Giovanni Piaz

Giovanni Battista Piaz (born October 13, 1879 in Pera di Fassa ; † August 5 according to another source on August 6, 1948 ibid), called Tita , also the devil of the Dolomites , was a famous Italian mountain guide and mountaineer from the Fassa Valley ( Dolomites ) .

Life

Piaz was not only a man of the mountains, he was also a political person. Politically more on the left, he joined the opposition movement Irredenta . That caused him trouble with the Austrians in 1915. The First World War followed , which Piaz experienced in a punishment company on the Eastern Front . Afterwards he returned to his homeland physically intact. There he was appointed mayor of the Upper Fassa Valley in 1920. When the fascists came to power , he went into opposition to them. Arrests followed. In 1944 he was sentenced to death. After his liberation he remained committed. He took over the office of mayor in his hometown, stood up for the political opponents of yore with the Allies and fought against poverty in his valley together with church bodies.

On August 5 or 6, 1948, Tita Piaz died as a result of a bicycle accident that he suffered in his home town of Pera di Fassa.

Services

Piaz began climbing when he was 14. He developed the so-called Piaz technique , a push-pull technique with which one can overcome certain non-step climbing passages (in Italy this technique is called Dülfern ). Piaz remained a rock climber throughout his life. 50 first ascents in the Dolomites are attributed to him.

As a mountain guide, he undertook the 14th ascent of the Preusswand (level of difficulty V) in the east face of the Campanile Basso (2883 m) with the Belgian King Albert I.

First ascents:

• Punta Emma, ​​northeast wall, Piazriss , 1900
• Totenkirchl , west wall, Piazwandl , 1908
• Pordoispitze , Punta Roma, southern intersection, 1933

Wall hook dispute

→ Main article : Section “The principles of climbing” in Paul Preuss

In the so-called wall hook dispute of 1911/1912, Piaz stood up against his friend Paul Preuss . Preuss postulated that the rope and the wall hook (at that time it was only iron pins that were driven into crevices in the rock) should only be used as a means of securing in an emergency, but not as a permanent means of securing or even means of transportation for climbing. Piaz commented on this view with the words: "We would rather hang four or 20 meters on the securing rope (perhaps with a broken leg) than let the ravens feast on our corpses in the dark abyss" . Like Preuss, Piaz refused to use rope and hooks - in the sense of “technical climbing” in the 1950s - as a means of transportation.

Twenty years after Preuss' death, Tita Piaz built the small Preuss hut below the Vajolettürme in memory of his friend and a great alpinist.

Works

• Tita Piaz: Dolomites, my freedom . Hallwag, Bern 1966.

Web links

• Horst Höfler: Doubts in alpinism Part 5: Tita Piaz, the Totenkirchl-Westwand and the threat to go to the convent if he does not manage the wall… In: bergsteiger.de. Bruckmann Verlag, accessed on June 7, 2012 (from BERGSTEIGER 07/09). 
• Personal folder for Tita Piaz (I) (PDF) in the historical Alpine archive of the Alpine clubs in Germany, Austria and South Tyrol (temporarily offline)
• Personal folder for Tita Piaz (II) (PDF) in the historical Alpine archive of the Alpine clubs in Germany, Austria and South Tyrol (temporarily offline)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b c d} Horst Höfler: Doubts in Alpinism Part 5: Tita Piaz, the Totenkirchl-Westwand and the threat to go to the convent if he does not manage the wall… In: bergsteiger.de. Bruckmann Verlag, accessed on June 7, 2012 (from BERGSTEIGER 07/09). 
2. ↑ Walter Welsch: History of the Bayerland section of the German Alpine Club e. V. - Giovanni Battista Piaz and the Punta Emma. (PDF; 8.6 MB) DAV Bayerland, p. 35 , accessed on January 1, 2013 . 
3. ↑ ^{a b c} Reinhold Messner: Vertical - 150 years of climbing history . 2nd Edition. BLV Buchverlag, Munich 2008, ISBN 978-3-8354-0380-2 , p. 63 .
4. ↑ The devil of the Dolomites. (No longer available online.) Archived from the original on December 22, 2012 ; Retrieved on June 7, 2012 (homepage of the Rifugio Re Alberto). Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  
5. ↑ ^{a b c} Uli Auffermann: Decision in the wall - milestones of alpinism . 1st edition. Schall Verlag, Alland 2010, ISBN 978-3-900533-62-5 , p. 36 .
6. ↑ Reinhold Messner: The philosopher of free climbing - The story of Paul Preuss . 1st edition. Pieper Verlag, Munich 2011, ISBN 978-3-492-40416-7 , p. 27 .
7. ↑ Reinhold Messner: The philosopher of free climbing - The story of Paul Preuss . 1st edition. Pieper Verlag, Munich 2011, ISBN 978-3-492-40416-7 , p. 41 f .