German-American Himalaya Expedition 1932

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Members of the DAHE in Camp VI (6600 m), view of Chongra Peak, which was first climbed during the expedition

The German-American Himalayan Expedition ( DAHE ) took place in 1932 and had the goal of making the first ascent of Nanga Parbat in the Himalayas . It was the first of six expeditions to Nanga Parbat that the German Empire undertook in the 1930s.

prehistory

In 1895, the English mountaineer Albert Mummery made the first attempt to climb Nanga Parbat. Supported by the Gurkha carrier Ragobir, after exploring the Rupal flank on the Diamir side, he reached an altitude of about 6000 m, precise details are missing here. Mummery and his porters were lost when they tried to descend through the Diamir flank into the Rakhiottal .

In 1910 the publisher and author of alpine literature Walter Schmidkunz acquired the German rights to the works of Mummery. Schmidkunz studied the Nanga Parbat on the basis of the existing literature and reported in the 1920s to Willo Welzenbach and Paul Bauer of his assumption that an ascent on the northeast side from the Rakhiottal was possible.

In 1929 the German alpine pioneer Willo Welzenbach took up the idea of ​​Mummery and Schmidkunz and concretized the plan to climb the west side of Nanga Parbat in the Diamir flank. The first Nanga Parbat expedition since Mummery was supposed to start in the fall of 1930. Shortly before the expedition began, however, it was stopped by the German Foreign Ministry . In 1932 Paul Bauer finally won the support of the State Department and the next attempt was made. Welzenbach was disappointed again, however, because his employer, the city of Munich, did not give him any vacation. He then suggested Willy Merkl as the expedition leader.

Welzenbach chose the Nanga Parbat because it had two significant advantages over the other eight-thousanders . On the one hand, its close proximity to major cities and roads makes it easily accessible from India . On the other hand, due to its relatively low altitude of 8125 m, no oxygen supply was necessary for the climbers. According to Welzenbach's investigations, five to seven mountaineers, who were also members of the Munich Academic Alpine Association, were to take part in an expedition to the Nanga Parbat . The planned expedition members, all of whom were important participants in subsequent expeditions, should include Hans Hartmann , Martin Pfeffer and Karl Wien .

Expedition team

The expedition team included the Germans Willy Merkl as expedition leader, Fritz Bechtold , Herbert Kunigk , Felix Simon and Dr. Hugo Hamberger as an expedition doctor, the Austrian Peter Aschenbrenner , as well as Fritz Wiessner , who emigrated from Germany to the USA in 1929, and the Americans Elbridge Rand Herron and Elizabeth Knowlton as correspondents for the American media, which provided money. The expedition was accompanied by British liaison officer Capt. RND Freeze.

course

Preparations

The fairy tale meadow with the breathtaking view of the Nanga Parbat

The journey to and from the Himalayas took two months, with up to 200 porters deployed. Serious omissions in Merkl's planning quickly became apparent, however. So no experienced Sherpa had been organized, the high porters on site had to gradually give up. After various forced and energy-sapping detours - access to the Rakhiot side was only guaranteed in India - a main camp was built and the ascent started. However, these detours led to a special discovery. The team found a meadow with a view of Nanga Parbat - the "fairy tale meadow".

Attempted ascent and termination of the expedition

The base camp was built at an altitude of 3967 m . Contrary to Welzenbach's original ideas, the ascent took place through the crevasses of the Rakhiot Glacier on the north side of the mountain. Peter Aschenbrenner, together with Hugo Hamberger, managed the first ascent of the 6830 m high Chongra Peak , an easterly pre-summit, and together with Herbert Kunigk the first ascent of the 7070 m high Rakhiot Peak (16 June). After four weeks, the team was able to set up camp VII at 6950 m on July 29th, which should be the starting point for the ascent to the summit. The expedition came within a few hundred meters of altitude to the Silbersattel, the “gateway” to the summit region at 7400 m. However, due to the onset of monsoons and the accompanying three-week snow storm , the mountaineers were unable to conquer the summit of the mountain. They were forced to turn back at 7000 m, near the Mohrenkopf, as they called a black rock, and to end the expedition unsuccessfully, and returned to base camp without losses.

Elizabeth Knowlton reached an altitude of about 6,100 m, where the rest of the climbers refused to continue the ascent. Knowlton was one of the first women documented to exceed an altitude of 20,000 ft (6,096 m). While expedition leader Willy Merkl reduced her participation in the expedition to the weekly press reports and housewife activities in the base camp and only mentions a "distinguished visit" in camp IV, Knowlton wrote later that she had spent more than a month over 6100 m .

Post-history

On the way home, the American Elbridge Rand Herron visited Alexandria and Cairo. After the hardships and dangers of an eight-thousander - he had just escaped an avalanche - he died in a crash from the Chephren pyramid in Giza . For the residents of the Nanga Parbat region, this was the “demon” of the mountain who reached out for him.

Further expeditions in the 1930s

The Nanga Parbat was then stylized as the “holy grail”. After the unsuccessful German-American Himalayan expedition, three other expeditions took place in addition to the German Nanga Parbat Expedition in 1934 and the German Nanga Parbat Expedition in 1937 , the last one in 1939 with Heinrich Harrer and Peter Aufschnaiter . These six expeditions in the 1930s were all unsuccessful.

The German press and propaganda then made the Nanga Parbat the “Germans' mountain of fate”.

literature

Web links

Footnotes

  1. See Reinhold Messner: Die white loneliness , p. 325f.
  2. See Peter Mierau: National Socialist Expedition Policy , p. 66.
  3. a b See “Alabaster Alp” , Time Magazine , October 24, 1932.
  4. a b See the history of ascent of the Rakhiot flank ( memento of the original from January 4, 2016 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. on the website of the American Foundation For International Mountaineering, Exploration & Research (AFFIMER) . @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.affimer.org
  5. ^ Obituary in the New York Times of January 27, 1989, note the correction at the end of the article
  6. cf. Expedition report from Willy Merkl in KM Herrligkoffer: Nanga Parbat (see literature list)
  7. ^ Biographical note on Elizabeth Knowlton in the University of New Hampshire Library.