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Austrian mountaineer and explorer, one of the first four people to climb the north face of the Eiger in 1938.
Personal details
name: Heinrich Harrer
date of birth: 6 July 1912 - Obergossen, Hüttenberg (Carinthia)
Died: 7 January 2006 - Friesach (Carinthia)
Nationality: Austrian
Occupation: mountaineer, explorer and writer
Biography
Heinrich Harrer was born in Obergossen, in the Carinthian municipality of Hüttenberg, the eldest son of Josef Harrer, a postal clerk, and Johanna Harrer. In 1927, the family moved to Graz, where he joined the Österreichischer Alpenverein and, between 1933 and 1938, studied geography and physical education at university. In 1936, he was selected for the Austrian downhill and slalom team for the Winter Olympics in Garmisch-Partenkirchen; in 1937, he won the downhill event at the World University Championships and, from that same year, worked as coach of the Austrian women’s national ski team.
In July 1938, immediately after her final state examination, she travelled to the Grindelwald area with Fritz Kasparek to attempt the north face of the Eiger, where many experienced mountaineers had already failed. The ascent, completed alongside two German mountaineers, brought him international fame and was exploited for political ends. A few months earlier, immediately after the annexation of Austria by Germany, Harrer had joined the SS with the rank of Oberscharführer on 1 April 1938, and is recorded as having joined the National Socialist Party on 1 May of the same year. The regime’s propaganda presented the ascent as a symbol of the superiority of the German race; the four mountaineers were received by Adolf Hitler in Wrocław, and Harrer wrote a contribution to the volume *em* *Um die Eiger-Nordwand* , published by the party’s central publishing house. In December 1938, he married Lotte Wegener, daughter of the Greenland explorer Alfred Wegener.
In 1939, he took part in an expedition to Nanga Parbat organised by the Himalaya-Stiftung, a foundation which the Deutsches Historisches Museum classifies as National Socialist. At the outbreak of the war, he was arrested along with his companions in the port of Karachi and interned in a British prisoner-of-war camp in India. On 29 April 1944, he managed to escape with Peter Aufschnaiter: the two walked some 2,000 km, crossing numerous Himalayan passes, and reached Lhasa in 1946. Harrer worked as a translator and photographer for the Tibetan government and lived in Lhasa until 1951 as a teacher and adviser to the 14th Dalai Lama, with whom he maintained a lifelong friendship. He left Tibet following the entry of Chinese troops and returned to Austria in 1952.
In the years that followed, he undertook exploratory and ethnographic expeditions to the headwaters of the Amazon River (1953), to the Ruwenzori Mountains (1957), in New Guinea (1962), in Borneo (1971 and 1972), in Uganda and Zaire (1977) and on several occasions in Bhutan between 1980 and 1986. In the early 1980s, he returned to Tibet. In 1982, he was awarded the Grand Cross of Merit by the German Federal President.
In August 1957, the north face of the Eiger was the scene of a tragedy. The Italians Claudio Corti and Stefano Longhi joined two Germans, Günther Nothdurft and Franz Mayer. Longhi died on the face. Nothdurft and Mayer left their tent with Corti, continued towards the summit and disappeared. In the book Die weiße Spinne (1958), Harrer harshly criticised Corti’s conduct, and in Italy he was among the main proponents of the suspicion that Corti was responsible for the deaths of the two Germans. In 1961, the bodies of Nothdurft and Mayer were found on the western slope, far from the normal route: the two had reached the summit and were descending via a different route, and the discovery disproved Harrer’s claims. The story is recounted in the book edited by Daniel Anker, Giovanni Capra and Rainer Rettner.
In 1997, the release of the film based on Seven Years in Tibet sparked a debate about Harrer’s Nazi past, an issue he had never publicly addressed. The evidence varies in terms of certainty. His joining the SS in 1938 and his membership of the party are documented, and Harrer acknowledged that he had been in the SS for a limited period, stating that he had worn theuniform only once, on his wedding day, and that he had joined the party to further his career as a teacher and mountaineer. More controversial is his membership of the SA from October 1933, when theorganisation was illegal in Austria: the date appears on the application for a marriage licence submitted to the SS in 1938, and archive documents were uncovered by the journalist Gerald Lehner and published in 1997 by Stern magazine. Harrer contested this account and claimed he had written that date merely to boast. The Deutsches Historisches Museum describes his membership as nominal, and Lehner is the author of a study dedicated to the subject.
Harrer died in Friesach on 7 January 2006 and was buried in Hüttenberg cemetery.
Mountaineering achievements
Eiger (3,967 m) - 1938 – first ascent of the north face (summit on 24 July), with Fritz Kasparek, Anderl Heckmair and Ludwig Vörg – Bernese Alps, Switzerland
Nanga Parbat (8,126 m) - 1939 – German reconnaissance expedition – Himalayas, Pakistan
Ausangate (6,384 m) - 1953 – first ascent of the main summit, with Fritz März and Jürgen Wellenkamp; some sources include Heinz Steinmetz amongst the climbers [to be verified] – Cordillera Vilcanota, Peru
Mount Drum (3,661 m) - 1954 – first ascent via the north ridge, with Keith Hart and George Schaller – Wrangell Mountains, Alaska
Mount Deborah (3,761 m) - 1954 – first ascent via the south ridge (summit on 19 June), with Fred Beckey and Henry Meybohm – Hayes Range, Alaska
Mount Hunter (4,442 m) - 1954 – first ascent via the west ridge (summit on 5 July), with Fred Beckey and Henry Meybohm – Alaska Range, Alaska
Carstensz Pyramid, Puncak Jaya (4,884 m) - 1962 – first ascent, expedition led by Harrer, with Philip Temple, Russell Kippax and Albertus Huizenga – West New Guinea
Places and commemorations
Heinrich Harrer Museum – Hüttenberg, Carinthia – ethnographic museum housing collections from his travels in Tibet, Africa, Borneo and South America
Works
Um die Eiger-Nordwand (collected volume, contribution by Harrer), Franz Eher Nachfolger, 1938
Seven Years in Tibet, Milan, Garzanti, 1953 (original edition Seven Years in Tibet, 1952)
The White Spider, Milan, Garzanti, 1959 (original edition Die weiße Spinne, 1958)
I Come from the Stone Age, Berlin, 1963
My Life, 2002
Bibliography
As a key reference
Gerald Lehner, Between Hitler and the Himalayas. Heinrich Harrer’s Memory Gaps, Czernin Verlag, 2007
Daniel Anker, Giovanni Capra, Rainer Rettner (eds.), Death on the Eiger. The Tragedy of Claudio Corti and Stefano Longhi, Corbaccio, 2007