Translator’s Introduction

Eduard Pichl, who is considered in Alpine circles one of the most influential climbers of the early twentieth century, was born on September 15, 1872, in a small town just a few miles southwest of Vienna called Liesing, which became the city’s twenty-third district after the Anschluss—the term commonly used to designate Austria’s annexation by Nazi Germany in 1938. After studying chemistry at the Technical University in Vienna, he became a public servant in the Hauptpunzierungsamt in 1895, a public office that was tasked with overseeing the jewelry sector in Austria. Starting in 1903, he became the head of the local office in Bregenz; his career as public servant, however, was interrupted by his military service and captivity during World War I. In 1914, Pichl had volunteered as a front officer, but was wounded and held captive as a prisoner of war in Russian internment camps for nearly three years. On his release, he trained soldiers in South Tyrol to become mountain guides. After the war he returned to working as a public servant, but voluntarily retired in 1923 at the rank of Hofrat (privy councillor), fully dedicating himself to the Deutscher und Österreichischer Alpenverein (German and Austrian Alpine Association), in particular to leading the powerful Section Austria. As a proponent of führerloses Gehen (guideless climbing) Pichl was particularly involved in exploring the Carnic Alps, a range in southern Austria (Carinthia) and northeastern Italy. He died on March 15, 1955, in Lauffen, Upper Austria.

Pichl is credited with many first ascents, and various routes are named after him—for example, the “Pichlweg” on the south face of the Dachstein and on the Planspitze north face, as well as the “Pichlriß” at the Delago tower in the Dolomites. The first translation included here, which stems from an Italian collection of “psychological biographies” of prominent living mountaineers, addresses the prominence of guideless climbing and alpinism as a sport that has lost any ancillary justification, whether it be of a scientific or aesthetic nature. Written just before the outbreak of the war, it is symptomatic of the way in which mountain climbing had developed since its so-called golden age (1854–65) and, in particular, since the turn of the century.