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
10 - Arnold Fanck, He Directed Glaciers, Storms, and Avalanches: A Film Pioneer Recounts (1973)—Excerpts
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
Translator’s Introduction
Arnold Fanck (1889–1974), pioneer of the specifically German genre of the Bergfilm (mountain film), began life as a sickly child with breathing problems. As he recounts in his 1973 autobiography Er führte Regie mit Gletschern, Stürmen und Lawinen: ein Filmpionier erzählt (He Directed Glaciers, Storms, and Avalanches: A Film Pioneer Recounts), his early years gave no indication that he would later direct and film movies under demanding conditions in the Alps and Greenland. Fanck was so prone to asthma attacks that he was homeschooled until the age of nine, at which point his wealthy family sent him off to a boarding school in Davos, Switzerland. There, in the town immortalized for its sanatoria in Thomas Mann’s Der Zauberberg (The Magic Mountain, 1924), a local physician told Fanck’s father, “it is said that the children never have problems with asthma.”
This change from the “sooty factory town” (11) of Frankenthal in the Palatinate to the high Alpine air of Davos was, in Fanck’s words, a “ Wende,” a turning point, or, more simply, a turn. Turns are important in Fanck’s autobiography both literally and as metaphors; indeed, he repeatedly returns to the word “ Wende” to describe the vicissitudes of fate that led him from his hometown to Davos, then, as a teenager, to Freiburg im Breisgau in southwest Germany after his father’s death, all stations on a circuitous route to what became Fanck’s career achievement: “to show people the beauties of the mountains with the help of the newly emerged idiom of the moving picture—of film” (12). Turns, however, do not just signify changes in Fanck’s life; they are also, concretely, the thousands upon thousands of turns he made as a young, enthusiastic, and talented skier. These turns, in turn, led him into photography, for he wanted to show his mother, who could not ski, the beauty of the Black Forest in winter (48). Later, his skiing and ski mountaineering skills would precipitate an invitation to his first film, which would lead to his own illustrious film career as a director. I highlight the role of skiing here, because in most accounts of the Bergfilm the focus is, quite rightly, on mountaineering, usually the classic alpinist practice of rock climbing, glacier travel, and the ascent of steep firn slopes by means of ice axe and step-chopping.
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- Mountains and the German MindTranslations from Gessner to Messner, 1541-2009, pp. 243 - 262Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2020