Heinrich Harrer

Heinrich Harrer (born 1912 in Hüttenberg, Carinthia, died 2006) was an Austrian mountaineer, explorer and geographer. He first came to wide attention in 1938, when he was part of the team that made the first ascent of the north face of the Eiger, and later through his books about Tibet. Born when Carinthia was part of Austria-Hungary, he wrote in German, but his work was read in many languages.

He studied geography and sport at the University of Graz from 1933 to 1938, though mountains were his real passion. He was set to compete at the 1936 Winter Olympics but did not take part after the Austrian team boycotted the event. In July 1938, alongside Fritz Kasparek, Ludwig Vörg and Anderl Heckmair, he reached the summit of the Eiger by its north face, a near-vertical wall that had already claimed several lives. The feat made headlines around the world, and the team was photographed with Hitler. Harrer had joined the SA, then the SS and the Nazi Party, a membership he later described as a mistake of youth. After the war he was cleared of pre-war crimes, a decision Simon Wiesenthal later supported.

In 1939 he was on an expedition to Nanga Parbat when war broke out, and British colonial authorities interned him in India. After several escape attempts, he reached Tibet in 1944 with Peter Aufschnaiter and, in January 1946, the capital, Lhasa. There he worked for the Tibetan government and became tutor to the young Dalai Lama in English, geography and some science. The two formed a friendship that lasted the rest of Harrer's life.

Back in Austria, he published Seven Years in Tibet in 1952. It was translated into 53 languages and inspired films in 1956 and 1997. Later he joined ethnographic and mountaineering expeditions to Alaska, the Andes and central Africa. His legacy rests on both a celebrated climbing feat and a account of Tibet that shaped how many Western readers came to see the country.