Hermann Buhl

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Hermann Buhl (1953)

Hermann Buhl (born September 21, 1924 in Innsbruck ; † June 27, 1957 on the Chogolisa , Pakistan ) was an Austrian alpinist . He was the first person to climb Nanga Parbat in 1953 and four years later was one of the first to climb Broad Peak . He is one of the pioneers of the alpine style .

Life

As the youngest of four children, Buhl was sent to an orphanage after his mother's death . In the 1930s, the boy, who was considered weak and sensitive, undertook his first tours in the Tux Alps , the Wilder Kaiser and the Karwendel . In 1939 he joined the young team of the Innsbruck Alpine Club section , which belonged to the DAV from 1938 to 1945 .

Profession and starting a family

After finishing secondary school, Hermann Buhl began an apprenticeship as a freight forwarder . In 1943 he trained as a medical soldier in St. Johann in Tirol and experienced the war as a mountain hunter in Italy, including on the Montecassino .

In March 1951 Hermann Buhl married Eugenie ("Generl") Högerle from Ramsau near Berchtesgaden and in the same year became the father of the later writer Kriemhild Buhl . Two more daughters followed later and he changed his first place of residence to his wife's hometown.

His activity as a mountain guide did not bring much. In 1952 he was freed from financial bottlenecks by a job as a mountain sports goods seller and equipment consultant at the Schuster sports shop in Munich.

Alpinism

Buhl opened and repeated a large number of difficult routes in the Alps. Before his work in the Karakoram , Buhl made an appearance through outstanding achievements in the Alpine region , for example in 1952 with the first solo ascent of the northeast face of Piz Badile and in 1953 with the solo ascent of the east face of Watzmann at night and in winter, at that time in preparation for the upcoming Nanga Parbat -Expedition.

First ascent of Nanga Parbat

Hermann Buhl (left) and Walter Frauenberger after the Nanga Parbat expedition at a lecture in the Wiener Konzerthaus (1953)

Buhl's best-known summit victory is the first ascent of Nanga Parbat (8125 m) on July 3rd. It took place as part of the Willy Merkl memory expedition , which was organized by the Munich doctor Karl Herrligkoffer and led in conjunction with Peter Aschenbrenner as the mountaineering leader. Buhl, aided by a change in the weather after the first monsoon onset, had reached Camp V on July 2 , together with Walter Frauenberger , Hans Ertl and Otto Kempter, at 6,900 m altitude, where he and Kempter spent the night while the other two with the porters go down to camp IV.

Buhl set off on his own and without additional oxygen, but after taking Pervitin , in the night around 2:30 a.m. to the summit and finally reached it with his last bit of strength around 7 p.m. As evidence of his ascent, Hermann Buhl left his ice ax and the Pakistani flag on the summit (the Tyrolean pennant was only attached for a photo). Kempter, who followed an hour later, had to give up at an altitude of about 7400 m on the plateau on the Silbersattel due to a fit of weakness and had returned to Camp V. There he waited with Frauenberger and Ertl, who had come up again, for Buhl to return.

Buhl was only able to survive the bivouac at an altitude of almost 8,000 m without bivouac equipment because of the unusually favorable weather conditions. However, he suffered frostbite on two toes. He still had most of the descent ahead of him. At times he was in a dangerous state of apathy and was haunted by delusions of perception . After 41 hours, he returned to Camp V in a state of extreme exhaustion and extremely dehydrated , where hopes of his return had already begun to decline. In the following days Buhl managed the descent to the main camp on his own, where they arrived on July 7th. Here it turned out that his frozen toes could not be saved, but had to be amputated . It had to be carried on the rest of the march back. Hans Ertl made the documentary Nanga Parbat about this expedition .

Following the expedition, there was a falling out with Herrligkoffer because of his authoritarian leadership style, to which Buhl, as by far the most powerful member of the team, did not submit without contradiction, which prompted him to make arbitrary decisions in crucial situations. There followed legal disputes over the exploitation rights, which the expedition leader had secured in advance. Buhl, on the other hand, wanted to use his summit victory in his own publications. He viewed it as a personal success that he had achieved against the instructions given by the expedition leader on June 29 to retreat to the main camp due to the onset of the monsoon.

In 1999, Buhl's pimple left behind on the summit was found by a Japanese expedition and returned to his widow.

Sportsman of the year 1953

The Austrian sports journalists voted him on January 21, 1954 " Sportsman of the Year 1953".

First ascent of Broad Peak

Because of the frostbite suffered on the descent on Nanga Parbat , Buhl's rock climbing skills were somewhat limited. He now turned increasingly to high-altitude mountaineering .

On June 9, 1957, Buhl, together with Fritz Wintersteller , Kurt Diemberger and Marcus Schmuck, was the first to climb Broad Peak (8051 m) in the Karakoram, setting a milestone in the development of the alpine style on an eight-thousander. Alongside Kurt Diemberger, Hermann Buhl is the only mountaineer to have climbed two eight-thousanders for the first time.

Lost on the Chogolisa

On June 27, 1957 Hermann Buhl fell at an ascent attempt situated near the Broad Peak Chogolisa (7654 m) with a cornice from the north wall and disappeared since then. Kurt Diemberger, who tried to climb the Chogolisa in a rope team with Buhl, was only a few meters ahead of Buhl. Based on a photo of the crash site taken by Diemberger, the footprint in the snow shows that Buhl had lost his bearings for a short time in the snowstorm and probably got too close to the edge of the cornices, whereupon the cornices gave way under his weight.

Importance and appreciation

Hermann Buhl was the first to climb an eight-thousander on the final section alone and without additional oxygen . In 1953 he was voted Austrian Sportsman of the Year . Buhl was a member of the Austrian Alpine Club .

In professional circles he is still considered to be one of the most important rock climbers and high-altitude climbers of all time due to his sensational first ascents in the Alps and the Karakoram. His way of doing extreme alpinism broke with the national mountaineering ideals of earlier decades. Buhl oriented himself on personal motives such as the desire to cross the border. Instead of cumbersome material battles on the mountain, he preferred light luggage, fast climbs and alpinism without additional oxygen. That is why Buhl is seen as a pioneer of Reinhold Messner .

Buhl spent 41 hours alone on the Nanga Parbat. During his ascent to the summit he consumed the stimulating drug pervitin , without which he might not have survived the hardships, especially the unprotected bivouac at 8000 m altitude.

49 years after Buhl's death on the Chogolisa, the Austrian mountaineer and alpine historian Markus Kronthaler undertook the expedition In the footsteps of Hermann Buhl on Broad Peak, during which he himself died on July 8, 2006.

In 2012 the forecourt of the new Hungerburgbahn on the Hungerburg in Innsbruck was named Hermann-Buhl-Platz .

Works

  • Eight thousand over and under. Nymphenburger Verlag, Munich 1954 (and numerous later editions)

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ [1] Walter Frauenberger. In: salzburgwiki
  2. ↑ "1. Hermann Buhl and Trude Klecker ” . In: Arbeiter-Zeitung . Vienna January 22, 1954, p. 8 ( berufer-zeitung.at - the open online archive - digitized).
  3. ↑ For more information on this ascent, see the Development section in the article on Alpine style.
  4. ^ Karl M. Herrligkoffer: Nanga Parbat. Seven decades of summit battle in the heat of the sun and ice. Ullstein Verlag, Berlin 1967, p. 100 ff.
  5. ↑ hungerburg.at Information on Hermann-Buhl-Platz in Innsbruck from September 24, 2012.
personal data
SURNAME Buhl, Hermann
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Austrian mountaineer
DATE OF BIRTH September 21, 1924
PLACE OF BIRTH Innsbruck , Austria
DATE OF DEATH June 27, 1957
Place of death Chogolisa , Pakistan