Paul Bauer (mountaineer)

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Paul Friedrich Peter Bauer (born December 29, 1896 in Kusel ; † January 9, 1990 in Munich ) was a top functionary and central figure in National Socialist sports and a major in the mountain hunters . He was the head of the “Specialist Office for Mountaineering and Hiking in the German Reich Association for Physical Exercise ” and was responsible for coordinating organized mountain sports and its sub-associations.

Life

Bauer came forward at the beginning of the First World War as a volunteer . After a British prisoner of war in 1917 he returned to Germany in 1919. After that he was a member of various volunteer corps . He later glorified his war experiences as decisive for his mountaineering: "When we had to give up the rifle, the orphaned hand felt for the pimple." Bauer studied law and in 1922 joined the Academic Alpine Association in Munich .

In 1929 and 1931, Bauer led two expeditions to the Kangchenjunga . On October 3, 1929, the participants Eugen Allwein and Karl von Kraus reached an altitude of about 7,300 m on the northeast spur before the team was forced to turn back by a five-day storm. Two years later, on September 18, 1931, Allwein and Karl Wien climbed the Sporn summit (approx. 7,700 m) on the same route, but then had to turn back because of the extreme danger of avalanches. In 1936 Bauer returned a third time as an expedition leader in the Kangchenjunga area and was responsible for the first ascent of the Siniolchu and other five and six-thousanders.

At the X Olympic Games in Los Angeles in 1932, Bauer was named Olympic champion in the “ Competition of the Liberal Arts ” in the “Literature” category. The occasion was his book Am Kangehenzonga - Battle for the Himalayas , published in 1931 , with which he was able to make a name for himself as a mountaineer. His name is still on the 1932 honorary stele of the German Olympic champions at the Berlin Olympic Stadium.

Grave of Paul Bauer in the cemetery in Unterbiberg

Although Bauer already sympathized with the National Socialists in the Weimar Republic , he did not join the NSDAP until they came to power in May 1933 , as he previously saw his participation in expeditions endangered by possible party membership.

From 1934 to 1938, Bauer formed the German Mountaineering Association in Section XI of the German Reich Association for Physical Exercise, which had the task of orienting mountaineering, which was previously primarily understood as mountain sports, in a National Socialist manner. As a good mountaineer, an experienced and internationally respected expedition leader, a legally trained organizer and a staunch National Socialist, Bauer was predestined for this position. In 1936 he was appointed head of the newly established German Himalaya Foundation . After the dramatic German Nanga Parbat Expedition in 1937 , he organized a rescue expedition to rescue the climbers who had died and in the process reached Camp IV (6,185 m), which had been buried by an avalanche. In 1938, Bauer withdrew from club and association work. At the beginning of the Second World War he enlisted in the Wehrmacht and became the commander of a high mountain fighter battalion .

After the war, he sat on the board of the comrades group of the mountain troops , an organization with the self-declared aim of " providing support and assistance for our war convicts, for our comrades held in custody ". In this capacity he played a key role in the construction of a memorial on the Hohe Brendten in Mittenwald, which he inaugurated on June 10, 1957 with the words:

"We will guard this place and cherish it in loyalty to our fallen and proud as a confession of our faith in the eternal worth of their soldierly sacrifice."

literature

  • Helmuth Zebhauser: Alpinism in the Hitler State. Thoughts, memories, documents. Bergverlag Rother . Munich 1998. ISBN 3-7633-8102-3 . ( Documents of alpinism 1).
  • Peter Mierau: National Socialist Expedition Policy. German expeditions to Asia 1933–1945. Utz. Munich 2006. ISBN 3-8316-0409-6 . ( Munich Contributions to History 1), (Simultaneously: Munich, Univ., Diss., 2003), ( Reading sample , Utzverlag, pdf (various chapters); Karsten Jedlitschka: Review . In: H-Soz-u-Kult from 14 December 2006).

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Paul Bauer. In: historical-alpenarchiv. German Alpine Club, accessed on June 10, 2012 (Archives of the German, Austrian and South Tyrolean Alpine Club).
  2. ↑ Ralf-Peter Märtin: Nanga Parbat. Berliner Taschenbuch Verlag. Berlin 2004. p. 109ff.
  3. ↑ Paul Bauer: Battle for the Himalayas. Munich 1952. 97f.
  4. ↑ Paul Bauer: Battle for the Himalayas. Munich 1952. 175f.
  5. ↑ Map of the Zemu Glacier (in red the routes of the 1931 expedition)
  6. ↑ on this expedition: Paul Bauer: Auf Kundfahrt im Himalaya. Berlin 1937.
  7. ↑ Volker Kluge: Olympic Summer Games. Die Chronik I. Berlin 1997. S. 741, S. 774f.
  8. ^ Peter Mierau: National Socialist Expedition Policy: German Asia Expeditions 1933-1945. Utz. Munich 2006. 71f.
  9. ↑ Paul Bauer: On customer trip in the Himalayas. Berlin 1937. pp. 163-166.
  10. ↑ Vulnerable maintenance of tradition (PDF; 58 kB)
personal data
SURNAME Bauer, Paul
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Bauer, Paul Friedrich Peter
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German mountaineer and National Socialist functionary
DATE OF BIRTH December 29, 1896
PLACE OF BIRTH Kusel
DATE OF DEATH January 9, 1990
Place of death Munich