Maurice Herzog

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Maurice Herzog (born January 15, 1919 in Lyon , † December 13, 2012 in Neuilly-sur-Seine ) was a French mountaineer and politician .

Live and act

Maurice Herzog was the leader of the legendary French Annapurna expedition in 1950 , in which Louis Lachenal , Lionel Terray , Gaston Rébuffat , Marcel Ichac , Jean Couzy , Marcel Schatz and the doctor Jacques Oudot took part. Together with Lachenal, Herzog stood on the summit of Annapurna on June 3, 1950. The two were the first people to climb an eight-thousander . Herzog and Lachenal suffered severe frostbite in the death zone and barely escaped death on the mountain.

Herzog's book Annapurna , which tells the story of the ascent, reached millions of copies.

From 1962 and 1967 to 1978, Herzog was a Member of Parliament in Paris and from 1958 to 1965 held the ministerial office for youth and sport in Charles de Gaulle's cabinet . Under him, the promotion of amateur and competitive sport by the French government increased considerably. In addition, he also fulfilled numerous representative duties and thus combined the popularity of his person with the newly created office. So he started for example in 1959 and 1965 , the 24-hour race at Le Mans .

From 1968 to 1977, Herzog was Mayor of Chamonix . From 1970 to 1995 he was a member of the IOC and since then an honorary member until his death. He last lived in Neuilly-sur-Seine .

Duke's heroic depiction of the expedition from 1951 was supplemented in 1956 by the publication of Lachenal's diary, Les Carnets du vertige , which Duke's brother Gérard prepared after Lachenal's death. This diary version now showed striking differences to the manuscripts Lachenal found, which his son found in 1996 and which were used by Guérin Verlag for a new edition of the diary. As a result, there was a legal dispute and judgment, which de facto strengthened Louis Lachenal's reading in the repeatedly questioned role distribution of the two mountain comrades in the fight with the mountain. Lachenal wrote that he had only continued the extremely risky ascent because Herzog, who wanted to reach the summit at all costs, would otherwise have gone on alone, which would have meant certain death.

In his book True Summit , David Roberts tries to provide a balanced representation of the expedition and the different characters of the two climbers . In particular, he puts the merits of Gaston Rébuffat and Lionel Terray in the right light.

Special references to Germany

  • Maurice Herzog's ancestors, to whom the family name goes back, came from Waldshut .
  • During the Second World War , Maurice Herzog was a member of the Resistance , which operated in the Alpine region.
  • As Minister under de Gaulle, Maurice Herzog was one of the fathers of the Franco-German Youth Office and received the Cross of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany in recognition of his achievements.

Awards

Works

  • Maurice Herzog: Annapurna - first eight-thousander. Ullstein, Vienna 1955. French original edition 1951.

literature

  • Louis Lachenal: Les Carnets du Vertige. Guérin, Chamonix 1996, ISBN 2-911755-01-4 .
  • David Roberts: True Summit - What really happened on the legendary ascent of Annapurna. Simon & Schuster, New York 2000, ISBN 0-684-86757-5 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ L'alpiniste et ancien ministre Maurice Herzog est mort. Le Monde , December 14, 2012, accessed December 14, 2012 (French).
  2. ^ Thierry Terret: France. In: James Riordan , Arnd Krüger (Ed.): European Cultures in Sport: Examining the Nations and Regions. Intellect, Bristol 2003, ISBN 1-84150-014-3 , pp. 103-122
  3. ↑ Le Monde, April 21, 2009
  4. ^ The Alps, 9/2000, p. 14
  5. ↑ List of all decorations awarded by the Federal President for services to the Republic of Austria from 1952 (PDF file; 6.59 MB)
personal data
SURNAME Duke, Maurice
BRIEF DESCRIPTION French climber and politician
DATE OF BIRTH January 15, 1919
PLACE OF BIRTH Lyon
DATE OF DEATH December 13, 2012
Place of death Neuilly-sur-Seine