Hermann Buhl

For the German Olympic athlete, see Hermann Buhl (athlete).

Hermann Buhl

Buhl in 1953, back from his ascent to Nanga Parbat
Personal information
Nationality	Austrian
Born	(1924-09-21)21 September 1924 Innsbruck, Tyrol, Austria
Died	27 June 1957(1957-06-27) (aged 32) Chogolisa, Karakoram
Occupation	Mountaineer
Spouse	Eugenie Högerle (m. 1951)
Children	3, including Kriemhild Buhl
Climbing career
Known for	1953 German–Austrian Nanga Parbat expedition
First ascents	Nanga Parbat Broad Peak

Hermann Buhl (21 September 1924 – 27 June 1957) was an Austrian mountaineer. His accomplishments include the first ascents of Nanga Parbat in 1953 and Broad Peak in 1957. He is one of the pioneers of the alpine style. Buhl was the father of Austrian-German writer, publisher, and freelance journalist, Kriemhild "Krimi" Buhl.

Personal Life

Buhl was born in Innsbruck, Austria. He was the youngest of four children. At the age of four, he was taken to an orphanage with his half-brother Siegfried after his mother Marianne, who came from South Tyrol, became mentally ill and was institutionalized. His father Wilhelm, who was overwhelmed with looking after the four children, told the children that their mother had died. However, Marianne actually became a victim of Nazi euthanasia in Mauthausen years later. Two years after moving into the orphanage, Hermann was taken in by his aunt and uncle. In the 1930s, the boy, who was considered weak and sensitive, undertook his first tours in the Tux Alps, the Wilder Kaiser and the Karwendel. In 1939, he joined the young team of the Innsbruck section, which belonged to the German Alpine Club (DAV) from 1938 to 1945. Later, together with his friend Kurt Diemberger, he was a member of the Bergland section of the DAV in Munich. Through the mediation of Luis Trenker, he was supported by the founder of the section, August Schuster, and was given a job in his sports shop.

After finishing secondary school, Hermann Buhl began an apprenticeship as a forwarding agent. World War II interrupted his commercial studies, and he joined the Alpine troops, as a mountain infantryman, in 1943. Buhl participated in the Monte Cassino, in Italy. 1949 he was founding member of the mountain rescue in Innsbruck.

In March 1951, Hermann Buhl married Eugenie (“Generl”) Högerle († 2025) from Ramsau near Berchtesgaden and in the same year became the father of Kriemhild Buhl, who would later become a writer. This was followed by daughters Silvia and Ingrid and a change of residence to his wife's hometown.

In 1957, Hermann Buhl was photographed sharing a moment with his wife and daughter, bidding farewell before embarking on another expedition. Less is known about Buhl's other daughters. In her book "Papa Lalalaya", Kriemhild Buhl offers a personal account of her father's duality as an extreme mountaineer and a devoted family man. She recounts how, despite the inherent risks of his climbing pursuits, Buhl remained deeply connected to his family, often being around his young daughters and valuing the moments spent with them.

His work as a mountain guide did not earn him much. Buhl's commitment to his family was evident even in his professional life. To support them financially, he worked as a salesman and advisor for mountaineering equipment at Sporthaus Schuster, a sportswear store in Munich.

Alpinism

Nanga Parbat

Main article: 1953 German–Austrian Nanga Parbat expedition

Before his successful 1953 Nanga Parbat expedition, 31 people had died trying to make the first ascent.

The ascent of Nanga Parbat on 3 July 1953 is Buhl's most famous summit victory. It took place as part of the Willy Merkl Memorial Expedition, organized by the Munich doctor Karl Herrligkoffer and led in conjunction with Peter Aschenbrenner as mountaineering leader. Buhl, helped by a change in the weather after an initial monsoon, reached Camp V at 6,900 m on July 2 together with Walter Frauenberger, Hans Ertl and Otto Kempter, where he and Kempter spent the night while the other two descended with the porters to Camp IV.

Buhl set off for the summit single-handedly and without additional oxygen at around 02:30 in the night and finally reached it with his last ounce of strength at around 19:00. As proof of his ascent, Hermann Buhl left his ice axe and the Pakistani flag at the summit Kempter, who had followed an hour later, had had to give up at an altitude of around 7,400 m on the plateau at the Silbersattel due to a bout of weakness and had returned to Camp V. There he waited with Frauenberger and Ertl, who had come back up, for Buhl's return.

Buhl spent the following night alone, about 1.2 km (4,000 feet) higher up than Camp V. He was only able to survive the bivouac at an altitude of almost 8,000 metres without bivouac equipment because of the unusually favourable weather conditions. However, he suffered frostbite on two of his toes. He still had most of the descent ahead of him. At times he was in a dangerous state of apathy and was haunted by perceptual illusions. He took Pervitin. After 41 hours, in a state of extreme exhaustion and extremely dehydrated, he arrived back at Camp V, where hopes of his return had already begun to fade. In the days that followed, Buhl also managed the descent to the main camp under his own steam, arriving there on July 7. Here it turned out that his frostbitten toes could not be saved and had to be amputated. He therefore had to be carried on the rest of the return march. Hans Ertl made a documentary film called Nanga Parbat about this expedition.

A dispute arose between Herrligkoffer and Buhl after the expedition due to Herrligkoffer's authoritarian leadership and Buhl's refusal to follow orders without question. This led to legal issues over exploitation rights and Buhl's desire to publish his own account of the summit victory, which he achieved despite being ordered by to retreat.

Buhl is the only mountaineer to have made the first ascent of an eight-thousander solo, this was on his first ever visit to the Greater Ranges. Regardless, his monumental efforts, along with spending the night standing on a tiny pedestal too small to squat upon, untethered, on the edge of a 60-degree ice slope, have become mountaineering legend, described by Bonington as "a magnificent achievement". In 1999, Buhl's ice axe, which had been left behind on the summit, was found by a Japanese expedition and returned to his widow.

Broad Peak

Hermann Buhl memorial plaque in the August-Schuster-Haus with original pennant

Fritz Wintersteller and Kurt Diemberger reached the forepeak (8030 m) on May 29 1957, during the course of the Austrian expedition led by Marcus Schmuck. However, it was a few days later, between June 8 and 9, that Wintersteller, Schmuck, Diemberger, and Buhl reached the true summit of Broad Peak (8051m), and achieved the first successful ascent of the mountain. Buhl was approaching the summit in the twilight, at around 6:30pm. The ascent was accomplished without the aid of supplemental oxygen, high-altitude porters or base camp support. The original pennant with the logo of the Bergland section, with which Buhl took the summit photo, is on display in the restaurant of the August-Schuster-Haus in Garmisch-Partenkirchen. This summit photo and Buhl's last letter to his comrades from Bergland can be found in the commemorative publication for the 50th anniversary of the Bergland section in 1958.

Chogolisa

Just a few weeks after the successful first ascent of Broad Peak, Buhl and Diemberger made an attempt on nearby, unclimbed Chogolisa (7665 m) in Alpine style. Buhl lost his way in an unexpected snow storm and walked over a huge cornice on the East Ridge, near the summit of Chogolisa II (7654 m; also known as Bride Peak), subsequently triggering an avalanche that hurled him down 900 m over Chogolisa's Northeast Face. His body could not be recovered and remains in the ice. On the basis of a photo of the crash site taken by Diemberger, it can be seen from the footprint in the snow that Buhl had probably briefly lost his bearings in the snowstorm and got too close to the edge of the cornice, whereupon the cornice gave way under his weight.

Legacy

Hermann Buhl was the first person to climb an eight-thousander on the final section alone and without additional oxygen. Austrian sports journalists voted him “Sportsman of the Year 1953” on January 21, 1954.

Due to his sensational first ascents in the Alps and the Karakoram, he is still considered by experts to be one of the most important rock climbers and high-altitude mountaineers of all time. His approach to extreme alpinism broke with the national mountaineering ideals of earlier decades. Buhl was guided by personal motives such as the desire to push the limits. Rather than heavy equipment battles on the mountain, he preferred light luggage, fast ascents and alpinism without additional oxygen. His ascents on rock and snow, solo and as a rope leader, his attitude towards the mountain and his physical elegance have been assessed by such contemporary luminaries as Kurt Diemberger, Marcus Schmuck, Heinrich Harrer, Walter Bonatti and Gaston Rébuffat. He was also an idol and hero of climbers of younger generations, such as Reinhold Messner, Peter Habeler and Hansjörg Auer.

49 years after Buhl's death on Chogolisa, the Austrian mountaineer and alpine historian Markus Kronthaler undertook the expedition Auf den Spuren von Hermann Buhl on Broad Peak and lost his life on July 8, 2006.

Honoring

Hermann-Buhl Platz Innsbruck

On September 24, 2012, the previously unnamed square in front of the Hungerburgbahn mountain station in Innsbruck was named Hermann-Buhl-Platz after Hermann Buhl.

His expedition to Nanga Parbat was dramatized by Donald Shebib in the 1986 film The Climb, based in part on Buhl's own writings about the expedition and starring Bruce Greenwood as Buhl.

Publications

• Buhl, Hermann (1956). Nanga Parbat Pilgrimage. Hodder & Stoughton. ASIN B0000CJH7J.
• Buhl, Hermann (1999). Nanga Parbat Pilgrimage: The Lonely Challenge. Seattle, WA, USA.: Mountaineers Books. ISBN 0-89886-610-3.

See also

• List of famous Austrians
• List of Austrian mountaineers
• List of climbers

Literature

• Karl M. Herrligkoffer: Nanga Parbat 1953. Verlag Neues Leben, Berlin 1954.
• Marcus Schmuck: Broad Peak 8047 m. Meine Bergfahrten mit Hermann Buhl. Das Bergland-Buch, Stuttgart 1958.
• Lionel Terray: Große Bergfahrten. Mit einer Einleitung von Luis Trenker. Schlussteil und Redaktion von Kurt Diemberger. Nymphenburger Verlag, Munich 1984, ISBN 3-485-01757-4.
• Hermann Buhl: Allein am Nanga Parbat und große Fahrten. Foreword by Reinhold Messner, biography by Lia Hörmann. Steiger-Verlag, Innsbruck, 1984, ISBN 3-85423-036-2.
• Horst Höfler, Reinhold Messner (Publisher): Am Rande des Möglichen. AS Verlag, Zurich 2003, ISBN 3-905111-88-8.
• Jochen Hemmleb: Broad Peak „Traum und Alptraum“ Auf den Spuren von Hermann Buhls letzter Expedition. Tyrolia, Innsbruck 2008, ISBN 978-3-7022-2811-8.
• Kriemhild Buhl: Mein Vater Hermann Buhl. Das Leben der Eltern ist das Buch, in dem die Kinder lesen. Herbig, Munich 2007, ISBN 978-3-7766-2506-6.
• Kurt Diemberger: Seiltanz. Die Geschichten meines Lebens. Malik, Munich 2007, ISBN 978-3-89029-328-8.
• Richard Sale: Broad Peak. Carreg, Ross-on-Wye 2007, ISBN 978-0-9538631-5-0.

External links

• Overview Team Members of the Austrian OEAV Karakoram Expedition 1957
• Hermann Buhl Page with biography and many photos, in German