Heinrich Harrer - Biography, Date of Birth, Place of Birth, Filmography (Read)

Heinrich Harrer - biography, date of birth, place of birth, filmography, clips, Writer, Actor, Operator.

July 6, 1912, Huttenberg, Austria - January 7, 2006, Friesach, Austria - Austrian traveler, climber, writer, screenwriter, actor, cameraman and SS Oberscharfuhrer.

Attended real schools in Brook an der Mur and Graz. In 1929 he joined the Academic Sports Society of Graz.

From 1933 to 1938 he studied geography and played sports at the University of Graz. In October 1933 he joined the SA.

Harrer was a great skier. He was a candidate for the 1936 Olympics. However, the Austrian national team boycotted these Games. However, he won the downhill competition during the World University Games.

Harrer's most outstanding climbing achievement was the first ascent of the Eiger North Face in 1938. Thanks to him, he became famous as "the best climber in Europe."

1 April 1938 joined the ranks of the SS (No. 73.896), 1 May 1938 became a member of the NSDAP. Was an SS sports instructor. In the same year he married Charlotte (Lotte) Wegener, daughter of the geologist and meteorologist Alfred Wegener. In December 1939, they had a son, Ralph. In 1943, they divorced after Lotta sent the captive Heinrich a divorce form asking him not to interfere with her new love.

In 1939, Harrer traveled to British India as a member of the German Nanga Parbat climbing expedition. The climbers did not manage to reach the summit, but they made a path along the Diamir wall of this mountain. At the end of the expedition, all of its members were taken prisoner by the British colonial authorities in connection with the outbreak of World War II, and sent to a prisoner of war camp in India.

April 29, 1944 Harrer and three other prisoners managed to escape. Having made a long journey through the Himalayas, Harrer and his friend Peter Aufschnaiter arrived in Lhasa in February 1946. Harrer was destined to stay in Tibet for seven years. He told the Dalai Lama, who was 11 years old at the time, a lot about Western countries, which were then outlandish for Tibetans. This fact (as well as some data about his participation with Aufschnaiter in organizing the armed struggle of the Tibetans against the Chinese aggression in Tibet in 1950) is used by modern Chinese propaganda as "proof" of the connection between the Tibetan leadership and the Nazis, although the Dalai Lama himself later said that in At the time, he knew nothing about the Nazis.

After the capture of Tibet by Chinese troops in 1950, Harrer returned to Austria. Here he wrote the book "Seven Years in Tibet".

In the following years, he took part in a number of ethnographic and mountaineering expeditions, made several first ascents in Alaska (for example, he was the first to conquer Mount Hunter), in Africa and Oceania.

In 1958 Heinrich Harrer took up golf and became the Austrian amateur champion. At the age of eighty, he continued to actively engage in alpine skiing.

Harrer's Seven Years in Tibet has been translated into 53 languages. She was filmed in (1997), Jean-Jacques Annaud (starring Brad Pitt as Harrer). In total, 23 books came out from under his pen.

In his homeland of Huttenberg, Harrer founded a museum, which contains a rich collection of ethnographic materials from various countries of Asia and Africa, as well as photographs and equipment of Heinrich Harrer himself.

Harrer has won numerous awards over his more than 600 expeditions.

Heinrich Harrer and the current Dalai Lama remained close friends all their lives. In 2002, the Dalai Lama commended Harrer for his efforts to bring the situation in Tibet to the attention of the world.

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Author: Jane Watson