Hermann Hoerlin

Hermann Julius Wilhelm Hoerlin (born July 5, 1903 in Schwäbisch Hall , † November 6, 1983 in Boston ) was a German - American mountaineer and physicist .

Life

Hermann Hoerlin grew up in Schwäbisch Hall as the son of a businessman. After studying physics at the Technical University of Stuttgart (1922), he began climbing and mountaineering.

In the course of the journalistic support and processing of the Nanga Parbat expedition in 1934 and its unfortunate end (ten mountaineers and Sherpas died), Hoerlin met Käthe Schmid, née Käthe Schmid. Tietz, the widow of the expedition's press spokesman, Willi Schmid, who was murdered by the SS on June 30, 1934 during the so-called Röhm Putsch due to a mix-up . Since Käthe Schmid, who grew up in Schwerin , was the illegitimate daughter of a Prussian aristocrat and a Jewish businessman, was considered a "half-Jew" by the Nazi state and the Nuremberg Laws of 1935 forbade a marriage to an "Aryan", the marriage in 1938 took years of effort Special permit in advance. For their issuance were u. a. The good contacts between Käthe Schmid and Hitler's personal adjutant Fritz Wiedemann were decisive. Until 1937 Hermann Hoerlin was a member of the executive committee of the German and Austrian Alpine Club (DÖAV) and opposed the National Socialist coordination of the club.

Rockclimbing

He gained fame at the end of the 1920s together with his climbing partner, the Austrian Erwin Schneider , through a series of first-time winter climbs a. a. from secondary peaks of Mont Blanc . Hoerlin and Schneider took part in the international Himalaya expedition of 1930 organized by Günter Dyhrenfurth . With the ascent of the 7,462 m high Jongsang Ri on June 3, 1930, they reached the highest mountain peak on earth that had been climbed up to then. In 1932 Hoerlin was part of a German-Austrian expedition in the Andes , which u. a. the first ascent of Nevado Huascarán (6768 m) was successful, the highest mountain in Peru . During this expedition, Hoerlin made extensive measurements of cosmic rays , which were incorporated into his dissertation (published in 1936) , which was supervised by Erich Regener . He was supposed to be a participant in the 1934 Nanga Parbat expedition led by Willy Merkl , but declined because of the death of his father.

Emigration to the USA

In 1938 the couple emigrated to the USA together with the three children of Käthe Hoerlin from their first marriage , where Hoerlin first worked for Agfa in Binghamton (New York) . In 1944 he received American citizenship . In the USA he was often called Herman instead of Hermann . From 1953 Hoerlin did research in the Los Alamos National Laboratory a . a. on the physical effects of atomic bomb tests in the earth's atmosphere . This work, and what Hoerlin said before a committee of the US Congress (March 9, 1962), contributed to the conclusion of the 1963 Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons Tests in the Atmosphere, Space and Underwater . 1959-1960 Hoerlin held a visiting professorship at Cornell University brokered by his friend Hans Bethe . From 1964 Hoerlin and his wife lived in Santa Fe and in 1983 they moved to Boston, where Hermann Hoerlin died on November 9th at the age of 80. A part of his written and photographic legacy is kept in the Historical Alpine Archive in Munich.

literature

• Bettina Hoerlin: Steps of Courage. My Parents' Journey from Nazi Germany to America. AuthorHouse, Bloomington 2011, ISBN 978-1-4634-2618-7 Online excerpt in English with reference to the support from Nicholas Mailänder in the Acknowledgments chapter on p. 243 below.
  • Translation: Courage. In the shadow of Nanga Parbat 1934. The true story of the mountaineer Hermann Hoerlin and a life-threatening love. Translated and edited by Jochen Hemmleb . Tyrolia, Innsbruck / Vienna 2014, ISBN 978-3-7022-3336-5 .

• Nicholas Mailänder : The Hoerlin Letters, Nanga Parbat & National Socialism, illustrated text accompanying the Bavarian Broadcasting Program on June 28, 2016 online . Report on the recent presentation in the Alpine Museum in Munich of the book Bettina Hoerlin: "Steps of courage - my parents journey from Nazi Germany to America." By the author on the correspondence between her parents Käthe Tietze-Schmid and Hermann Hoerlin, who were still unmarried at the time Years 1934 to 1938.

Web links

• Hermann Hoerlin in the Internet Movie Database (English)