Heinrich Harrer
July 6, 1912 – January 7, 2006
Heinrich Harrer was an Austrian mountaineer, Tibetan traveler and non-fiction author. From 1933 he was a member of the then still illegal SA in Austria. In 1938 he was one of four first climbers of the Eiger north face, which was enthusiastically celebrated by National Socialist propaganda. Harrer became a member of the SS, where he was Oberscharführer, and the NSDAP. In the autumn of 1939, after an expedition to Nanga Parbat, he was interned in India, fled to Tibet and lived there until 1951. During this time, he became a confidant of the 14th Dalai Lama. His book Seven Years in Tibet and its film adaptation made Harrer widely known. In 1962 he succeeded in the first ascent of the Carstensz Pyramid in western New Guinea. Since 1983, the Heinrich Harrer Museum has been located in Hüttenberg.
Heinrich Josef Harrer was born as the first of four children of Josef Harrer and Johanna née Penker in Obergossen near Knappenberg. His father was a postal clerk, his mother a housewife. Harrer's maternal grandfather came from the village of Penk in the Möll Valley. In 1880 he settled in Hüttenberg, where he worked as a miner.
Harrer's father Josef was born in Styria, the parents had met at Semmering. Harrer's sister Lydia was born in 1921, brother Josef in 1924 and sister Ruth in 1931.
After his father was transferred, Harrer attended the primary school and the secondary school in Bruck an der Mur, Styria. There he became a member of the German Gymnastics Club. After another transfer of his father (1927), Heinrich transferred to the secondary school in Graz. At the age of 17, Heinrich Harrer became a member of the student fraternity Akademischer Turnverein Graz (A. T. V.).
As a teenager, he discovered his great passion, sport (alpine and Nordic skiing, mountaineering, swimming, athletics, tennis, handball, and from 1955 also golf). At the age of fifteen, he made his first climbing attempts in the Julian Alps. At the age of sixteen, he began to participate in ski competitions.
In the winter semester of 1933/1934 he became active in the A.T.V. Graz, became academic downhill world champion in 1937, and later (1958) also Austrian golf champion.
From 1933 to 1938 he studied to become a teacher in geography and sports at the University of Graz. After successfully passing the ski instructor and mountain guide exams, he financed his studies with skiing and climbing courses, among other things. He founded a ski school on the Tauplitz, where he was also responsible for the club's own refuge Grazer Haus as a hut warden, and also worked in Sesto in the Dolomites.
In 1936, Harrer was supposed to take part in the downhill and slalom at the Winter Olympics. However, this did not happen, as the alpine ski teams of Austria and Switzerland boycotted the competition due to disputes over the professional status of ski instructors. A year later, he became the national coach of the Austrian women's national ski team.
It was not until 1996, in the run-up to the film Seven Years in Tibet, that the ORF editor and filmmaker Gerald Lehner found membership cards in American archives. Harrer joined the SA underground in October 1933, almost five years before the "Anschluss of Austria" to the National Socialist German Reich. Harrer himself has always denied this account. Even before the Eiger expedition, Harrer joined the SS on 1 April 1938, then applied for admission to the NSDAP on 11 August 1938 and was admitted retroactively to 1 May of the same year (membership number 6,307,081). He was then an SS sports instructor with the rank of SS-Oberscharführer. Harrer later called these accessions a "stupid mistake" and an "ideological error". One of his admirers and supporters was Heinrich Himmler. Himmler also accelerated the approval procedure (usual for SS men) for Harrer's marriage to Lotte Wegener. On December 20, 1938, the "Race and Settlement Main Office" in Berlin granted permission. The SS Central Administration created an 80-page file on Harrer.
Harrer denied – at the request of Gerald Lehner – his acquaintance with Bruno Beger, who, as a "race researcher" of the National Socialists, had been an anthropologist with an SS expedition in Tibet a few years before Harrer. Beger stated, however, that the two had known each other for a long time and were informal friends. Harrer's mountain comrade Andreas Heckmair also claimed that Harrer had a red pennant with a swastika in his backpack, but could not hoist it on the summit due to strong winds.
Mountaineering continued to fascinate Harrer very much. In March 1938, Austria was annexed by the German Reich. During the university semester break, Harrer had met the alpinist Fritz Kasparek while climbing in the Dolomites. On 9 July 1938, immediately after he had passed his last state examination, he went to Grindelwald to take part in the first ascent of the Eiger north face (July 1938). Previously, many experienced alpinists had failed there. From 21 to 24 July 1938, he succeeded in taking the risk with Anderl Heckmair, Fritz Kasparek and Ludwig Vörg. The four successful climbers were then welcomed by Adolf Hitler and each received a photo with a personal dedication from him.
In December 1938 he married Hanna Charlotte "Lotte" Wegener (1920–1989), the daughter of the German polar explorer Alfred Wegener, who died in the Greenland ice in 1930. In December 1939, Harrer's son Peter was born. Harrer was interned in India at the time. The marriage to Lotte was divorced during his stay in Asia; her second marriage to Etta Truxa lasted from 1952 to 1958. His third marriage to Carina Haarhaus (1922–2014), whom he had met in 1957 at a golf club, lasted until Harrer's death.
In the summer of 1939, an exploratory expedition to Nanga Parbat organized by the German Himalayan Foundation took place, in which Harrer took part under the leadership of Peter Aufschnaiter alongside Lutz Chicken and Hans Lobenhöffer (1916–2014). When the Germans waited in Karachi at the end of August for the overdue cargo ship to return home, they were detained because of the Second World War, which began on September 1, 1939: first in transit camps, then, after England had entered the war on September 3, in the British internment camp in Ahmadnagar near Bombay; most recently they were transferred to Dehra Dun at the foot of the Himalayas. Many of the internees wanted to break out and make their way to Japanese lines: Harrer succeeded in breaking out in 1944, on his fifth attempt. The successful fourth escape attempt, which Harrer had made in 1943 together with the Italian General Marchese (who financed the enterprise), ended after a month, when the exhausted Marchese refused to march on to the nearest forest (the two marched in India only at night and hid during the day). The prisoners were brought back with politeness and some respect for their sporting achievements, but Harrer decided to go his own way after the next escape. After the usual 28 days of solitary confinement for the offense, he began to plan it and was financially supported by the elder Marchese, who did not want to participate again.
The fifth attempt on April 29, 1944, in a group of seven people, including Aufschnaiter, was successful. This group also included Rolf Magener and Heins von Have from Hamburg, who made their way to the Japanese in Burma via Calcutta in about six weeks, while the other escapees wanted to reach the Japanese lines in the east via Tibet, which was considered neutral. In addition to Harrer and Aufschnaiter, Hannes Kopp from Berlin, Friedl Sattler from the Rhineland and Bruno Treipl from Salzburg were among them. Immediately after the escape, the group had separated, later the five marchers in the direction of Tibet found each other again rather by chance; Sattler returned to the internment camp voluntarily soon afterwards after a bout of mountain sickness. The others marched at times in fours, sometimes in teams of two (Harrer then with Kopp), at first only at night. On May 17, 1944, they crossed the border over the 5300-meter-high Tsangchokla Pass. From then on, they also set off during the day for the time being.
In Tibet, however, it turned out that Tibetans were forbidden to sell food to strangers without a pass. Although such could occasionally be purchased at black market prices, the funds would not have been sufficient for long. The refugees were referred to the abbot of the nearest monastery of Thuling, who had the authority to issue permits, but only did so under the assurance that the foreigners would immediately move on to Schangtse (on the border with India).
After Treipl had also fled to India, the trio of Harrer, Aufschnaiter and Kopp remained together until after the end of the war (which made reaching Japanese lines obsolete). In the border village of Tradün (to Nepal), to which they had finally received a temporary pass, they wanted to force them to emigrate to Nepal, but only Kopp did so. He was promptly deported to India a few days later, where the British internment camps were not dissolved until the beginning of 1948, as it turned out later. From now on, Harrer and Aufschnaiter planned to reach Lhasa and fled from the border village.
In the course of the entire journey, the two overcame at least 50 passes - none below 5000 meters - and covered around 2100 kilometers on foot. On January 15, 1946, they reached the then "forbidden city" of Lhasa.
Aufschnaiter became an advisor to the Tibetan government on agricultural and urban planning issues, Harrer first a translator and photographer for the Tibetan government, later a teacher (for English, geography and mathematics) and finally also a friend of the young 14th Dalai Lama, for whom he also repaired a private cinema; a cordial relationship connected the two until Harrer's death. There is a reference to documents published according to which Harrer is mentioned in Lhasa "as an informant and presumed employee of the American secret service CIA" in the 1950s. Because of the Tibetan-Chinese conflict of 1950/51, Harrer fled to India in 1951, initially accompanying the Dalai Lama to the country's border. From there, Harrer returned to Europe the next year. In 1952, Harrer returned to Europe and settled in Kitzbühel. Later he also lived for a time in the hamlet of Münichau near Kitzbühel and in Liechtenstein.
In July 1962, Harrer narrowly escaped the plane crash of Alitalia Flight 771 on his return flight from the first ascent of the Carstensz Pyramid (Puncak Jaya). On the onward flight, the plane crashed on approach to Bombay, there were no survivors.
Many of Harrer's travel stories were shown in the television series Heinrich Harrer erzählt, which was broadcast by ARD between 1965 and 1983.
As an author, he wrote over 20 books. His best-known work is Seven Years in Tibet, in which Harrer describes his time with Peter Aufschnaiter in Tibet and his acquaintance with the 14th Dalai Lama. He began to write about these experiences in India. The book became a worldwide success (translated into 53 languages, worldwide circulation so far over four million) and made him famous. In 1997, Jean-Jacques Annaud filmed the book under the same title with Brad Pitt in the role of Heinrich Harrer.
In 1977 he was one of the founding members of the P.E.N. Club Liechtenstein. Heinrich Harrer died on 7 January 2006 at the age of 93 in hospital in Friesach, Carinthia. He was buried in Hüttenberg in an honorary grave.