Rudolf Peters (mountaineer)

Rudolf Peters (born January 4, 1913 in Munich ; † December 5, 2008 there ; also: Rudl Peters ) was a German mountaineer and mountain guide .

Life

After completing elementary school, Peters moved to secondary school . Shortly before graduating from high school , however, he had to leave school prematurely because his father had left his mother, him and his siblings to emigrate to South America with his older brother . In order to alleviate the resulting financial misery, Peters had to take up a job. At the age of 18 he began training as a judicial officer in the Munich Ministry of Justice. But his supervisor, Hans Hechtel, realized that Peters' talent lay in a different area. So in 1936 he got him an interview with Colonel Konrad, the commander of the Reichenhaller Gebirgsjäger . Peters convinced Konrad of himself and thus switched to the Wehrmacht as a professional soldier . Even Toni Kurz and Anderlecht Hinterstoisser were among the rich Hallern. When they had a fatal accident in the north face of the Eiger in 1936 , Peters and Hans Hintermeier were ordered to recover their bodies. But they could only find Toni Kurz. On August 24, 1936, they discovered his body in a deep rift. Anderl Hinterstoisser's remains were nowhere to be found.

With the outbreak of the Second World War , Peters was assigned to the Heeres-Hochgebirgsschule in Fulpmes . There he and other top alpinists at the time such as Peter Aschenbrenner , Hias Rebitsch , Anderl Heckmair , whom he had brought to school, survived the war as instructors. At the end of the war in 1945, Peters retired from his profession as a soldier with the rank of captain.

In 1945 he returned to Munich with his family. Here he tried his hand at first as a producer and distributor of self-made tread rubber soles. In 1954, he and his wife opened a sports shop, which they ran until 1968 or 1969. Afterwards, Peters received retirement money for his service as a professional soldier and was only a mountain guide and "passionate private mountaineer". In his capacity as a mountain guide , Peters had been a mountain and ski guide since 1947, and for a few years he was a travel guide worldwide for the DAV Summit Club .

Rudolf Peters died on December 5, 2008 at the age of 95.

Achievements as an inventor

Peters' experience in the steep ice of the mountains gave him the idea of having a crampon made that had two sharp frontal points protruding beyond the tip of the shoe. Peters had this new twelve-point crampon patented. Another idea led to the development of an ice ax . The new ice ax had a hammer head and a pick sharpened at an acute angle. This pick could penetrate deep into the ice without breaking it. Peters also had this innovation patented.

Achievements as a mountaineer

The Grandes Jorasses in the morning sun.

Peters celebrated his greatest success on June 29, 1935. Around 8 p.m. he and his partner Martin Meier reached the middle summit of the Grandes Jorasses , the Pointe Croz . They got in on the afternoon of June 28th. Thanks to the two Peters inventions, this ascent was not only successful, but was completed at an enormous speed for the conditions at the time. The first ascent of the Grand Jorasses north face was a success and the second of the three great faces of the Alps was conquered.

It was precisely in this wall that Peters suffered a year earlier (July 29 to August 2, 1934) but probably also his hardest hours as a mountaineer. Together with his friend Rudolf Haringer , he climbed the north face of the Grandes Jorasses for the first time. The weather changed on the second day of their tour. Masses of snow hindered their ascent. A second bivouac had to be made. While looking for a suitable bivouac site in the fresh snow, the unsecured Haringer fell over 500 m. A tormenting and dangerous descent began for Peters, but he managed it unscathed despite the adverse circumstances. This confrontation with the impossible brought him back to the north face of the Grand Jorasses a year later.

More Achievements:

• December 24th - 25th, 1934: 1st winter ascent, south edge of the Großer Mühlsturzhorn , now known as the "Old South Edge", with Martin Meier
• 1936: 1st winter ascent, Schüsselkarspitze Southeast Face with Adolf Göttner
• December 18-20 , 1940: 1st winter ascent, Dachstein south face with Gerald Leinweber

literature

• Rainer Rettner: Race for the great north faces. Matterhorn - Grandes Jorasses - Eiger . 1st edition. AS Verlag, Zurich 2010, ISBN 978-3-909111-78-7 .

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b c d e f g h i j} Nicho Mailänder: Back on the river. (PDF) The life of Rudl Peters. In: Panorama 4/2009. Deutscher Alpenverein , p. 48ff , accessed on October 16, 2014 . 
2. ↑ ^{a b c d} Peters, Rudolf - personal folder (signature: DAV PER 2 SG / 90/0). (PDF; 1.3 MB) Historical Alpine Archives of the Alpine Clubs in Germany, Austria and South Tyrol, accessed on June 17, 2012 . 
3. ↑ Horst Höfler: Dream Teams - The most successful rope teams in alpinism . 1st edition. Bruckmann Verlag, Munich 2008, ISBN 978-3-7654-4496-8 , pp. 65 .
4. ↑ Drawings for patent specification 742485 (PDF file; 68 kB)
5. ↑ Sketch of the patented ice ax (PDF file; 26 kB)
6. ↑ Uli Auffermann: In the shadow of the north face: Triumph and tragedy on the Matterhorn, Eiger and Grandes Jorasses . 1st edition. Bruckmann Verlag, Munich 2012, ISBN 978-3-7654-5626-8 , pp. 32 f .
7. ↑ Uli Auffermann: In the shadow of the north face: Triumph and tragedy on the Matterhorn, Eiger and Grandes Jorasses . 1st edition. Bruckmann Verlag, Munich 2012, ISBN 978-3-7654-5626-8 , pp. 16 f .
8. ↑ ^{a b c} Uli Auffermann: decisions in the wall: milestones of alpinism . 1st edition. Schall-Verlag, Alland 2010, ISBN 978-3-900533-62-5 , p. 100 .