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Alan Rubin
climber
Amherst,MA.
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Mar 28, 2019 - 12:27pm PT
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Fritz was also an active skier and for many years his primary business, I believe, was making wax for skis, so his move to Vermont--where he could cross-country out his back door--made perfect sense. He lived very close to Smugglers Notch, so he undoubtedly climbed around there, but it seems that he had greatly reduced his first ascent activity by the time he moved to Vermont. I don't think that his lack of reported new routes in the Gunks after the mid-40s had anything to do with the establishment of the Mohonk Trust, which didn't occur for approximately another 15 years. In fact he continued to climb there frequently up until the time of his strokes in the early '80s and maintained a very positive relationship with those 'in charge' during those years--he was, appropriately, treated as an honored guest there. His slowing down in terms of climbing (at least reported FAs) may have been due more to his moving on in his life, but another likely contributory factor was that for several decades (until the '70s) he was somewhat 'blackballed' by certain members of the US climbing 'establishment' as a result of the disaster on K-2.
A biography of Wiessner would be great. I believe that at one point both Bill Putnam and Ed Webster were working on such books, but nothing came of either effort--maybe Ed is still at it.
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tradmanclimbs
Ice climber
Pomfert VT
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Mar 28, 2019 - 04:41pm PT
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He must have had a climbing journal? I do know he tried but did not finish Elephant Head crack in Smuggs.It would later go free at 9+. perhaps Smuggs was simply too much of a chossheap to inspire rock climbing at the time?
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tradmanclimbs
Ice climber
Pomfert VT
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Mar 31, 2019 - 05:38am PT
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doubtful being jewish that he would have been suspected as a german sympathizer.
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Steve Grossman
Trad climber
Seattle, WA
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Topic Author's Reply - Mar 31, 2019 - 09:08am PT
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A European biography came out in 2000 but it is very hard to find in English.
His story is certainly worth telling in book form and Ed would be the man to do it.
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jstan
climber
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Mar 31, 2019 - 05:26pm PT
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Unfortunately the person who might have written about the 10th Mountain division, is dead, Raffi Bedayn. Some forty years after the war, I talked with one veteran from the division who complained they were usually sent where there was no action. Though I have read they were active at Monte Casino, The action there was brutal.
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Alan Rubin
climber
Amherst,MA.
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I think that Tradman is mistaken in his comment that Wiessner was Jewish. I have never heard that before and believe that it is erroneous. Though he was surely no supporter of the Nazi's, my understanding is that he left Germany in the late '20s to pursue economic opportunities not to escape persecution.In fact, he was a member of the 1932 German expedition to Nanga Parbat, which would not have been possible if he were Jewish. Perhaps Tradman is mixing part of Fritz's biographical information with that of Paul Pruess or, more likely, Hans Kraus.
Wiessner did face a degree of World War II era anti-German prejudice (and likely some government scrutiny). Many believe that some of the reason he was burdened with much of the blame for the 1939 K-2 disaster was based on such prejudice, magnified by the fact that he did have a very 'autocratic' leadership style, which was viewed as being (stereotypically) Germanic (he'd only been living here for about a decade at that time). I think it is true that his status as a relatively recent immigrant from Germany as well as the repercussions from K-2 (along with his age--he was in his 40s) were major factors as to why he was not part of the 10th Mountain Division.
Steve, I was unaware that a book about Wiessner had been published in Europe. Do you know any details? I would love to see (and own) it, even though I would not be able to read much of it. I don't think that he kept a climbing journal. As I wrote much earlier in this thread (posted several years ago), Ken Nichols and I interviewed Fritz (in the late 70s) when we were working on the Connecticut guidebook. I very distinctly remember Fritz showing us his scrapbook (I could have spend days looking at that!!!!)but have no recollection of his showing us or referring to any journals or other written records. It is possible that he didn't consider the short climbs in Connecticut as worth recording on paper (though he surely remembered them), while keeping notes on his larger climbs. I presume that the scrapbook and any such notes, if they exist, are in the possession of his children or grandchildren. It would be great if they, or at least copies of them, could be donated to the AAC library/museum.
There are several books in print about the exploits of the 10th Mountain Division. I know that I have one at home but don't recall the title or author. It is true that the 10th didn't see action until the later part of the war, but I think that was more to do with training and uncertainty on how best to employ them, than with any conscious decision by the military brass to keep them out of action. While it is not correct that they fought in the battles around Mte. Cassino in 1943/'44, they did play key roles in some subsequent mountain assaults further north in Italy and continued fighting right up until the end of the war. In fact, General Darby, the deputy division commander (and famous as the founder and first commander of the Army Rangers), was killed in northern Italy just a few days before the end of hostilities. While the 10th is the best known specialist US 'mountain' unit from WWII, it was proceeded by the First Special Service Force, which was a unique joint US-Canadian outfit which also recruited soldiers with skiing, climbing, and other outdoor backgrounds. It saw considerable action, particularly earlier in the Italian campaign, and gathered quite a reputation at the time as serious fighting force, particularly in mountain terrain.
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rgold
Trad climber
Poughkeepsie, NY
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My (wonderful) high-school math teacher was a super-Aryan looking German guy who emigrated out of extreme distaste for the Third Reich. He quickly became an American citizen and then went back to Germany as a US spy. He said he had seen many things he would never speak about...
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tradmanclimbs
Ice climber
Pomfert VT
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You are correct. I was certainly thinking of Hans Kraus. In 1939 much of the USA was still quite pro german.. by 41 when we were in the war for real a 40yr old man was considered over the hill for any combat job below the rank of Colonel. Its not like today when 40year old men win superbowls and 70 is the new 50.... lots of guys in their 40s enlisted after 911 which would have been almost unheard of in 1940.. My dad was considered an old man @ 24 when he was a WWll infantry SGT.
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Gnome Ofthe Diabase
climber
Out Of Bed
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My mother & father Were evacuated from Austria as children. Hans recognized my mother's distinctive looks; a family resemblance to that of a family that he thought had all perished.
Later as a teenager, I was a regular on weekends, climbing & skiing & then I spent summers as a guest of the Raubenheimers.
We children spent a lot of time with both men, swimming, climbing & hiking. Fritz would take me, alone, for milkshakes.
I have fond, if foggy, memories of ruined dinners due to those after climbing thick-shakes.
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tradmanclimbs
Ice climber
Pomfert VT
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Pretty Shure General Gavin was in his 20's... Don't see that much in the modern Army.
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jogill
climber
Colorado
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Rough overlaps here between the Stettners and FW. Joe and Fritz were practically the same age. Also, sixteen years or so older, Oliver Perry-Smith. There's not much evidence of serious climbing by OPS after WWI. But the Stettners were certainly active and volunteered for WWII, with Joe a climbing instructor at Camp Hale.
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Alan Rubin
climber
Amherst,MA.
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As John pointed out, it is interesting that Joe Stettner, who had also immigrated from Germany just a few years before Wiessner,and was very similar in age, was very involved with the 10th Mountain as an instructor, while Wiessner was permitted only a more limited role. My guess is that this is a result of the reaction to the K2 disaster--and the blame for it placed on Fritz, by many within the skiing/climbing community of the era. This group, while small, was very well-connected and influential--the creation of the 10th Mountain was very much the result of the efforts of the nascent US Ski Patrol.The Stettner brothers, while not Jewish, were escapees from persecution in Germany. Their father, a moderate, left-wing political activist was murdered in the streets of Munich by members of the Freikorps (proto-Nazi, rightist paramilitaries) in the turmoil in the years immediately following the end of the First World War, and the brothers, seeing the writing on the wall, left the country a few years later.
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Alan Rubin
climber
Amherst,MA.
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I don't know the answers to your questions--which is why I would love there to be a good biography of him to fill in such details. I suspect you are correct as to his family's economic situation (though Germany in the '20s and early '30s was hard hit by the Depression with rampant inflation so many otherwise middle class families suffered greatly), however their political beliefs are just speculation. It is reasonable to assume, however, that, at least as of 1932, Wiessner was not known to be critical of the Nazis as otherwise he would not have been allowed on the Nanga Parbat expedition.Other, non-climbing, biographical details I would like to know about is whether or not Fritz was in the German military during WWI--as he was of the conscription age at least for the final year of the war and did those of his family still in Germany survive WWII, particularly the Dresden fire-bombing.
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guido
Trad climber
Santa Cruz/New Zealand/South Pacific
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Mirella Tenderini
June 18, 2018
GARY HEMMING and the problems of writing biographies
When I was asked by Terry Gifford to come to Bretton Hall to speak about Italian mountaineering literature I felt flattered and honoured to accept. Mountaineering literature is a subject of which I am particularly fond and - begging for your patience for my accent and my grammar - I'll enjoy speaking to you about it, later in the afternoon. I was also thrilled at the idea of coming to Bretton Hall and hear mountaineering writers speak, meet climbers, see old friends... But I was not aware I'd be asked also to talk about my book! Well, that's even more flattering, but the possibility of boring you is double and asking you for double patience is embarrassing, so I'll try to be as brief as possible.
The book I wrote is the biography of the American mountaineer Gary Hemming, known in the 60s because of a few fine ascents on the Alps.
Gary Hemming was an intriguing character. I never met him, nor I knew of his existence during his life. This is strange, because he was my contemporary - more or less - and during the time he was in Europe I might have come across him on the Alps. My husband and my climbing friends were very active in the Mont Blanc area in the same years as Hemming, but they never met him and knew of him only vaguely. At that time the climbing world was made of watertight compartments, so to speak. Then, in the 70s, Italian climbers started visiting Yosemite and fell in love with American climbing. They knew nothing of American mountaineering tradition and history until later and they thought that John Harlin and Gary Hemming were representative of American mountaineering because, in the 60s, they had accomplished innovative first ascents in the Mont Blanc area with Yosemite climbers (Royal Robbins and Tom Frost). Hemming, particularly, struck their imagination and a legend flourished about him, magnified by the publicity the French gave to a rescue he led on the west face of Petit Dru and by his mysterious death. Also, there were rumours of first ascents carried out by Hemming without telling anybody, and on top of that he was a hippy and a rebel, a perfect hero for those years.
From time to time I read about him on magazines and what struck me was the absence of real information. Nobody actually seemed to know much about him: where he was born, how old he was, what did he do in America, why did he come to Europe, who he was, actually. That was puzzling and the character was intriguing: that's how the idea came to me of finding out about him and telling his story. That's all in the book: the story and my quest. I am very grateful to my publishers, James Baines and Peter Hodgkiss, and to the translator, Susan Hodgkiss, for making this book available in English to Gary's friends.
What I am going to talk about, now, is how to write biographies. When I started to write my book I had no idea of the best way to handle all the information which I collected in six year time. There is no recipe to write a biography and at the end I decided to write the book as a long article. I was used to write articles, so that was the easiest way. It meant discarding a great deal of information and concentrating on highlights but it seemed a good idea to write in a fast, light way, the way Hemming lived. This formula of course would not be appropriate for another subject.
I am really interested in knowing how my colleagues here arranged their books. In fact I am anxious to read their books. They certainly had different problems than I. Their research was easier, perhaps, since both Tilman and Young were famous and wrote several books, whereas Hemming was almost unknown and I was able to read his journals only at the end of my search. When writing, however, they might have had more problems than I, as they also had to take into account what had already been written on the subject, and the books written by Tilman and Young, and they had to say something new, unpublished before, to justify a biography, and of course, same as anybody else, they had to be truthful and to be respectful...
One of the problems with biographies is this one: how can an author give a true picture of her/his hero without telling about his faults and shortcomings? Is it fair to reveal somebody's dark side to everybody? On the other hand, a biography containing only praises is a lie, useless and of no interest.
So, to what extent has the biographer the right to enquire? My immediate answer is: to the end. But then another question arises: and to what extent has the biographer the right to report what she/he found out? Here I hesitate to answer. I have no answer, in fact. Everything which is necessary to give a true portrait of the protagonist must be said. But is every detail necessary? This problem is greater when there are relatives or friends of the protagonist still alive. Is it fair to hurt their feelings? Maybe they hold a different image of the person they loved. How can a biographer dare to spoil it? And yet, the writer who decided to tell the life of someone must get to know every detail, has to be impartial and implacable. A hero, to be true, must be described in his wholeness. Also, to understand him it is important to study the city, the country where he lived in the years when he lived there, his social milieu, what he studied, what he read, what he thought... It is necessary to learn a huge amount of details and check a huge amount of information, corresponding to thousands pages, to write just a few dozens.
At the end of the work the image of the hero coincides with the idea that the biographer had of him at the very beginning as biographies are the result of the relationship between biographers and their heroes. And that relationship often arises out of an initial intuition, a spark of prescience that reveals the true essence of the hero to the biographer, hence the biographer's desire to tell the hero's story.
Sometimes, on the contrary, the biographer sets out to tell about a person on whom she/he has no particular interest - in the case of a book commissioned by a publisher, for instance, or for some other reason. In that case there might be no particular feeling between the narrator and his hero and perhaps the biography will be more objective, more truthful. I don't know, however who can describe more truthfully a character: whether it is the visionary biographer or the scholarly researcher. Of course the best thing would be to possess the qualities of both...
This however (what to say and to what extent) is only one of the many problems that the biographer has to solve. Then there are all the other problems related with writing a book in general: research first and then writing. After I wrote my first biography I started reading - and re-reading - biographies with special attention and I would like to discuss at length all the different kinds of approach I found out. But I think it better to stop here and listen to your opinion and answer your questions if you have any.
lecture by Mirella Tenderini
at Bretton Hall, University of Leeds, November 1995
(transcription from recording)
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Steve Grossman
Trad climber
Seattle, WA
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Topic Author's Reply - Apr 14, 2019 - 01:42pm PT
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The biography that I mentioned is only available in German and is entitled Fritz Wiessner 1900-1988 written by Gottfried Andreas on the centennial anniversary of his birth. It is a collection of essays written by people that knew Fritz and available only in paperback.
I just ordered a copy from Chessler Books.
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guido
Trad climber
Santa Cruz/New Zealand/South Pacific
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Apr 14, 2019 - 05:05pm PT
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Mirella Tenderini is a well known author with a vast background on climbing and exploration. Here is a link to some of her books and some have been translated but not all. I think her essay on the difficulty of writing biographies is interesting and a good place for one to start if they have any inclinations on such an endeavor.
K2-Shackleton-The Duke of Abruzzi-..........................
https://www.abebooks.co.uk/book-search/author/TENDERINI,-MIRELLA?cm_sp=brcr-_-bdp-_-author
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