Peter Aufschnaiter

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Peter Aufschnaiter (born November 2, 1899 in Kitzbühel , † October 12, 1973 in Innsbruck ) was an Austrian mountaineer , agricultural scientist , development worker and cartographer .

Life

education

The son of a carpenter attended the secondary school in Kufstein . While still at school, the young Peter Aufschnaiter had to interrupt school and move to the Dolomites front in 1917 . After graduating from high school, he moved to Munich and began studying, which he completed in 1927 as a qualified farmer.

He started mountaineering in the Wilder Kaiser in his youth - in Munich he later came into contact with well-known alpinists.

Student associations

In Kufstein he was an active member of the Germania youth student association and in Munich he became a member of the Academic Alpine Association .

Expeditions to the Himalayas

In 1929 and 1931 he took part in the German expeditions to the Kangchenjunga in Sikkim . During these expeditions he got in contact with Tibetans for the first time and began to study the Tibetan language .

After the National Socialists came to power, he joined the NSDAP in 1933 . From 1936 to 1939 Aufschnaiter was the full-time managing director of the German Himalaya Foundation , which was instrumentalized by the National Socialists for their goals. He became a close confidante and friend of Paul Bauer , the founder and director of this foundation.

In 1939 Aufschnaiter led an exploration expedition to Nanga Parbat and Rakaposhi in what was then British India (now Pakistan ); one of the participants was Heinrich Harrer . Since the Second World War began during the expedition in Europe , the expedition members were interned on September 3, 1939 on their return journey in India .

Escape to Tibet

On April 29, 1944, Aufschnaiter, Heinrich Harrer and five other prisoners managed to escape from the Dehradun internment camp . Rolf Magener and Heins von Have managed to escape through India to the Japanese front in Burma ; Hans Kopp accompanied Aufschnaiter and Harrer through western Tibet, but then decided to go to Kathmandu , where he was interned again at the instigation of the British. For two others, the escape was only short-lived.

Aufschnaiter and Harrer reached the Tibetan capital Lhasa on January 15, 1946 - the end of an adventurous escape through western Tibet past the holy mountain Kailash , through southern Tibet and the Changthang , the plateau of northern Tibet. During their march, both benefited from Aufschnaiter's Tibetan language skills. The story of this adventurous escape has been described several times, the best known version is that of Heinrich Harrer in his world bestseller Seven Years in Tibet . In the 1997 film adaptation of the book by Jean-Jacques Annaud , Aufschnaiter was portrayed by British actor David Thewlis ; the story of Aufschnaiter's marriage to a Tibetan woman is fictional.

Living in Tibet, India and Nepal

The stay in Lhasa lasted until 1950 - during this time Aufschnaiter, as an employee of the Tibetan government in Lhasa, planned a hydropower plant and a sewerage network , carried out the first reforestation measures and river regulations in the Lhasa Plain, and successfully tried to improve the seeds by cultivating hybrids -Highland barley and, with the help of Harrer, created an exact map of the Tibetan capital for the first time. In the course of the work, Aufschnaiter first made archaeological discoveries in Lhasa, about which he corresponded with the Italian Buddhologist and Tibetologist Giuseppe Tucci . His work earned him the reputation of "the first development worker in Tibet". Despite his quiet manner, Aufschnaiter's circle of acquaintances in Lhasa was remarkable, and his relationship with the family of the 14th Dalai Lama was amicable. During this time he and Harrer also met the British diplomat and Tibetologist Hugh Richardson , with whom Aufschnaiter was a pen friend until his death.

In October 1950 the occupation of Tibet - which had been de facto independent since 1911 - by the armed forces of the People's Republic of China began. The Chinese People's Liberation Army advancing on Lhasa forced Harrer and Aufschnaiter to flee again on December 20, 1950. They joined the caravan of the fleeing Dalai Lama , who was waiting for political developments in the Chumbi Valley, which lies on the border with Sikkim and India. Harrer went straight to India from Tschumbi; Aufschnaiter separated from the caravan in the southern Tibetan city of Gyantse because it was difficult for him to leave his "second home" Tibet. Always retreating west, he stayed in Tibet for about ten months. In January 1952 he crossed the border into Nepal .

At the instigation of the Indian government, Aufschnaiter was expelled from Nepal and then worked for several years as a cartographer for the Indian army in New Delhi . From 1956 he worked for the FAO (UNO Agriculture Organization) again in Kathmandu as an agricultural expert. He took on Nepalese citizenship, which allowed him to explore areas in Nepal that were closed to foreigners, including the petty kingdom of Mustang . On one of these trips he discovered early Buddhist frescoes of great cultural and historical value.

After crossing north-west Nepal in 1971, Aufschnaiter was one of the first visitors from a non-communist country to return to western Tibet. He stayed in the place Khochar (Khachar; Khojarnath ) for 14 days .

Death and inheritance

Peter Aufschnaiter died on October 12, 1973 in the Innsbruck University Hospital . In the hospital he received another visit from Harrer. Aufschnaiter found his final resting place in the cemetery near the Andreas Church in Kitzbühel . His grave is still decorated with Tibetan prayer flags today.

The very introverted Aufschnaiter only planned shortly before his death to publish his memories of his stay and his travels in Tibet and Nepal in book form, but this was no longer possible. The manuscript, in the possession of Paul Bauer after his death, was given to the Swiss Tibetologist Blanche Christine Olschak for editing; this finally left it to the Tibetologist Martin Brauen , who edited and edited the work, which was bulky in many respects. Aufschnaiter's diaries and estate came into the possession of the Ethnographic Museum of the University of Zurich .

Works

  • Peter Aufschnaiter, Martin Brauen (ed.): Peter Aufschnaiter. His life in Tibet. 2nd edition, Steiger Verlag, Innsbruck 1988, ISBN 3-85423-016-8
  • Peter Aufschnaiter: Lands and Places of Milarepa . In: East and West. NS 26, 1976, pp. 175-189.
  • Peter Aufschnaiter: Prehistoric Sites discovered in inhabited Regions of Tibet. In: East and West 7. 1956, pp. 74-88.
  • Bruno J. Richtsfeld (edit., Ed.): Peter Aufschnaiter's postponed notes on his journey through northwestern Nepal to Khochar in Tibet in 1971. Supplemented by Giuseppe Tucci's description of his visit to Khochar in 1935 and Swami Pranavânanda's description of the monastery of Khochar in 1939 . In: Munich contributions to ethnology. Yearbook of the Staatliches Museum für Völkerkunde München 10/2006, Verlag des Staatliches Museum für Völkerkunde München, Munich 2006, ISBN 978-3-927270-50-3 , pp. 183-232

literature

  • Heinrich Harrer: Seven years in Tibet. My life at the court of the Dalai Lama . Ullstein, Vienna, 1952, ISBN 3-548-35753-9
  • Heinrich Harrer: My Life in Forbidden Lhasa . In: National Geographic Magazine 58 (No. 1) 1955, pp. 1-48
  • Heinrich Harrer: My life . Ullstein, Munich 2002, ISBN 3-550-07524-3 .
  • Hans Kopp: Six times over the Himalayas . Berwang 1989 (1st edition: 1955)
  • Peter Mierau: The German Himalaya Foundation from 1936 to 1998. Its history and its expeditions . Documents of Alpinism, Volume II., Munich 1999
  • Nicholas Mailänder , Otto Kompatscher: He went ahead to Lhasa. Peter Aufschnaiter. The biography. Tyrolia Verlag, Innsbruck 2019, ISBN 978-3-702236-93-9

Web links

Commons : Peter Aufschnaiter  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Wolfgang Bahr: Bergsteiger in: Acta Studentica , Volume 156, June 2006, p. 15.
  2. ↑ Bernd Steinle: Seven years in the shadow. In: faz.net . April 26, 2019, accessed on April 29, 2019 (book report on Milan's biography (behind the payment barrier)).
personal data
SURNAME Aufschnaiter, Peter
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Austrian mountaineer, agricultural scientist, development worker and cartographer
DATE OF BIRTH November 2, 1899
PLACE OF BIRTH Kitzbuhel , Austria
DATE OF DEATH October 12, 1973
Place of death Innsbruck , Austria