George Mallory

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George Mallory, 1915

George Herbert Leigh Mallory (born June 18, 1886 in Mobberley , Cheshire , England , † June 8 or June 9, 1924 on Mount Everest ) was a British mountaineer who was considered one of the best of his generation and one of the pioneers of the Mountaineering on Mount Everest applies. Mallory was involved in the three British expeditions to the Mount Everest area in the 1920s. While the aim of the first expedition was to explore the region, the explicit aim of the second and third expeditions was to secure the first ascent of the highest mountain in the world for Great Britain. Mallory and Andrew Irvine never returned from the mountain on the last attempt to climb the third expedition . His mysterious disappearance preoccupied a nation, and for a long time it was speculated that Mallory and Irvine had reached the summit before their deaths.

Mallory's body was found on Everest in 1999 by a search party led by Conrad Anker . It was on the mountain flank below where his partner Andrew Irvine's pimple was found. It remains to be seen whether Mallory and Irvine managed to reach the summit. Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay are considered the first to climb Mount Everest , 29 years later (1953).

biography

youth

George Mallory came from a comparatively simple background. His father, Leigh Mallory, was vicar of Mobberley, a large and affluent parish not far from Manchester. Ecclesiastical ministry has been a centuries-old tradition of the Mallory family. As early as 1621, an ancestor of George Mallory was active as a clergyman. Mallory's mother, Anne Beridge Jebb, was also the daughter and granddaughter of vicars. Two sisters, Avie and Mary, and his younger brother Trafford grew up with George. Mallory's climbing talent showed very early on. Sent to his room as a seven-year-old for bad behavior, he appeared a little later on the roof of the church: Mallory had gone down the gutter of the rectory and then up the facade of the old bell tower. His younger sister Avie described him as follows:

Chapel of Winchester College, which Mallory attended from September 1900.

“He climbed everything there was to climb. I learned so early that it was fatal to tell him that it was not possible to climb a certain tree. A formulation that he immediately saw as a challenge was not possible. "

As a 13-year-old, George Mallory won a math scholarship to Winchester College , a prestigious boys' boarding school in south-west England. Mallory, who went to school there from September 1900, felt very much at home there. Everest historian Wade Davis describes Winchester as a typical school of the British Empire before the First World War , in which an elite was drawn up who would later serve the British Empire on outposts, lead troops as officers and determine the fate of their country as politicians.

One of Mallory's tutors at Winchester College was Graham Irving , an avid alpinist and member of the British Alpine Club . In 1904 Mallory Irving accompanied another Winchester student on a climbing tour in the French Alps. Irving was a somewhat unorthodox climber and the dangerous climbs he undertook with the two students in the Mont Blanc area earned him a formal admonition from the board of the Alpine Club. Irving, who wrote Mallory's obituary for the club's magazine in 1924, later stated that Mallory's unusual body control, athleticism and climbing safety had already shown himself then. After returning from France, Irving and these two students founded the Winchester College Ice Club, which was also joined by Guy Bullock , who later became a well-known mountaineer. After finishing school in the summer of 1905, this time Irving and Mallory traveled to the Alps again, accompanied by Bullock, and on August 21 they climbed Dent Blanche , one of the four-thousand-meter peaks in the Swiss Alps.

Education

Mallory showed little interest in a military career after graduating from school. However, he managed to get a scholarship to study history at Magdalene College , Cambridge . His tutor at that college, who would accompany him for the next three years, became the essayist and poet Arthur Christopher Benson . Even after the first year of his studies, Mallory was certain that he should not become a clergyman like his father. He made friends with Rupert Brooke , Geoffrey and Maynard Keynes , Gerald Shove , James and Lytton Strachey and EM Forster , among others , and counted Virginia Woolf among his circle of friends, all of whom belonged to the Bloomsbury Group . EM Forster based the character of George Emerson in his 1908 novel Zimmer mit Aussicht even on the handsome George Mallory.

Mallory found many among his friends who shared his passion for mountaineering. His Cambridge tutor was experienced in climbing, he knew the daughters of the President of the Alpine Club and friends of his introduced him to Geoffrey Young , then the best-known British mountaineer, whom he accompanied on climbing tours in Wales and the Alps a little later.

Teaching at the boarding school "Charterhouse"

Photo George Mallory

After completing his studies, he got a job at the elite private school Charterhouse , where he was supposed to teach history, mathematics, French and Latin. His starting annual salary was £ 270, which was a comparatively high salary. An established country doctor was earning around £ 400 a year at the time.

Not only did Mallory look so young that visiting parents mistook him for one of the students, but he also struggled to maintain the traditional roles of student and teacher in the classroom. The future writer Robert Graves , who remained on friendly terms with him until Mallory's death, nevertheless called him one of the best teachers he ever had.

“From the beginning he treated me like an equal and I spent my free time in his room reading or going hiking with him. He suggested the modern writers to me ... I had never heard of figures like Shaw , Rupert Brooke, Wells , Masefield before . "

In the fall of 1911, Frank Fletcher became the new director of Charterhouse. He was also a mountaineer and member of the Alpine Club, but Mallory was in opposition to him, who placed great emphasis on strict discipline. Mallory began to spend more and more time in London, where he befriended Edward Marsh in February 1912 . In the summer of 1912 Mallory traveled a sixth time to the Alps to climb again with Geoffrey Young. They climbed the Pointe de Genevois together and found a new route on the Dent Blanche. However, their trip was overshadowed by the deaths of their friends Humphrey and Muriel Jones, who fell to their deaths while climbing Mont Rouge de Peuterey .

At the beginning of 1914 Mallory met the then 22-year-old Ruth Turner, with whom he fell madly in love. The Turner family invited Mallory to spend the holidays with them in Venice at Easter. The two became engaged on May 1, 1914, and the marriage was set for July 29th. Ruth Turner was the middle of three daughters of the widowed architect Thackeray Turner. He gave his daughter a generous dowry: the young couple received a pension of 750 British pounds and were to have their own house. Materially, Mallory had taken care of it. Both married on this date; however, the planned honeymoon, which was supposed to lead to the Alps, did not materialize. On June 28, Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife were murdered by an assassin in Sarajevo , and the First World War broke out a little later.

First World War

Rupert Brooke, who died of blood poisoning in 1915

School teachers were initially not included in the military service and since his school principal described him as indispensable, George Mallory continued to teach in the first year of the war in Charterhouse. However, in this role as an outsider, which did nothing to help Britain win, Mallory felt increasingly uncomfortable. He was aware of the conditions at the front: As in all English private schools, the graduates of the school were prepared to take on a role as NCO immediately after leaving school. In the first three months of the First World War alone, 21 Charterhouse graduates fell. His wife Ruth worked as a volunteer in a hospital where war wounded were cared for, and Mallory also made frequent visits to the sick in the evenings. In an attempt to combine his duties as a patriot and towards his wife, who had been pregnant since December 1914, Mallory tried at the beginning of 1915, ultimately unsuccessfully, to be reassigned to a post important for the warfare of the Navy. Increasingly, people very close to Mallory also fell. Jack Sanders, a good friend, died in a gas attack during the Second Battle of Flanders . On the same day, Mallory's close friend Rupert Brooke succumbed to sepsis on board a military transport that was to take him to Gallipolli. Another friend, Harry Harret, was killed in the Battle of Gallipoli . Mallory's brother Trafford was seriously injured at the same time. The day Mallory and Ruth's eldest daughter Clare was born, they received news that Hugh Wilson, another mountaineer friend, had fallen near Hébuterne .

In the late autumn of 1915, Mallory's principal finally agreed to release him from school duties. Mallory began his service with the Royal Garrison Artillery and was transferred to the front after three months of training. He consoled his wife Ruth by pointing out that as a member of this unit he would not fight in the front line, but it was only luck that he survived when his accommodation was destroyed during an artillery battle on May 14, 1916. A few days later, 41 officers of a sister battalion died in a similar attack when artillery fire hit their canteen. Mallory made no mention of this incident in his letters to Ruth. But he confessed to her how much it burdens him to be surrounded by so many dead and what horror it is to be sure to come across body parts when digging trenches. He also wrote to his father about the dead and dying and about reports that whole regiments had been mowed down by machine guns. On July 29, 1916, he and a small group of soldiers under his command came under artillery fire far from the trenches. Two of his people were killed in the process. Just a few days earlier he had written how angry he was that so few of the dead were buried. Mallory had the two men carried to the nearest wounded ward, even though they were clearly dead. In August 1916 he wrote to Ruth that he had accepted death and the dead, but that the sight of the wounded bothered him very much.

On December 26, 1916, Mallory was appointed orderly officer to a colonel at headquarters and was now several kilometers from the immediate front line. Mallory described his situation as surreal: his colonel had as much influence as a Chinese mandarin in an opera by Gilbert and Sullivan , he himself was nothing more than a better valet who, in turn, was shaved in bed in the morning by his own officer . After two months, Mallory applied for a transfer and returned to the front on April 7, two days before the start of the Battle of Arras . Just one day later, Mallory was withdrawn from the front lines because of an injury. For months he had had problems with an ankle that he had injured in a climbing accident eight years earlier. It now turned out that there had been a fracture at the time that had healed poorly and Mallory would have had to undergo an operation if a stress fracture did not occur. At the beginning of May 1917 he recovered in a London hospital and in the summer of that year was initially employed as an instructor for a new generation of artillerymen. A similar turn of fate saved him from actively participating in the Third Battle of Flanders . On October 8, the rear wheel of his motorcycle blocked, causing it to hit a goal post. His foot was pinched and he was hospitalized again until October 16. It was only after Christmas 1917 that he was considered physically recovered to the point that he could return to active service.

Everest expeditions

Members of the 1921 British Expedition (Standing: Wollaston, Howard-Bury, Heron, Raeburn / Sitting: Mallory, Wheeler, Bullock, Morshead)

In 1921 Mallory was invited to participate in a British Everest expedition because of his achievements in the Alps. The aim of this expedition, organized by the Royal Geographical Society and the Alpine Club , was to explore the Everest massif and explore a possible route to the summit .

A promising ascent route was sought on the Tibetan north side of Mount Everest. In several teams of two, the expedition explored the northern surroundings of the mountain over a wide area. George Mallory climbed the entire middle glacier in the Rongbuk Valley to below the north face, turned right onto the saddle of the Lho La Pass before the west ridge, and on the south side of Everest was probably the first person to see the Valley of Silence , which after the Second World War enabled the first ascent on the south side in Nepal. Mallory realized that before reaching this valley, the ice breaking of the Khumbu Glacier would be a huge problem, in his view insoluble. (The Swiss and British expeditions of the 1950s then solved this problem on the southern route.)

But no way had yet been found on the north side.

George Mallory then found the orography of the Kangshung Glacier from the Kharta Valley east of Everest on the ascent to the Lhakpa La pass : the Eastern Rongbuk Glacier had to provide the way to get to the foot of the northern ascent route. Mallory and his climbing partners descended from Lhakpa La into the glacier valley of Eastern Rongbuk and explored the possible ascent route below the north saddle. Except for three rocky outcrops high up on the northeast ridge, an ascent seemed feasible to him. Mallory even made a tentative ascent attempt, but it was broken off early on in the difficult wall up to the north col, and given the exhaustion of the exploration team. In view of the long way back, Mallory also refrained from going down in the Eastern Valley, which would have led him and his crew directly to Rongbuk Monastery. However, it had become clear to him that finding the end of the valley, the confluence of the Eastern Glacier, would be the solution to the north ascent.

With this knowledge, the north route on Everest, which is still used as standard today, was developed in the following years. Even if Mallory did not cross the entire valley of the Eastern Rongbuk and also did not recognize the small, hidden entrance above the Rongbuk monastery, the foundations for the north route were laid with his exploration. The following 1922 expedition then entered the eastern glacier valley and took exactly this route.

Before that, while approaching Everest, the expedition in the Kharta Valley had come quite close to the mountain. On closer inspection of the east wall and its ridges, Mallory gave her eastern ridge a famous saying. Mallory said this wall was "so difficult that one can only climb it in the imagination, but it is nothing for us." Since then this ridge has been called "Phantasy Ridge". It has not yet been overcome, and it represents one of the last unsolved problems on Everest - clearly recognized and described by George Mallory as early as 1921.

Mallory was also part of the second expedition in 1922 . This time the ascent to the summit should be attempted. A height of over 8,300 m was reached here. A serious avalanche accident in which seven porters died under Mallory's direction, led to the end of this expedition. Mallory grievously reproached himself for the rest of his life that the porters had died.

Mallory was one of those in the group of British mountaineers in 1922 who regarded it as unsporting to make climbing on the mountain easier with oxygen cylinders. He then changed this attitude during the expedition in 1924.

In 1924 Mallory and the other participants of this expedition were awarded the first ever Olympic mountaineering prize, the Prix ​​olympique d'alpinisme , at the Olympic Winter Games in Chamonix .

The attempt from 1924

North face of Mt.Everest
green: normal route north, high camp at 7700 and 8300 m
1922/24 the route went over the left of the camp at 8300 m
(a) Finch 1922 approx. 8325 m
(b) Norton 1924 approx. 8573 m
?: Second step , key point on the upper northeast ridge
† 1 = G. Mallory site

In 1924 George Mallory was on the mountain again. On his last attempt to reach the summit, he and his companion Andrew Irvine were allegedly recognized by the British geologist Noel Odell on June 8th at an altitude of about 8500 m. After that, they disappeared into the fog and were never seen alive again. To this day, speculation persists as to whether either of the two reached the summit.

Finding the body and reconstructing the mountain accident

The American mountaineer Conrad Anker found Mallory's mummified body on May 1, 1999, 75 years after his last expedition, at an altitude of 8150 m on an inclined snow slope.

Mallory's body was in excellent condition. He had his snow goggles in his pocket, but it cannot be inferred from this that he descended at night, as the photo of his departure on June 8, 1924 on the north saddle shows his spare goggles on his belt. The photo of his wife Ruth, which was supposedly always on his body, was no longer with him. He had wanted to put it down at the summit. Mallory no longer wore oxygen equipment. He will presumably have put it high on the mountain after it had become empty and thus useless. A camera was also not found on him. His body had two injuries from a fall: a broken lower leg and a severe head wound. He must have only fallen a short distance; his body is not shattered as it would have been if he had fallen from the ridge.

It is evident that Mallory chose a different route to descend than to ascend. The fact that he climbed the ridge route on the ascent seems to be certain now, but it has not yet been clarified when and why he left the ridge and climbed into the flank of the mountain.

Media response and reception

George Mallory's answer to the question why he wanted to climb Everest has become famous: “ Because it is there. "(German:" Because he is there. ")

  • The British author Jeffrey Archer made the life of George Mallory the subject of his 2009 novel Paths of Glory .
  • The docu-drama The Wildest Dream by Anthony Geffen (the first feature film to be shot on Mount Everest) deals with Mallory's last ascent to the summit of Mount Everest and Conrad Anker's discovery of the corpse.
  • Jiro Taniguchi's and Baku Yumemakura's five-volume manga "Summits of the Gods", which appeared in Japan from 2000 to 2003, deals with the eventual first ascent of Everest by Mallory and Irvine.

Others

literature

  • Jeffrey Archer : Paths of Glory (Roman), St. Martin's Press, New York 2009, ISBN 978-0-312-53951-1 .
  • Wilhelm Ehmer: Around the top of the world. The story of the climber Mallory. Engelhorn, Stuttgart 1936.
  • Walter Bauer: Mount Everest. Report from Mallory and his friends. Gütersloh: C. Bertelsmann Verlag 1953
  • Wade Davis: Into the Silence: The Great War, Mallory and the Conquest of Everest. Vintage Digital, London 2011, ISBN 978-1-84792-184-0 .
  • Jochen Hemmleb , Larry A. Johnson, Eric R. Simonson: The Spirits of Mount Everest. Finding Mallory and Irvine. From the American by Hainer Kober. Hoffmann and Campe, Hamburg 1999, ISBN 3-89405-108-6
  • Jochen Hemmleb & Eric Simonson: Detectives on Everest. The Story of the 2001 Mallory & Irvine Research Expedition. The Mountaineers Books, Seattle 2002
  • Jochen Hemmleb: Mount Everest crime scene. The Mallory case , Reich, Luzern 2009, ISBN 3-7243-1022-6
  • Reinhold Messner : Mallory's second death. BLV, Munich 1999, ISBN 3-405-15840-0
  • Tom Holzel, Audrey Salkeld: In the Death Zone - The Secret of George Mallory. Goldmann, Munich 1999, ISBN 3-442-15076-0
  • Conrad Anker, David Roberts: Lost on Mount Everest - On the trail of George Mallory's secret . Diana-Verlag, Zurich 2000, ISBN 3-453-17711-8
  • Peter Firstbrook: Lost on Mount Everest - The spectacular search for George Mallory. Burgschmied Verlag, Nuremberg 1999, ISBN 3-933731-20-8
Fiction


Manga

  • Jiro Taniguchi / Baku Yumemakura: Summit of the Gods, 5 volumes.

Movies

Web links

Commons : George Mallory  - Collection of Images, Videos and Audio Files

Single receipts

  1. ↑ Wade Davis: Into the Silenc . P. 5.
  2. ↑ Wade Davis: Into the Silenc . P. 2
  3. ^ A b c Wade Davis: Into the Silenc . P. 165.
  4. ↑ quoted from Wade Davis: Into the Silence . P. 166. In the original Avie Irving said about her brother: I learn very early that it was fatal to tell him that a tree was impossible for him to get up. "Impossible" was a word that acted as a challenge for him.
  5. ↑ Wade Davis: Into the Silence . P. 167.
  6. ^ A b Wade Davis: Into the Silence . P. 168.
  7. ↑ Wade Davis: Into the Silenc . P. 169.
  8. ↑ Wade Davis: Into the Silence . P. 173.
  9. ↑ Wade Davis: Into the Silence . P. 176.
  10. ^ A b Wade Davis: Into the Silence . P. 181.
  11. ↑ Wade Davis: Into the Silence . S. 182. Robert Graves wrote in the original: From the first he treated me as an Qual, and I used to spend my spare Imme reading books in his room or going for walks with him in the country. He told me of the existence of modern authors .... I had never heard of people like Shaw, Rupert Brooke, Well, Masefield .
  12. ^ A b Wade Davis: Into the Silence . P. 183.
  13. ^ A b Wade Davis: Into the Silence . P. 184.
  14. ^ A b Wade Davis: Into the Silence . P. 186.
  15. ↑ Wade Davis: Into the Silence . P. 187.
  16. ↑ Wade Davis: Into the Silence . P. 189.
  17. ^ A b Wade Davis: Into the Silence . P. 190.
  18. ↑ Wade Davis: Into the Silence . P. 191.
  19. ↑ Wade Davis: Into the Silence . P. 192.
  20. ^ A b Wade Davis: Into the Silence . P. 193.
  21. ↑ Wade Davis: Into the Silence . P. 194.
  22. ↑ Wade Davis: Into the Silence . P. 195.
  23. ↑ Hölzel, Tom and Salkeld, Audrey, co-authors (1996) First on Everest: The Mystery of Mallory & Irvine. New York: 1996 Henry Holt & Co. ISBN 0-8050-0303-7
personal data
SURNAME Mallory, George
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Mallory, George Herbert Leigh
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British climber
DATE OF BIRTH June 18, 1886
PLACE OF BIRTH Mobberley , Cheshire
DATE OF DEATH uncertain: June 8, 1924
Place of death on Mount Everest