died. Perhaps it even believed it. But the real spur was that inexplicable longing for the eternal adventure.
1936 was to be the year marked by the shattering death of the last survivor of two parties; of the man who tried to come back from the beyond into the world of living men—the year of the tragedy of Toni Kurz.
1Kurt Maix, “Im Banne der Dachstein Südwand,” Publishers, Das Bergland Buch, Salzburg, 1952.
As is often the case with mountain folk, whose features have been carved by wind and storm so that they look older in their youth, younger in their old age, Albert von Allmen’s face is ageless. He might be in his middle thirties or his middle fifties.
The mountains have been von Allmen’s strict teachers and loyal friends, even if his profession leads him more into than onto the peaks. For Albert is a Sector-Guard on the Jungfrau Railway. He is responsible for everything along the line inside the Eiger, and sees to it that nothing goes wrong in that long tunnelled section; but he is equally interested in everything that goes on outside. True, he doesn’t quite understand the young people who are trying to climb the terrific Eiger precipice, but, even if he thinks them a little deranged, he has a soft spot for them. Von Allmen’s eyes are kindly eyes. They are surrounded by many little creases which record not only cares and the hard life of the mountains, but also the joy of laughter.
At noon on July 21st 1936 Albert was standing outside the gallery entrance at Kilometre 3-8, after opening the heavy wooden door.
It was a Tuesday. Ever since Saturday the 18th there had been four climbers on the Face; two Austrians, Edi Rainer and Willy Angerer, and two Bavarians, Anderl Hinterstoisser and Toni Kurz. Everyone had fallen for the fresh-faced, clean-limbed Toni Kurz, not only because he was himself a professional guide, but because of his laugh. When Toni laughed, it was as if life itself were laughing. All young men, these; Angerer, the eldest, was twenty-seven, Kurz and Hinterstoisser just twenty-three. They had already climbed almost as high on the Face as Sedlmayer and Mehringer the year before, on their ill-fated attempt from which they did not return. But these four would come back safely; what had been seen of them during the last few days gave solid grounds for hope that this time there would be no disaster.
None of those present had seen such magnificent climbing. True, one of the climbers, apparently Angerer, seemed to have been struck by a stone. That was why the party had been moving so slowly for the last two days, and that was probably why they had decided to turn back. The descent over ice-fields and rock cliffs swept by falling stones and avalanches looked ghastly enough; but the four men were moving steadily, if very slowly, downwards towards the safety of the easier ground below, in obvious good heart and without a moment’s hesitation The three fit ones were continually attending to the one who had clearly been hurt. They couldn’t be bad, these lads who looked after each other so well. They must be fine fellows, even if a bit crack-pot.
Albert von Allmen thought of the Sunday tourists and excursionists, the blasé men and the ladies in high heels who went to the tunnel-window at Eigerwand Station and uttered their “ah’s” and “oh’s” as they gazed at what seemed to them the terrifying gulfs and immeasurable heights of the Eiger’s precipice. It was people like those, hungering for sensation, who were now crowding round the telescopes at Grindelwald and Kleine Scheidegg. And then too there were the pronunciamentos of the know-it-all’s, busy weighing up the chances of another catastrophe or of the safe return of four living men to the valley.
They must get back safely, thought Albert. His sympathy lay with Youth, youth generally, but particularly these four youngsters on the Face. It would be a good idea to take a look at them and hear for himself how they were getting on. Allmen pushed back the bolts of the heavy wooden doors and stepped out into the open, as he had done a hundred times before. He was used to the grim aspect of the Face; but that day, perhaps because there were people on it, it seemed particularly horrific. A layer of glassy ice overlaid the rock; here and there a stone came clattering down; many of those lethal bullets went humming menacingly down for thousands of feet quite clear of the Face. Then, too, there was the hissing of snow-avalanches as they slid down, whole cascades of snow and ice. The very thought that there were living men somewhere up in that vertical Hell was oppressive. Could they still be alive?
Von Allmen shouted, listened, shouted again.
Then the answer reached him. A cheery, gay answer. The voices of four young people shouting, yodelling. Albert couldn’t see them, but, judging by the sound, they couldn’t be more than three or four hundred feet above him. It seemed incredible to him that anyone could climb down those icy, perpendicular or even overhanging rocks, continually swept by falling stones; but these crazy kids had so often shown how possible it is to climb impossible things. And, above all, there was that cheery shout coming down from above:
“We’re climbing straight down. All’s well!”
All well with all of them. The Sector-Guard’s heart beat faster for joy.
“I’ll brew you some hot tea,” he shouted back.
Smiling with pleasure, Albert von Allmen went back through the gallery-door to his shelter inside the mountain and put a huge kettle on for tea. He could already see, in his mind’s eye, the arrival of the four lads, exhausted, injured perhaps by stones, maybe seriously frost-bitten, but alive and happy. He would meet them with his steaming tea. There was no better drink than hot tea for frost-bitten, exhausted men. He was slightly cross at the time it was taking the water to start bubbling; the lads would be here in a minute or two.
But the lads didn’t come in a minute or two.
Long after the tea was ready, they hadn’t come. Albert set the golden-brown drink on a low flame, just enough to keep it hot without getting stewed.
Still the lads didn’t come; and the Sector-Guard, this man whose age it was impossible to guess, had time for second thoughts….
In truth, one could not hold it against a public avid for sensation that it should be thronging inquisitively about the telescopes. These climbs on the Eiger’s Face had been worked up into a publicity feature. The Press and the Radio had taken charge of the “Eiger Drama”. Some of the reports were sound enough, informed by the heart and mind of true mountain folk behind them, others displayed a woeful lack of knowledge of the subject.
1936 had started badly. The first to arrive had been the Munich pair, Albert Herbst and Hans Teufel, who were already at Kleine Scheidegg before the end of May. Had they come to look for last year’s victims? The thought may have been there, but their secret aim was certainly the ascent of the Face. They were splendid climbers, to be sure, but perhaps lacking in that calm and relaxation which is the hall-mark of the accomplished master-climber.
They did not come to grief on the Eiger’s Face. They knew that to start up that gigantic wall so early in the year, in almost wintry conditions, would be nothing short of suicide; but the waiting about became unbearable. According to the calendar it was summer by now, but storms and snow didn’t seem to mind about that. So Teufel and Herbst decided as part of their training to climb the as yet unclimbed North Face of the Schneehorn. This was purely an ice- and snow-slope. Conditions were far from favourable. The heavy falls of new snow had as yet failed to cohere firmly with the old snow beneath. In spite of this, the pair tackled the ice-slope on July 1st and succeeded in reaching the summit cornice, beneath which they were forced to bivouac. They suffered no harm from their
