Beyond Seven Years in Tibet

Beyond Seven Years in Tibet is the autobiographys of Heinrich Harrer, traveller, explorer and mountaineer who led one of the most extraordinary lives of the twentieth century. He famously spent Seven Years in Tibet (made into the film in 1997 starring Brad Pitt as Harrer himself) and was tutor, mentor and a lifelong friend of the Dalai Lama.

Heinrich Harrer made the first ascent of the notorious North Face of the Eiger in 1938 (told in his book The White Spider). The Eigerwand had been a scene of carnage in the years preceding Harrer’s success - an achievement partly overshadowed by the perennial debate over the extent to which the climbers were ‘sponsored’ by the Nazis.
In this dramatic autobiography he brings to life all of his adventures, from the early days of climbing in the Alps, through his time in Tibet, to his later expeditions including exploring the Congo with the King of Belgium and travels to remote parts of Asia, South America and Africa.

Obituary, Climb Magazine April 2006

Heinrich Harrer 1912-2006
Last of the Eigerwanderers

Had Heinrich Harrer not been interned by the British at the outbreak of the Second World War, history might well have judged him in a rather different light. Instead of being feted as the conqueror of the Eiger's North Face and the author of one of the most popular climbing books of all time, the SS Oberscharführer, and long-standing member of the thuggish Nazi paramilitary Sturmabteilung (SA), might have been drawn into participating in some unsavoury wartime deeds. Fortunately for Harrer, the Indian Army's intervention in detaining him and his fellow Austro-Germans during their expedition to climb Nanga Parbat in 1939 spared him from active service - and thereby allowed him to gift the canon of climbing literature one of its classic books: The White Spider.

Harrer was born and brought up in the Austrian town of Hüttenberg in Carinthia and showed athletic promise from an early age. He spent much of his childhood skiing and climbing, surviving a 170ft fall during his teens. By the time he was in his twenties he had been picked to represent his country in the Olympic ski team and won the downhill competition in the World Students' Championship of 1937. 1938, however, was the highpoint of his alpine career; the year he succeeded where so many had failed disastrously before - on the North Face of the Eiger.

The Eigerwand had been the scene of carnage in the preceding years; of the 12 climbers who had attempted it, only three had survived to tell the tale. (Indeed, such was the highly-charged atmosphere engendered by a death-or-glory attitude prevalent among many of the leading young alpinists at this time it led to the famous quote by Armand Charlet: ‘This is not climbing, this is war.’) Swiss authorities disapproved of attempts on the so-called 'Mordwand' so much they passed a temporary law banning attempts. Local guides threatened to refuse to help rescue anyone on trouble on the face. Britain's Alpine Club President Edward Strutt thundered that the North Face of the Eiger was "an obsession for the mentally deranged"

Such publicity ensured the Eigerwand became a magnet for an ambitious alpinist like Harrer. Partnered by fellow Austrian Fritz Kasparek, the pair joined forces with the German aces Anderl Heckmair and Ludwig Vörg who were coincidentally also attempting the climb. Their joint ascent has stood the test of time as a benchmark in extreme alpine climbing, with Heckmair the driving force who willed the party through hideous conditions to the summit. Strutt of the Alpine Club, however, remained convinced that Nazi ideology had played as much a part in motivating the young Austro-Germans as a desire to achieve a historic first ascent - an accusation both Harrer and Heckmair would always robustly refute. Nevertheless, the extent to which the climbers were 'sponsored' by the Nazis is still-disputed and there can be no doubt that the Third Reich leadership saw it as a propaganda opportunity. As Stephen Goodwin has pointed out, 'Mountaineering was represented as embodying Aryan virtues - muscular, heroic and suffused with the symbolism of the rope and comradeship. Hitler had promised medals for those who triumphed on the "Murder wall". The 1938 success had an added value for the Goebbels machine - three months after the Anschluss, Germany and Austria had been united in glorious struggle. Harrer was recorded at the time as being moved to tears by Hitler's praise at Breslau, replying effusively: "We have climbed the Eiger Nordwand, over the summit beyond, to you, our Führer." He later vehemently denied saying any such thing, blaming the words on a "total simpleton of a ghostwriter" appointed by a Nazi publishing house.'

Whatever Harrer's feeling's about being used as an Aryan exemplar by Hitler, it certainly held him in good stead for he was immediately invited aboard an expedition to vanquish a mountain that had come to be regarded as something of a Nemesis by German mountaineers: Nanga Parbat. A disastrous expedition to the mountain five years earlier had resulted in the deaths of six Sherpas and four Germans; it thus represented a fine Wagnerian challenge for an avenging troupe of crack Teutonic climbers, especially when one of them was fresh from dispatching the Eigerwand. Unfortunately, the mountain - and the British Indian authorities - had other ideas. After reconnoitring the Diamir Face the team, led by Peter Aufschnaiter, became concerned about the impending outbreak of war and headed for home via Karachi, tailed by British secret police. Harrer and a couple of his colleagues attempted shake off the suspicious Brits by driving towards what is now Iran but were intercepted and arrested. Imprisoned at the internment camp of Dehra Dun on the edge of India's Garhwal Himalaya, Harrer made two escape attempts over five years before successfully breaking free with Aufschnaiter and fleeing over the border into neutral Tibet. Here they would pursue an extraordinary journey which would later be recounted in Harrer's other great book Seven years in Tibet. The pair wandered the lonely Tibetan plateau for 18 months, living the life of high altitude tramps, cadging food from nomads and effectively engaging in a kind of never-ending shoestring trekking holiday.

They eventually entered the then 'forbidden city' of Lhasa where Harrer befriended the young Dalai Lama and taught him about the mysterious ways of the West, its science and new-fangled technologies, and became a great favourite. But the idyll came to an end in 1951 when the Chinese Army invaded and annexed the feudal kingdom by force. Harrer fled to Sikkim thence to India and his magical time in Tibet was over.

Back in Austria Harrer remarried. (His first wife, Charlotte Wegener, the daughter of the geographer-explorer and inventor of the theory of continental drift, Alfred Wegener, whom he had wed in 1938, had got fed up of waiting for him to return and had dissolved the marriage.) Domestic bliss however did little to still his wandering spirit. Most of the his life during the 1950s sounds like one continuous road trip, with visits to mountain ranges from the USA (where he made first ascents of Mounts Deborah and Hunter in Alaska) to the Andes and the Alps to Africa to pursue both mountaineering and ethnographical expeditions. His wife, Margarethe Truxa, left to fend for herself at home mostly, had finally had enough by 1958. Four years later, Harrer married Katharina Haarhaus four years later and, although his itinerant lifestyle continued, the couple stayed together. By this time Harrer was an international celebrity as a result of the publication of his famous books Seven Years in Tibet (1953) and The White Spider (1958). He was feted by international heads of state and institutions alike and showered with awards and honorary titles. The equally footloose King Leopold of the Belgians became a good friend and travelling companion. Harrer's last notable mountaineering feat was as leader of a trip which made the first ascent of the Carstensz Pyramid in New Guinea in 1962.

Harrer's reputation seemed assured until Hollywood decided to make a film of Seven Years in Tibet in 1997 with Brad Pitt starring as Harrer himself. The result was a film described by one American critic as: 'The true story of the arduous spiritual transformation of Heinrich Harrer, from Third Reich poster boy and all-around asshole, into a genuine and loving human being.' The renewed interest in Harrer's life, however, stirred muck-raking journalists from the German news magazine Stern to publish details of the ancient Nazi skeletons in Harrer's cupboard. As a result, 'Hollywood dropped the beleaguered Austrian like a hot brick' and he was not invited to the US premiere of his biopic. Harrer always protested that he had only involved himself with the Nazis for the pragmatic purpose of furthering his climbing career. "Well, I was young. I was, I admit it, extremely ambitious and I was asked if I would become the teacher of the SS at skiing," was his explanation. "I have to say I jumped at the chance. I also have to say that if the Communist party had invited me I would have joined. And if the very Devil had invited me I would have gone with the Devil." He claimed to have only worn his SS uniform once - at his first wedding. Harrer had powerful allies to back his side of the story; the famed Nazi war-criminal-hunter Simon Wiesenthal vouched for Harrer's character as did his old friend the saintly Dalai Lama, who also who opened a museum in Hüttenburg celebrating his former tutor's life.

Harrer's death thus cut one of the last great links with the heroic-romantic era of inter-war Alpine pioneering, and of a past climbing landscape now rapidly changing under the onslaught of global warming. The infamous "White Spider" icefield which Harrer made into such a mountaineering icon is now no longer a permanent feature of the Eiger, its ancient bedrock ice melting away in 2003 to be replaced by transient drapes of powder snow or infrequent nevé. It might therefore be said that Harrer had outlived both his controversial past - and his own great climb.

Colin Wells