Fritz Kasparek

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Fritz Kasparek (born July 3, 1910 in Vienna , † June 6, 1954 at Salcantay , Peru ) was an Austrian alpinist .

Life

Kasparek was born into a Viennese working-class family. His father Franz was a silver worker, his mother Karoline a housekeeper. He completed an apprenticeship as a locksmith apprentice . He gained his first climbing experience on the Peilstein and in the Gesäuse , and later he joined the Friends of Nature . According to Eduard Rabofsky , after the association was dissolved in 1934, he is said to have helped anti-fascists over the mountains to France who wanted to flee to Spain.

The worker mountaineers of the twenties and thirties of the last century had no opportunity to go on expeditions to the mountains of the world. They rode their bikes to their mountain destinations as far as the Western Alps and tried to master the most difficult even under extreme conditions. As one of the pioneers of difficult winter ascents, Kasparek, together with Sepp Brunhuber, started the Comici-Führe on the north face of the Große Zinne in February 1938 at 20 degrees below zero. It was the first winter ascent of a guide in the VI. Degree at all. These and other extreme tours were aimed at preparing for their big goal, the Eiger north face.

From July 21 to 24, 1938, Kasparek and Heinrich Harrer (Brunhuber was unable to do so), together with the Munich rope team Anderl Heckmair and Ludwig Vörg, were the first to climb the face of the Eiger. Kasparek recorded the events in the book Ein Bergsteiger , which in the first editions of 1939 and 1940 still contained passages that described the struggle of the “German people and their national impetus”. An example:

I will never forget the north face of the Eiger; it was, as it were, the symbol of German fate. Six German mountaineers had lost their lives in it. And we were destined to give the final fulfillment to their great sacrifice. [...] Could we as Germans act differently? Didn't the Führer have to rise again and again before our eyes? And his superhuman struggle with the difficulties of the thorny road to the summit of his people? We couldn't have asked for a better teacher.

After the war, from the third edition in 1951, these passages are missing.

The north face of the Eiger, along with the north face of the Grandes Jorasses and the Matterhorn north face, was one of the “three last problems of the Alps” and, like the other two great north faces, was the target of a race of nations. This also made it a political issue. Because of this, and because previous attempts at ascent had cost a greater number of deaths, the first ascent caused a tremendous sensation. As early as 1936, on the occasion of the Olympic Games, Adolf Hitler promised a gold medal for the first ascent, although mountaineering was not an Olympic discipline. For Hitler and his propaganda, the success was "a demonstration for the superiority and the courage to death of the German master race ...". After their return, the first climbers were welcomed by the "Führer" and could not do enough with National Socialist addresses of devotion. German propaganda saw - after the Anschluss on March 12 of the same year - the merger of a German and an Austrian rope team (the German being "of course “Which was leading) as a highly symbolic event. When Harrer's early membership in the SA was discovered, his euphoric sentence in the book written by the first climbers became notorious : "We climbed the north face beyond the summit to our guide".

Kasparek had already joined the SS in the 1930s and SS Unterscharführer in World War II by 1942 at the latest . After the war he was listed as a suspect and started a career as a businessman . In contrast to this, Heinrich Harrer was able to keep his early ties to National Socialism hidden for a long time, until 1997, also because he did not return from his stay in Tibet until late after the war (1952).

Mountaineering cemetery Johnsbach, the memorial plaque for Fritz Kasparek is in the top left

At the end of April 1954, Kasparek traveled to Peru as head of the Austrian Andean expedition . On June 6th of that year he was killed while trying to climb the 6,271 meter high Salcantay when a cornice broke on the summit ridge and caused him and his rope companion, the Swiss alpinist Anton Vasenauer , who joined the expedition in Cusco, to fall 1,500 meters deep .

A memorial plaque on the mountaineers' cemetery in Johnsbach in Gesäuse commemorates Fritz Kasparek . In the neighboring Haindlkar there is still the "old" Haindlkarhütte , which was built under a huge boulder to protect against avalanches. On this block of huts, the “Kasparek overhang” is still a touchstone for the climbing elite. In 1968 the Kasparekgasse in Vienna- Donaustadt (22nd district ) was named after him.

Alpinistic services (selection)

  • Civetta Northwest Face, Comici Route, second ascent in 1933
  • Marmolada south pillar, fifth ascent in 1933
  • Rosskuppe (Gesäuse), Rosskuppenkante, first winter ascent in 1936
  • Laliderer Spitze north face, Auckenthaler route, third ascent, Schmid-Krebs route, sixth ascent in 1936
  • Western pinnacle north face, Cassin-Führe, fourth ascent in 1937
  • Kleine Zinne Preußriss, first winter ascent in 1938
  • Great pinnacle north face, Comici-Führe, first winter ascent in 1938
  • Eiger north face, first ascent with Heinrich Harrer, Anderl Heckmair and Luis Vörg in 1938
  • Hochtor north face, Pfannl-Maischberger-Führe, first winter ascent in 1941

Autobiography

  • A climber. One of the conquerors of the Eiger north face talks about his mountain trips . First edition, “Das Bergland-Buch” publishing house, Salzburg 1939.
    • -: Second edition, Das Bergland-Buch, Volume 145, ZDB -ID 2033230-0 . Publishing house "Das Bergland-Buch", Salzburg 1940.
    • From the Peilstein to the north face of the Eiger. Experiences of a mountaineer . Extended and revised new edition, Verlag “Das Bergland-Buch”, Salzburg. Editions 1951, 1955, 1957. (Before that, under the title: A mountaineer. One of the conquerors of the Eiger north face tells of his ascent ).
    • -: Erich Waschak (preface): A life for the mountains. From the Peilstein to the north face of the Eiger . Extended and revised new edition, licensed edition by the Donauland book club, Vienna 1960. (Before that, under the title: A mountain climber. One of the conquerors of the Eiger north face tells of his ascent and From Peilstein to the Eiger north face. Experiences of a mountain climber ).
    • From the Peilstein to the north face of the Eiger. Experiences of a mountaineer . Edition for the members of the Gutenberg Book Guild . Volksbuchverlag, Vienna 1960.

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Felix Czeike : Historisches Lexikon Wien , Vienna 1992, p. 475
  2. ↑ a b Vienna's street names since 1860 as “Political Places of Remembrance” (PDF; 4.4 MB), p. 92ff, final research project report, Vienna, July 2013
  3. ↑ See #Autobiography
  4. ^ Ein Bergsteiger , edition 1939, Das Bergland-Buch Salzburg. P. 224
  5. ^ Rainer Guldin: Political Landscapes: On the relationship between space and national identity , Transcript Verlag, Bielefeld 2014. ISBN 978-3-8376-2818-0 , p. 7).
  6. ↑ Rainer Amstädter: Hitler climbs with , in Eiger. The vertical arena , ed. D. Anker, Zurich 2008, pp. 223–224. Quoted from Rainer Guldin: Political Landscapes: On the relationship between space and national identity , Transcript Verlag, Bielefeld 2014.
  7. ↑ Two victims of the Austrian expedition to the Andes. The director Fritz Kasparek and a Swiss fell into an abyss . In: Arbeiter-Zeitung . Vienna June 12, 1954, p. 4 ( berufer-zeitung.at - the open online archive - digitized).

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Kasparek, Fritz
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Austrian alpinist
DATE OF BIRTH July 3, 1910
PLACE OF BIRTH Vienna
DATE OF DEATH June 6, 1954
Place of death Salcantay , Peru