Locating Himalayan porters in the Archivalien der Expeditionsgesellschaften of the German Alpine Club (1929–1939)

Table of Con­tents
Ger­many in the Himalayas  | Himalayan porters in the Ger­man archive  | Abbre­vi­a­tions |   End­notes  | Bib­li­og­ra­phy

The end of the nine­teenth cen­tu­ry wit­nessed the start of climb­ing expe­di­tions in the Himalayas that were dis­tinct from the ear­li­er expe­di­tions that focused on sur­vey­ing and explor­ing the region. Euro-Amer­i­can climbers became fas­ci­nat­ed with the idea of climb­ing the world’s high­est peaks and in the ear­ly twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry launched attempts to break the alti­tu­di­nal record. While the Eng­lish began their attempts at climb­ing Mount Ever­est from 1922 onwards, Ger­man climbers launched their Himalayan expe­di­tions with their first attempt to climb Kangchen­jun­ga in 1929. Between 1929 and 1939, Ger­mans under­took eleven moun­taineer­ing expe­di­tions to the Himalayan peaks. They were com­pa­ra­ble only to the attempts by the British climb­ing expe­di­tions in the same period.

The Deutsche Alpen­vere­in (DAV – Ger­man Alpine Club) and the Deutsche Himala­ja-Stiftung (DHS – Ger­man Himalaya Foun­da­tion) were the two insti­tu­tions that pro­vid­ed most of the sup­port for these expe­di­tions. The DAV was estab­lished in 1869 in Munich for the pro­mo­tion and sup­port of Alpine tourism. It merged with the Öster­re­ichis­ch­er Alpen­vere­in (ÖAV – Aus­tri­an Alpine Club) in 1873 to form the Deutsch­er und Öster­re­ichis­ch­er Alpen­vere­in (DuÖAV – Ger­man and Aus­tri­an Alpine Club). In 1911, the DAV Muse­um was set up on Prater Island in Munich and still holds the archive at the same address.[1] 

Unlike state or eco­nom­ic archives, the archive of the DAV is a small­er and more spe­cif­ic insti­tu­tion. It is orga­nized in sev­en hold­ings (Bestände):

1. Archiva­lien des DAV, des DuÖAV und der Sek­tio­nen (Records of the DAV, the DuÖAV and the Sections)
2. His­torische Doku­mente zur Alp­ingeschichte (His­tor­i­cal doc­u­ments on alpine history)
3. Archiva­lien der Expe­di­tion­s­ge­sellschaften (Archives of the Expe­di­tion Societies)
4. Fotografien und Postkarten (Pho­tographs and postcards)
5. Per­so­nen­nach­lässe (Pri­vate papers)
6. Werbe­mit­tel (Adver­tis­ing material)
7. Doku­men­ta­tio­nen (Doc­u­men­ta­tions)

With­in the frame­work of Indo-Ger­man entan­gle­ments, the hold­ing titled Archiva­lien der Expe­di­tion­s­ge­sellschaften is of spe­cif­ic inter­est, as it holds the files, pho­to archive, film and audio mate­r­i­al of the Ger­man Himalayan Foun­da­tion (Akten, Fotoarchiv, Film- und Ton­ma­te­r­i­al der Deutschen Himala­ja-Stiftung). The indi­vid­ual files of this hold­ing orig­i­nate from the many Himalayan expe­di­tions under­tak­en dur­ing the twen­ti­eth century.

This post aims to pro­vide a guide to this spe­cif­ic hold­ing of the DAV archive that doc­u­ments the begin­ning of Ger­man moun­taineer­ing efforts in the Himalayas and, in doing so, high­lights a unique facet of Indo-Ger­man his­to­ry as it attempts to uncov­er traces of the non-elite or native expe­di­tion labour­ers. The first sec­tion pro­vides the con­text and tra­jec­to­ry of the expe­di­tions, high­light­ing the con­di­tions under which such mate­ri­als were pro­duced. The sec­ond sec­tion focus­es on the hold­ing in the archive and the var­i­ous mate­ri­als that refer to the expe­di­tions’ labourers.

Germany in the Himalayas

The Weimar years (1918–1933) marked a shift in the atti­tude towards moun­tains and moun­taineer­ing in Ger­many from recu­per­a­tive recre­ation to an asser­tion of the ide­ol­o­gy of the nation. Accord­ing to Lee Holt, the First World War changed the envi­sion­ing of the Alps, as they became “a micro­cosm of the nation, a geo­graph­ic site where moun­taineers would train the next gen­er­a­tion of sol­diers” (Holt 2008: 4). The 1920s saw the emer­gence of the alpine jour­nals of Ger­many and Aus­tria encour­ag­ing peo­ple to look to the moun­tains for strength and inspi­ra­tion, as the moun­tains would be the rem­e­dy for the sick and weak nation (ibid.). The jour­nals also called for the re-estab­lish­ment of Germany’s geopo­lit­i­cal pres­ence, so Ger­man alpine orga­ni­za­tions launched var­i­ous expe­di­tions beyond their tra­di­tion­al area of activ­i­ty into the Pamirs and the Himalayas. The new moun­taineer embod­ied a new mas­culin­i­ty that drew upon sev­er­al dif­fer­ent dis­cours­es of the Weimar Repub­lic: body, behav­iour, moral­i­ty and spir­i­tu­al­i­ty became the quin­tes­sen­tial qual­i­ties of a moun­taineer who fre­quent­ly rep­re­sent­ed both the Ger­man nation and the promise of an impe­r­i­al future (Ibid: 81).

It was with­in this con­text that Ger­man moun­taineers start­ed look­ing towards the Himalayas and marked the begin­ning of a pro­longed effort to con­quer Himalayan peaks, in par­tic­u­lar two peaks: Kangchen­jun­ga (8598 m) in the east­ern Himalayas and Nan­ga Par­bat (8126 m) in the west­ern Himalayas. The first such expe­di­tion, led by Paul Bauer, was to Kangchen­jun­ga in 1929. With a team of eight Ger­mans and two Eng­lish­men deputised to the expe­di­tion by the British colo­nial gov­ern­ment, it man­aged to climb to a height of 7,400 meters, but failed to reach the sum­mit. Anoth­er expe­di­tion in 1930 led by the Aus­tri­an Gün­ter Oskar Dyhren­fürth (Die Inter­na­tionale Himalaya-Expe­di­tion (IHE)) attempt­ed the same peak, but, hav­ing failed, attempt­ed and suc­ceed­ed in climb­ing the neigh­bour­ing Jong­song, Ram­tang and Nepal peaks. Bauer launched anoth­er expe­di­tion to Kanchen­jun­ga in 1931, but man­aged to ascend only to a height of 7,775 m, the high­est alti­tude ever reached by any per­son at that time. But, just as in 1929 dur­ing his first expe­di­tion, he again could not reach the peak.

Hav­ing failed to scale the third high­est peak of the world, there was a shift in focus towards Nan­ga Par­bat in the west­ern Himalayas, to which the Ger­mans felt they had a con­nec­tion. The dis­cov­ery of Nan­ga Par­bat is ascribed to Adolf Schlag­in­tweit,[2] who in 1856 trav­elled this region and not­ed this par­tic­u­lar sum­mit for its tow­er­ing height, over­shad­ow­ing all oth­er snowy peaks (Mason 1955: 82). The first climb­ing attempt is attrib­uted to the British climber A.F Mum­mery, who tried to scale it in 1895. How­ev­er, this attempt end­ed in tragedy with the dis­ap­pear­ance of Mum­mery and the Gurkha sol­diers who accom­pa­nied him.

In 1932, per­mis­sion was giv­en to a Ger­man-Amer­i­can Himalayan Expe­di­tion led by Willy Merkl to climb Nan­ga Par­bat, but it failed to reach the sum­mit, owing to weath­er con­di­tions and labour trou­bles. Prepa­ra­tion for anoth­er attempt began almost imme­di­ate­ly with renewed sup­port from the Ger­man gov­ern­ment. In 1933, the Ger­man Alpine Club was brought under the Deutsch­er Reichs­bund für Leibesübun­gen, (DRfL – Ger­man Nation­al Fed­er­a­tion for Phys­i­cal Exer­cise) (Holt 2008: 265). This move brought the nar­ra­tive of Ger­man moun­taineer­ing under the con­trol of the Nation­al Social­ist par­ty, which had come to pow­er in Ger­many. The Reich Sports Leader Hans von Tscham­mer und Osten pro­vid­ed gov­ern­ment sup­port to the expe­di­tion by apply­ing for and get­ting approval for the nec­es­sary trav­el visas through British India. Hav­ing received greater fund­ing through the Bund der deutschen Reichs­bahn-Turn- und Sportvere­ine (Sports Club of the Ger­man State Rail­ways), Not­ge­mein­schaft der Deutschen Wis­senschaft (Soci­ety for Ger­man Sci­en­tists) and the DuÖAV, this expe­di­tion was the grand­est so far in terms of its abil­i­ty to equip and pro­vide for not only the Ger­man climbers but also the Sher­pa porters, who were recruit­ed from Dar­jeel­ing (Bech­told 1936: xvi­ii). This expe­di­tion end­ed in dis­as­ter with the deaths of four Ger­man climbers – Alfred Drex­el, Uli Wei­land, Wil­lo Welzen­bach and Willy Merkl – and six Sher­pa porters from Dar­jeel­ing – Nima Nor­bu, Nimu Dor­je, Dak­shi, Gay­lay, Pin­zo Nor­bu and Nima Tashi. At that time, reports of what was con­sid­ered the great­est-ever climb­ing dis­as­ter spread across the world and espe­cial­ly to the Ger­man public.

In the Ger­man imag­i­na­tion, Nan­ga Par­bat became renowned as the Schick­sals­berg – the moun­tain of des­tiny (Höbusch 2002). Renewed efforts to climb the peak mate­ri­al­ized in the form of the estab­lish­ment of the Ger­man Himalayan Foun­da­tion (Deutsche Himalaya Stiftung) under the Min­istry of Cul­ture in Bavaria in 1936 (Mier­au 1999). The foun­da­tion was cre­at­ed to sup­port climb­ing and sci­en­tif­ic expe­di­tions to the Himalayas and marked a new chap­ter in Ger­man efforts to con­quer the Himalayan peak, as it pro­vid­ed even greater sup­port for plan­ning such expe­di­tions. In the same year, per­mis­sion was denied for any expe­di­tions to this region due to the Kash­mir Durbar’s appre­hen­sions about such enter­pris­es’ demands on the resources of the land. An expe­di­tion to Sin­iolchu peak in Sikkim was instead organ­ised with Paul Bauer as leader. It suc­ceed­ed in the first-ever ascent of Sin­iolchu (6891 m) and oth­er sur­round­ing peaks – Simvu (6550) and Nepal peak (7150 m). A mem­ber of this expe­di­tion, Karl Wien, became the leader of the next Nan­ga Par­bat expe­di­tion in 1937. This attempt turned out to be a big­ger dis­as­ter than the pre­vi­ous one, with six­teen fatal­i­ties (sev­en Ger­man climbers and nine porters). An ice avalanche com­plete­ly wiped out Camp IV, where the six­teen mem­bers had camped.

The dis­as­ters of 1934 and 1937 were glo­ri­fied to the Ger­man pub­lic in fic­tion and news­pa­per pub­li­ca­tions as the sac­ri­fice of eleven Ger­man patri­ots. Harold Höbusch shows how Ad. W. Krüger’s nov­el Der Kampf um den Nan­ga Par­bat (The Strug­gle for Nan­ga Par­bat, 1941) dra­ma­tizes the 1934 expe­di­tion and puts great empha­sis on loy­al­ty and cama­raderie (Höbusch 2003: 27). The deaths of the moun­taineers were ele­vat­ed to mar­tyr­dom and used for pro­pa­gan­dis­tic pur­pos­es after the Nation­al Social­ist ascent to pow­er in 1933 (Höbusch 2003: 32). Fritz Bechtold’s Deutsche am Nan­ga Par­bat (1935 – Ger­mans on Nan­ga Par­bat), the most famous work of Ger­man alpine lit­er­a­ture in the first half of the twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry, went through twelve edi­tions until 1944 (Holt 2008: 275). Bechtold’s nar­ra­tive of the 1934 expe­di­tion con­struct­ed the expe­di­tion in line with the fas­cist ide­ol­o­gy of sport. The key com­po­nents of his book stressed the mar­shalling of chaos into order, adhered to the Führer prin­ci­ple, depict­ed “only Ger­man” mem­bers and used mil­i­tary rhetoric to praise the sac­ri­fice of the indi­vid­ual in serv­ing the nation and dis­ci­plin­ing the body (Höbusch 2002). The doc­u­men­tary Nan­ga Par­bat: Ein Kampf­bericht der deutschen Himala­ja-Expe­di­tion 1934 (Nan­ga Par­bat: A Front­line Report on the Ger­man Himalaya Expe­di­tion of 1934, 1935) was used as pro­pa­gan­da in the Third Reich for over two years and was also shown at the end of the Win­ter Olympics of 1936 (Holt 2008: 275). There was anoth­er expe­di­tion in 1938 led by Paul Bauer by anoth­er route with the base camp at either Mansehra or Abb­otabad.[3] This attempt failed, and so did the sub­se­quent expe­di­tion in 1939 led by Peter Auf­schnaiter, which was cut short due to the dec­la­ra­tion of war between Ger­many and England.

Himalayan porters in the German archive

Prepa­ra­tion for such expe­di­tions required exten­sive com­mu­ni­ca­tion and co-ordi­na­tion between Ger­many and the British gov­ern­ment in India, which, apart from pro­vid­ing logis­ti­cal sup­port in the form of loan­ing trans­port offi­cers and grant­i­ng cus­toms exemp­tions, also act­ed as inter­me­di­aries to the provin­cial pow­ers in Kash­mir and Sikkim. These cor­re­spon­dences form the transna­tion­al entan­gle­ment at the lev­el of inter­na­tion­al diplo­ma­cy and col­lab­o­ra­tion between the two coun­tries. Such mate­ri­als are often locat­ed in state archives and make lit­tle men­tion of the porters who were recruit­ed for these expe­di­tions. In the absence of any Indi­an “climbers”, the porters who car­ried the loads up the moun­tains and served the Ger­man climbers were the native coun­ter­part in this Indo-Ger­man expe­ri­ence. The per­ceived prob­lem in doing research on this par­tic­u­lar group is the pauci­ty of archival mate­r­i­al. Very lit­tle is known about them. The objec­tive here is to trace evi­dence of a group of peo­ple who were so vital to these expe­di­tions but are hid­den from the dom­i­nant nar­ra­tives of moun­taineer­ing and labour history.

A clear illus­tra­tion of the pres­ence of the Himalayan porters is the 1934 expe­di­tion to Nan­ga Par­bat led by Willy Merkl, which con­sist­ed of thir­ty-five porters recruit­ed from Dar­jeel­ing, five-hun­dred Kash­miri porters and forty Balti (from Baltistan) porters. The ratio of Ger­man climbers to native porters clear­ly points to the sig­nif­i­cance of the porters. The chal­lenge is to locate them in the enor­mous paper trail these expe­di­tions left behind. The hold­ing Archiva­lien der Expe­di­tion­s­ge­sellschaften with­in the DAV Archive ori­ents the researcher towards a spe­cif­ic inter­ven­tion in Ger­man moun­taineer­ing his­to­ry, as it con­tains doc­u­ments of the Deutsche Himala­ja Stiftung (DHS). The DHS orga­nized nine expe­di­tions to the Himalayas until 1957. Fol­low­ing this, the DHS was accept­ed into the DAV and was sub­se­quent­ly renamed Himala­ja-Stiftung im DAV (the Himalaya Foun­da­tion in the DAV) (Mier­au 1999). There­after, the Himala­ja-Stiftung con­tin­ued to sup­port var­i­ous expe­di­tions until its dis­so­lu­tion in 1998. In 1994, the Stiftung’s archive was trans­ferred to the cen­tral archive of the DAV in Munich, where it has been com­piled under the hold­ing men­tioned above; this post looks at the ear­ly years of the Stiftung’s operation.

The list of records of the DHS from its con­cep­tion in 1936 to its dis­so­lu­tion in 1998 is avail­able in the online find­ing aid https://www.historisches-alpenarchiv.org/ (as are records from oth­er hold­ings of the DAV). On inputting key­words such as “indi­en” or “himala­ja”, the online find­ing aid pro­vides a com­pre­hen­sive list of archival mate­r­i­al rang­ing from writ­ten records (Schriftgut) to pho­tographs and maps from the var­i­ous expe­di­tions. The find­ing aid pro­vides search results down to spe­cif­ic writ­ten or visu­al records. These doc­u­ments appear with the sig­na­ture EXP, which sig­ni­fies the doc­u­ments with­in the hold­ing of the expe­di­tion organ­i­sa­tion or soci­eties (Expe­di­tion­s­ge­sellschaften). More spe­cif­ic key­words like “Merkl” or “Dyhren­fürth” pro­vide fur­ther infor­ma­tion; their use pre­sup­pos­es a more thor­ough pri­or knowl­edge of spe­cif­ic indi­vid­u­als involved in the expe­di­tions. How­ev­er, the search results are not an exhaus­tive list, as some doc­u­ments in con­nec­tion with the expe­di­tions are found across oth­er hold­ings of the archive. An exam­ple to illus­trate this is the 1936 expe­di­tion to Sin­iolchu led by Paul Bauer. Most of the infor­ma­tion per­tain­ing to this is locat­ed in the soci­ety hold­ing and appears with the sig­na­ture EXP. How­ev­er, a report by a mem­ber of the same expe­di­tion, Fritz Schmitt, is found in the pri­vate paper hold­ing (Per­so­nen­nach­lässe) under the sig­na­ture NAS. Fur­ther, mis­cel­la­neous cor­re­spon­dences can also be found in the hold­ings of var­i­ous sec­tions of the archive, which is recog­nised by the SEK sig­na­ture.[4]

The hold­ing of the expe­di­tion soci­eties is extreme­ly rich in data on var­i­ous aspects of the expe­di­tions, but to find infor­ma­tion on the porters requires a more care­ful analy­sis of the mate­r­i­al. The records pro­duced by these expe­di­tions can be divid­ed into two broad cat­e­gories. The first cat­e­go­ry com­pris­es expe­di­tion reports and the offi­cial pub­li­ca­tion of such reports in the form of arti­cles in jour­nals, news­pa­pers and ulti­mate­ly the pub­lished expe­di­tion mono­graph. Such mate­ri­als are iden­ti­fied by read­ing files titled “Presse” or “Bericht” (Press mate­r­i­al or Reports). The tropes such nar­ra­tives fall into are com­pa­ra­ble to those of trav­el writ­ings that begin with the traveller’s prepa­ra­tion and descrip­tion of the jour­ney. As was com­mon in trav­el lit­er­a­ture of the late nine­teenth and ear­ly twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry, the fig­ure of the native appears in anec­do­tal encoun­ters, and the writ­ers’ descrip­tion of such encoun­ters became a part of the process of knowl­edge pro­duc­tion. In their inves­ti­ga­tion of porter rela­tions in the Karako­rams, Mac­Don­ald and Butz (1998) explain that trav­el in the Himalayas was reg­u­lat­ed by a set of com­plex and large­ly tac­it rules pre­scribed by the colo­nial state, and this large­ly influ­enced the rela­tions between the trav­eller as the sahib and his native com­pan­ions as the porters or coolies (Mac­Don­ald & Butz 1998). This in turn solid­i­fied the role that such actors played and lim­it­ed their abil­i­ty to tran­scend this par­tic­u­lar posi­tion. These authors high­light the cru­cial point that labour is not a sta­t­ic cat­e­go­ry in the nar­ra­tives pro­duced about the expe­ri­ences of trav­el, moun­taineer­ing and explo­ration. The chang­ing descrip­tions of labour reflect the inter­nal agency of the labour­ers (Mac­Don­ald & Butz 1998: 300–301). Such accounts cre­ate nar­ra­tives of the expe­ri­ences gen­er­at­ing knowl­edge in which the descrip­tive becomes the nor­ma­tive. These doc­u­ments are pep­pered with anec­dotes men­tion­ing par­tic­u­lar porters, often nar­rat­ing par­tic­u­lar instances, which in turn become part of the cor­pus that becomes com­plic­it in cre­at­ing and per­pet­u­at­ing stereo­types. The files con­tain­ing press mate­r­i­al also often men­tion the porter as part of the logis­ti­cal data. How­ev­er, on rare occa­sions, a larg­er report on the porters can be found, most­ly in the after­math of a dis­as­ter in the mountain.

The sec­ond cat­e­go­ry of archival mate­r­i­al is files con­tain­ing exten­sive lists of Aus­rüs­tung und Verpfle­gung (Equip­ment and Pro­vi­sions), Finanzen (Finances), Ver­schiedene Erk­lärun­gen (Var­i­ous Expla­na­tions) etc. These records range from thick files con­tain­ing numer­ous cor­re­spon­dences and draft lists of food items and equip­ment to be pro­cured and packed in var­i­ous box­es for the expe­di­tion to pay­rolls and the dis­tri­b­u­tion of loads dur­ing the advance and load-fer­ry­ing up and down the moun­tain. Loose doc­u­ments detail exten­sive plan­ning of what kind of food and equip­ment to be car­ried not only for the climbers, but for the porters as well. This detailed atten­tion to the pro­vi­sions pro­vides infor­ma­tion on minute aspects of the organ­i­sa­tion, but also the desire to pre­vent any delays in the expe­di­tions, as the most like­ly cause of labour trou­bles was insuf­fi­cient pro­vi­sions or cloth­ing and equip­ment. The porter is men­tioned often in two cat­e­gories – Träger and Kuli. The first term direct­ly denotes porter and the sec­ond is the oft-used term for unskilled coolie labour in the Indi­an sub­con­ti­nent. The doc­u­ments do not clear­ly men­tion a dif­fer­ence between the two and sug­gest that the terms could have been used inter­change­ably in these instances.

The most reveal­ing of all these are doc­u­ments on expe­di­tion finances. Such mate­r­i­al ranges from broad state­ments on income and expen­di­ture to the dai­ly book­keep­ing of the expe­di­tion. This mate­r­i­al con­tains the fin­ger­prints of the porter, both fig­u­ra­tive­ly and lit­er­al­ly. A file titled Brochüre con­tains details of the porters recruit­ed in Dar­jeel­ing with their per­son­al infor­ma­tion, such as their address­es, next of kin and fin­ger­prints, the details of their pay­ment depend­ing on which camp the par­tic­u­lar porter went up to and at the end a remark by the Euro­pean climber, his sahib, com­ment­ing on his per­for­mance on the moun­tain, which would deter­mine his employ­ment on future expe­di­tions.[5] The pages of this reg­is­ter account for only a hand­ful of the porters, includ­ing the cook and the sir­dar (Träger­ob­mann – porters’ fore­man) and sug­gest that these indi­vid­u­als were per­son­al­ly con­nect­ed to each climber, as it was the prac­tice to have a per­son­al ser­vant or order­ly serv­ing each indi­vid­ual climber dur­ing the course of the expe­di­tion. Such sources pro­vide the pos­si­bil­i­ty to trace pay­ments down to the indi­vid­ual porters and even an oppor­tu­ni­ty to recon­struct per­son­al his­to­ries. With­in the var­i­ous files are cor­re­spon­dences from indi­vid­ual porters them­selves. These are addressed to the Ger­man climbers like Bauer, request­ing ref­er­ences that would help them gain employ­ment on future expe­di­tions.[6] These rare cor­re­spon­dences raise the ques­tion of the lit­er­a­cy of the porters and the con­text in which they were able to write or have some­body write on their behalf.

The doc­u­ments in the Archiva­lien der Expe­di­tion­s­ge­sellschaften high­light the unique­ness of the expe­di­tion labour. They speak of an atyp­i­cal work­force with tan­gents that show link­ages to the mil­i­tary labour mar­ket, the remit­tance econ­o­my and house­hold strate­gies, as well as iden­ti­fi­able indi­vid­u­als with some lev­el of lit­er­a­cy. Recov­er­ing “hid­den tran­scripts” – con­cealed strate­gies of resis­tance or nego­ti­a­tion embed­ded in the pub­lic inter­ac­tions between groups in unequal posi­tions of pow­er – was an acces­si­ble approach for­mu­lat­ed by James Scott in order to trace the lives of sub­or­di­nat­ed groups that do not leave behind much evi­dence of their own expe­ri­ences (Scott 1990). A care­ful glean­ing of this hold­ing brings to light mate­ri­als that can help write non-elite his­to­ries, to fol­low per­son­al tra­jec­to­ries or the his­to­ry of a group of peo­ple with­out being lim­it­ed to search­ing for “hid­den transcripts”.

This hold­ing of the DAV on the expe­di­tions to the Himalayas pro­vides the details con­nect­ed with labour­ing indi­vid­u­als that can be linked to mate­ri­als from oth­er archives to per­haps write a his­to­ry of the lives of the Himalayan expe­di­tion labour.

Abbreviations

DAV — Deutsch­er Alpen­vere­in (Ger­man Alpine Club)

DHS — Deutsche Himala­ja-Stiftung (Ger­man Himalaya Foundation)

ÖAV — Öster­re­ichis­ch­er Alpen­vere­in (Aus­tri­an Alpine Club)

DuÖAV — Deutsch­er und Öster­re­ichis­ch­er Alpen­vere­in (Ger­man and Aus­tri­an Alpine Club)

IHE — Die Inter­na­tionale Himalaya-Expe­di­tion (The Inter­na­tion­al Himalaya Expedition)

DRfL — Deutsch­er Reichs­bund für Leibesübun­gen (Ger­man Nation­al Fed­er­a­tion for Phys­i­cal Exercise)

Endnotes

[1] https://www.alpenverein.de/geschichte/

[2]The archive of the DAV also holds a large col­lec­tion of pri­ma­ry mate­r­i­al from the Schlag­in­tweit brothers.

[3]“Ger­man Expe­di­tion to Nan­ga Par­bat”, Times [Lon­don, Eng­land] 2 Feb. 1938: pp. 10. The Times Dig­i­tal Archive.

[4]This post is based on the research con­duct­ed between August to Novem­ber 2019. A new online data­base will be updat­ed in March 2020.

[5]DAV EXP 2 SG/206/0

[6]DAV EXP 2 SG/197, 198, 199, 200/0

Bibliography

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Nokmedem­la Lem­tur, CeMIS, Georg-August-Uni­ver­sität Göttingen