy Angerer. But there was no sign of Angerer, Rainer or Hinterstoisser. How the accident came about can only be guessed at. The most common opinion is that the four were hit by an avalanche while descending, with Edi Rainer, who was protecting from above, hurled against a rock and fatally injured. The injured Willy Angerer is said to have been strangled by a rope, while Hinterstoisser's rope tore off and he fell down into the valley. Toni Kurz was in the middle and was now trapped on a small ledge, with his rope still connected to the two Austrians.

Kurz answered the calls from the mountain guides. He wanted the mountain guides to come up to him through the difficult crack , which had meanwhile been iced over, which the Swiss did not feel capable of doing. In difficult terrain, the four mountain guides came up to about 50 meters from Kurz, then wide overhangs blocked any progress. From there they no longer had a line of sight to Toni Kurz.

They shouted to Kurz to lower an accessory cord so that he could rope up the rope, hook and carabiner. Kurz replied that he no longer had any. Now the mountain guides wanted Kurz to go down to the dead Angerer, cut off the rope, then untwist it and tie the strands together. The hemp ropes of that time consisted almost entirely of three individual strands, each four or five millimeters in diameter. Toni Kurz was already badly battered and exhausted. He had been in the wall for four days and three nights, the last night he had spent standing or hanging in a heavy storm. His left hand was already frozen. Adolf Rubi thought it was impossible that Kurz would still be capable of such an elaborate task.

However, the mountain guides heard the pimple blows with which Kurz apparently cut through the rope that connected him to Angerer. With his still healthy hand and teeth, Kurz was able to untwist the rope in around four hours and knot the strands together. He then lowered this rope, weighted down with a stone, to the mountain guides. In the meantime, Willy Angerer, who was frozen to the wall, had come loose and fell into the depths. He missed one of the rescuers by just inches.

The mountain guides attached a rope to this cord, which Kurz would later use to abseil to the rescuers, as well as a hammer, a few hooks and carabiners. However, since the single rope seemed too short, they tied another rope to the first. They felt it was too dangerous to push their way up to Toni Kurz on this rope .

After a long time, Kurz managed to set up an abseil and slowly move down the rope. Because of his frostbite, he could not abseil in the Dülfersitz , but had tied a seat sling. He had wound the rope attached to the hook around a carabiner twice and hung it in the seat loop. He held on to the rope with his good hand so as not to tip over backwards. By tightening and loosening the rope, the mountain guides were also able to control his descent.

Toni Kurz's descent came to a standstill about six to eight meters above the mountain guides because the rope connection knot did not fit through his carabiner. He tried desperately to force it through the carabiner while the mountain guides encouraged him and encouraged him. Arnold Glatthard called out to him to cut the rope and let himself fall down to the rescuers, but Kurz had no strength left. He groaned again, fell forward, and died there with his hands and feet hanging down. His last words are said to have been "I can no longer".

Only a little later, eight German mountain rescuers arrived at the Stollenloch, who had been alerted on July 20 and had traveled from Munich on July 21 with a Junkers Ju 52 . The Swiss informed them that none of the climbers had survived. Together they took the train back down to Kleine Scheidegg and spent the night there.

Rescue of the casualties

On July 22nd, they took the first train back to the Stollenloch and climbed the same route over to Toni Kurz. It had snowed during the night and water had curdled over the rope and body of Kurz. His body was covered with a layer of ice and icicles hung from his fingers and feet. Due to the ice coating, the rope was now almost 10 cm thick. The German mountain rescuer Ludwig Gramminger wondered how Kurz's abseil position could hold this weight.

The Germans now climbed the difficult rock up to about three meters from Toni Kurz's corpse and tried to fix him with a rope loop that they had attached to a pole about two and a half meters long. With this they wanted to prevent the fall into the valley shortly after cutting the rope. After three hours and various techniques, however, they had to give up this undertaking. They then attached a knife to the pole and cut the rope, causing Kurz's frozen body to fall through the wall.

On July 23, the mountain rescuers recovered Willy Angerer's body in a ravine at the foot of the wall. They could still see that his head had been bandaged. Apparently he was the one injured who had been transported through the wall by the others. They also found scraps of clothing, crampons, a camera and a watch. In a rift they discovered the body of Max Sedlmayr, who had died in an accident in 1935.

On July 26th, the mountain rescuers discovered Rainer's frozen body at the lower end of the cross passage. When Ludwig Gramminger, Martin Meier and Paul Liebl attempted to rescue him, his dead body fell over the wall into the valley. He was recovered the next day. The cross-passage ropes partially anchored by the rescuers were used by later rope teams as handrail ropes for the cross-passage.

Toni Kurz was found 33 days after his death on August 24, 1936 by the Munich mountaineers Hans Hintermeier and Rudolf Peters in a crevice at the foot of the wall. Hintermeier and Peters had left the Mountain Infantry Regiment 100 in Reichenhall for the scene of the accident. The two found the body of Andreas Hinterstoisser on July 27, 1937 on a ledge. He was tied to a long rope that had been cut. The German mountain rescuers suspected that he fell victim to a rope break when he tried to run the Hinterstoisser traverse again.

After the tragedy

Three days after the death of the mountaineers, the government of the Canton of Bern issued a ban on climbing the north face of the Eiger. This was legally not tenable and was repealed in November 1936. However, the alpine rescue stations were released from their duty to provide assistance on the north face of the Eiger.

In 1938 the Hinterstoisser short memorial run took place in the Watzmannkar . In addition, there has been the Anderl-Hinterstoißer memorial run on the Reiter Alm since 1948 . On the Jungfrau-Eiger-Walk from the Eiger Glacier to the Kleine Scheidegg, their names carved in stone are a reminder of the tragedy. In the Frankenjura there is a climbing route called the Hinterstoißer Memorial Path.

Literary reception

  • In 1936, the first Eiger book, Der Kampf um die Eiger Nordwand , was published just a few weeks after the short rope team died .
  • The wall published soon after . The diary of a young mountaineer by Erika Jemelin is a fictional diary by Toni Kurz.
  • Also soon after the tragedy, Theo Lütolf wrote the verse epic Das Drama am Eiger .
  • In 1938 Gustav Renker wrote the novel Destiny in the North Face , in which the north face is a symbol of the struggle between man and nature.
  • In 2000 the book Flash-back sur l'Eiger by Daniel Grevoz and Simon Mawer was published. The main characters follow in Toni Kurz's footsteps.
  • In 2007 Daniel Grevoz and Simon Mawer published the book The Fall on a similar topic.

Movie

Several documentaries were made, in which primarily the historical events of 1935 and 1936 were re-enacted.

  • In 1980 , Gerhard Baur prepared the tragedy of 1936 as a feature film for Bayerischer Rundfunk . The special thing about this work is that all scenes were filmed at the original locations. The film has received many national and international awards.
  • The 2007 docu-drama The Beckoning Silence ( drama in the north face of the Eiger ) connects the story of Toni Kurz with the struggle for survival of the English mountaineer Joe Simpson in the Andes. His book from 2003 served as a template: Under the spell of the giant. The long way to the Eiger.
  • In 2008 , the story of the attempt to climb the north face was filmed by Philipp Stölzl . The four mountaineers are played by Benno Fürmann as Toni Kurz, Florian Lukas as Andreas Hinterstoißer, Georg Friedrich as Edi Rainer, and Simon Schwarz as Willy Angerer.

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Joe Simpson : Under the spell of the giant. The long way to the Eiger . 3. Edition. Malik, Munich 2003, ISBN 3-89029-261-5 , p. 338 (English: The Beckoning Silence . Translated by Karina Of).