Karl Wien

Charles ( " Pete " ) Wien ( born September 10, 1906 in Würzburg, † probably June 14, 1937 on Nanga Parbat ) was a German mountaineer.

Life

Karl Vienna, the son of a university professor and physicist Wilhelm Wien, who was awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1911, studied after high school in 1924 at the Munich Wilhelmsgymnasium Geography at the Ludwig- Maximilians- University in Munich and became a lecturer.

Vienna made ​​his first mountain experience in the Alps, where he managed the first ascent of the north face of the Grossglockner with Willo Welzenbach. Between 1924 and 1928 he was repeatedly active Board of the Academic Alpine Club of Munich. Outside Europe, he made several visits to Africa and the Himalayan region. To reach him, and Erwin Schneider, 1928, the first ascent of Pik Lenin in the Pamirs, with 7134 meters the highest then climbed mountain. In 1931 he was a member of the Kangchenjunga expedition under the direction of Paul Bauer. As part of the Sikkim Expedition 1936 Vienna was achieved together with Adolf Göttner the first ascent of the 6888 meter high Siniolchu.

A year later, Karl Vienna was chosen to the German Nanga Parbat Expedition 1937 on the " mountain of fate of the Germans" to lead. This was a new attempt to make the first ascent of Nanga Parbat after during the German Nanga Parbat Expedition 1934 ten climbers - Alfred Drexel, Uli Wieland, Willo Welzenbach, Willy Merkl and six Sherpas - found death. On the night of 14th to June 15th, 1937 camped Vienna and his comrades in Camp IV, when a massive ice and snow avalanche from the seracs of the glacier Rakhiot broke and spilled the Mountaineers. Seven German and nine Sherpas were killed, only the expedition doctor Uli air survived in a deeper stock. This disaster is considered to this day as the greatest misfortune on an eight-thousanders. After announcement of this tragic event organized Paul Bauer, head of the German Himalaya Foundation, an expedition to recover the bodies.

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