Reinhard Karl

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Reinhard Karl (born November 3, 1946 in Heidelberg ; † May 19, 1982 at Cho Oyu , Nepal ) was a German alpinist , photographer and writer .

Life

At the age of 14, Reinhard Karl began an apprenticeship as a car mechanic. "The dirtiest and worst of all dream jobs," as he later wrote. Because of his fondness for mountain books, his mother sent him to the Heidelberg section of the German Alpine Club . It was not until the age of 17 that Reinhard Karl made his first climbing tour on Battert , north of Baden-Baden . Mountaineering on the weekend became an escape from the unloved job. There he also got to know people with better education who fully accepted him, which gave him an additional boost. The leisurely round at the end of a climbing tour at the Bärenbrunnerhof was part of the ritual. “Living intensively” was the maxim of his life.

Karl first studied economics in Karlsruhe and later sports and geography in Heidelberg , but did not get a degree.

In 1969 he and Hermann Kühn managed to climb the Eiger north face in a very good one and a half days.

In the 1970s, Karl became the pioneer of free climbing in Western Europe through his visits to Yosemite and Saxon Switzerland . Together with Helmut Kiene , he opened the first alpine climbing route in the VII level of difficulty in 1977 , the Fleischbank - Pumprisse in the Wilder Kaiser .

On May 11, 1978 he was the first German to reach the summit of Mount Everest , in a rope team with Oswald Oelz . He had joined the same Austrian expedition with which Reinhold Messner and Peter Habeler climbed the mountain for the first time without additional oxygen. 

Karl made a name for himself as a writer and photographer primarily through his expedition reports.

Reinhard Karl died on May 19, 1982 in an ice avalanche on Cho Oyu ( Himalaya ) in the tent in Camp 2.

For his sporting success he received the silver laurel leaf from Federal President Walter Scheel .

In 2010 Eva Altmeier-Karl handed over her husband's photographic estate to the archive of the German Alpine Club. 

Works

  • Mountain experience. Time to breathe. 1st edition. Limpert, Bad Homburg 1980, ISBN 3-7853-1342-X .
    • Reinhard Karl, Elmar Landes (arr.): Mountain experience. Time to breathe. Reprint of the Berg edition, Munich 1994. (Since the new edition in 1993, ISBN 3-7654-1116-7 , edited and expanded with additional texts). Alpine Classics, Volume 18. Bruckmann, Munich 2009, ISBN 978-3-7654-5152-2 .
  • Climbing in Yosemite's vertical paradise. 1st edition. Limpert, Bad Homburg 1982, ISBN 3-7853-1380-2 . - Table of contents online (PDF) .
  • Reinhard Karl, Eva Altmeier-Karl (selection and compilation of the pictures): Mountains on Kodachrome. (Diary entries and photos from Reinhard Karl's last year of life). 1st edition. Limpert, Bad Homburg 1983, ISBN 3-7853-1427-2 .

literature

  • Tom Duration: Reinhard Karl. A life without ifs or buts. 2 publications. AS-Verlag, Zurich 2002, ISBN 3-905111-75-6 .
  • Tom Duration (Ed.): Reinhard Karl. The new image of the mountains. AS-Verlag, Zurich 2006, ISBN 3-909111-24-6 .

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Oswald Oelz : With ice ax and stethoscope. 2nd Edition. Mountain Adventure Series. AS Verlag, Zurich 1999, ISBN 3-905111-42-X .
  2. ↑ Federal Archives, Federal President's Office, (term of office Walter Scheel ), sports prizes, award of the silver laurel leaf AKTZ. BArch B 122/18
  3. ↑ Photo bequest of Reinhard Karl. Heir to a legend. In: DAV Panorama. Issue 6/2010. DAV, Munich 2010, ZDB -ID 2589886-3 , p. 88

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Karl, Reinhard
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German alpinist , photographer and writer
DATE OF BIRTH November 3, 1946
PLACE OF BIRTH Heidelberg
DATE OF DEATH May 19, 1982
Place of death Cho Oyu