Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction: The Changing Mountain Discourses—A Germanophone Perspective
- 1 Conrad Gessner, “Letter to Jacob Vogel on the Admiration of Mountains” (1541) and “Description of Mount Fractus, Commonly Called Mount Pilate” (1555)
- 2 Johann Jakob Scheuchzer, The Natural History of Switzerland (1716)—Excerpts
- 3 Sophie von La Roche, Diary of a Journey through Switzerland (1787)—Excerpts
- 4 G. W. F. Hegel, Travel Diary through the Bernese Alps (1796)
- 5 Alexander von Humboldt, Failed Ascents of Antisana and Chimborazo—Two Excerpts from the Travel Diaries (1802)
- 6 Hermann von Barth, From the Northern Limestone Alps (1874)—Excerpts
- 7 Georg Simmel, “Alpine Journeys” (1895) and “On the Aesthetics of the Alps” (1911)
- 8 Eduard Pichl, “Autobiographical Sketch” (1914) and “The Alpine Association and German Purity” (1923)
- 9 Leni Riefenstahl, Struggle in Snow and Ice (1933)—Excerpts
- 10 Arnold Fanck, He Directed Glaciers, Storms, and Avalanches: A Film Pioneer Recounts (1973)—Excerpts
- 11 Hans Ertl, My Wild Thirties (1982), Chapter 7: “The Film Gets Colorized—But the Himalaya Still Looks Bleak”
- 12 Max Peintner, “The Dam” (1981)
- 13 Reinhold Messner, Westwall: The Abyss Principle (2009)—Excerpts
- Bibliography
- Notes on the Contributors
- Index
Introduction: The Changing Mountain Discourses—A Germanophone Perspective
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 18 January 2023
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction: The Changing Mountain Discourses—A Germanophone Perspective
- 1 Conrad Gessner, “Letter to Jacob Vogel on the Admiration of Mountains” (1541) and “Description of Mount Fractus, Commonly Called Mount Pilate” (1555)
- 2 Johann Jakob Scheuchzer, The Natural History of Switzerland (1716)—Excerpts
- 3 Sophie von La Roche, Diary of a Journey through Switzerland (1787)—Excerpts
- 4 G. W. F. Hegel, Travel Diary through the Bernese Alps (1796)
- 5 Alexander von Humboldt, Failed Ascents of Antisana and Chimborazo—Two Excerpts from the Travel Diaries (1802)
- 6 Hermann von Barth, From the Northern Limestone Alps (1874)—Excerpts
- 7 Georg Simmel, “Alpine Journeys” (1895) and “On the Aesthetics of the Alps” (1911)
- 8 Eduard Pichl, “Autobiographical Sketch” (1914) and “The Alpine Association and German Purity” (1923)
- 9 Leni Riefenstahl, Struggle in Snow and Ice (1933)—Excerpts
- 10 Arnold Fanck, He Directed Glaciers, Storms, and Avalanches: A Film Pioneer Recounts (1973)—Excerpts
- 11 Hans Ertl, My Wild Thirties (1982), Chapter 7: “The Film Gets Colorized—But the Himalaya Still Looks Bleak”
- 12 Max Peintner, “The Dam” (1981)
- 13 Reinhold Messner, Westwall: The Abyss Principle (2009)—Excerpts
- Bibliography
- Notes on the Contributors
- Index
Summary
As mountain climbing in its diverse forms continues to grow in popularity, scholarship on its cultural history has likewise expanded, especially over the last decade. Historically, mountaineers have been part of an educated and wealthy elite, with a keen interest in the scientific and philosophical questions of the day. While the profile of the “scholar mountaineer” (to borrow Wilfrid Noyce’s term) still tends to hold true, recent studies have critically probed the privileged pastime, ideological bent, imperialist thrust, and gendered bias of mountaineering and its discursive practices. Such studies include Elaine Freedgood’s Victorian Writing about Risk: Imagining a Safe England in a Dangerous World (2000); Peter L. Bayers’s Imperial Ascent: Masculinity, Mountaineering, and Empire (2003); and Susan R. Schrepfer’s Nature’s Altars: Mountains, Gender, and American Environmentalism (2005). Subsequently, Maurice Isserman and Stewart Weaver’s Fallen Giants: A History of Himalayan Mountaineering from the Age of Empire to the Age of Extremes (2008) and Tait Keller’s Apostles of the Alps: Mountaineering and Nation Building in Germany and Austria, 1860–1939 (2016) further emphasize the nexus of mountain conquest, empire, and nationhood, but ultimately offer more nuanced and comprehensive analyses. In the present volume, which focuses exclusively on the Germanophone mountaineering tradition, nationalism arrives in somewhat belated but all the more forceful fashion during the early twentieth century, as is evident here in chapters 9 through 12, which feature translations from texts by Eduard Pichl, Leni Riefenstahl, Arnold Fanck, and Hans Ertl.
In the early days of mountaineering, motives of science, aesthetics, exploration, and pure pleasure often coalesce—or at least work together in productive tension. The first two chapters presented here, which feature sample writings by the early modern Swiss naturalists, Conrad Gessner and Johann Jakob Scheuchzer, are exemplary in this regard, as they bring together classical and early modern discussions of the sublime, attention to the physical activity of mountaineering, and emerging scientific discourses. These texts by Gessner and Scheuchzer also challenge a longstanding trope in mountaineering cultural history—namely, the transition of mountain spaces from sites of dread to destinations of worship. On a broader intellectual-historical level, the periodization of human-mountain engagement has received its share of critical scrutiny.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Mountains and the German MindTranslations from Gessner to Messner, 1541-2009, pp. 1 - 21Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2020