Ferdinand Kämpfer - The Matterhorn: The Tragic First Ascent

The author: Ferdinand Kmpfer studies the bachelor's degree program in History, Politics and Society at the University of Potsdam. Since 2016, he has been giving guided tours of the city and giving lectures on the history of Thuringia in Gera. Privately, the author has often been to the Alps, so it is always fascinating for him how the rope team around Whymper climbed the Matterhorn with the simplest means.

Bibliographische Information der Deutschen Nationalbibliothek:

Die Deutschen Nationalbibliothek verzeichnet diese Publikation in der Deutschen Nationalbibliographie, detaillierte bibliographische Daten sind im Internet ber www.dnb.de abrufbar.

TWENTYSIX der Self-Publishing-Verlag

Eine Kooperation zwischen der Verlagsgruppe Random House und BoD Books on Demand

2019 Ferdinand Kmpfer

Herstellung und Verlag

Books on Demand GmbH Norderstedt

ISBN: 978-3-740-721039

The booklet is dedicated to Benedict Perren, the
descendant of the Taugwalder and Pen Hadow, the
descendant of the late Douglas Hadow.

On 14th July 1865, two competing rope teams made their way to the summit of the Matterhorn. The mountain was considered invincible until Italians and Britons had the iron will to climb the colossus in the middle of the 19th century. The team around the British alpinist Edward Whymper won the race. It was sensational that for the first time people boarded the Matterhorn for good. But his rough aura was to take revenge: when the men descended the mountain, four of the seven climbers fell into the abyss, which is why the first ascent heralded the end of the Golden Age of Alpinism. What exactly happened in the crash? Was the rope cut? Were there any thoughts of murder?

With the booklet, the memory of the seven courageous ones is to be kept upright and the events will be reproduced. It is a kind of commemorative inscription on the 155th anniversary of the first ascent, which is intended to invite you to remember.

Ferdinand Kmpfer

It all started with Edward Whymper, a young British journalist and illustrator who was sent to the mountains by the English publisher Thomas Longman to make detailed drawings of the Alps and nature. Whymper was 25 years old in 1865, the year of the first ascent of the Matterhorn, ambitious, curious and risk-taking. So it was not only when drawing the mountains from a perspective. Whymper made so-called first ascents to capture a full view of paper from the summit. So it appealed to the researched draughtsman to get from mountain to mountain as quickly as possible.

From the middle of the 19th century, the Alps found great popularity among the British. The so-called golden age of alpinism was born. However, since the 18th century there have been so-called first ascents, thus laying the foundation stone of alpinism. Swiss, French and Italians were the first people who climbed in the Alps.

The young Edward Whymper. He plays a decisive role in the first ascent of the Matterhorn.

Proof of picture:

https://www.spri.cam.ac.uk/museum/exhibitions/whymper/n5_Pic0001.jpg

As early as the 18th century, the Dufour peak, the highest peak in Switzerland at 4634metres, was named after the Swiss General Henri Dufour.

Whymper was considered an arrogant and bare-faced man who climbed many mountains but was reluctant to share his successes with other climbers. Among his ascents are the Barre des Ecrins and the Aiguille d'Argentire, which the young Englishman climbed for the first time in 1864 with the then highly respected mountain guide Michel Croz from Chamonix.

But the king of the Western Alps remained the Matterhorn. It already impersonated the people at that time, was considered rough and uncertain, which is why many climbers did not venture to the mountain. Even Whymper had failed several times. He tried, among other things, to climb the mountain from the Italian south side, the Liongrat, with the Italian mountain guide Jean-Antoin Carrel. This quickly became clear to the Briton, so he informed the other climbers that an ascent in this way was impossible.

In the middle of the 19th century, the alpinists believed that the south side of the Matterhorn was easier to climb than the north site. As early as 1862, it was climbed by Italian and British climbers such as Carrel and Tyndal, after which the then reached peak on the south side was named.

Proof of picture:

https://www.active-mountains.at/produkt/matterhorn-ueberschreitung/

The Italian Jean Antoine Carrel, like Whymper, was also a somewhat rude contemporary, but he had great experience as a mountain guide, which is why he was highly sought after.

Proof of picture:

https://archive.benjaminschudel.com/nzz/matterhorn/index.de.html?mode=static

With Carrel, Whymper decided to make another ascent over a different route. But before it happened, Carrel jumped off. The reason for this was the Italian engineer Felice Giordano, whose services Carrel had been in for a long time. In addition, the weather in the summer of 1865 literally did not promise good prospects for a long time.

On July 12, 1865, better weather set in, but Whymper still didn't have a mountain guide to climb the mountain more safely. He suspected that an ascent was already underway at that time. In fact, it turned out that Jean-Antoine Carrel was on the road and was ambitiously trying from the Italian mountain side to be the first person to arrive at the top of the summit. Hoping, he symbolically would have celebrated the Italian unification of 1861.

Fascinating view. The Swiss north side along the Hrnligrat was to be the route of the rope team around Edward Whymper in July 1865.

Proof of picture:

https://www.kienzi.ch/flights/2008/2008-11-08.htm

Edward Whymper was in the Italian village of Breuil (today Cervinia) and, after Carrel's departure, planned to climb the Matterhorn from the Zermatt, i.e. the Swiss north side. No one can say what the first ascent would have looked like if Whymper had carried out his plan on his own. But at that very moment another Briton, the nobleman Lord Francis Douglas, came to Breuil. He was also an alpinist and was on an Alpine trip to gain experience in the European mountain world. Lord Douglas came from an ancient Scottish noble family, which was widely related to the British royal family.

He introduced himself to Whymper by saying that this was the most important topic of conversation of the renowned English Alpine Club. The Alpine Club was founded in 1857 and was intended for a better society. English nobles or large citizens were regulars here. Edward Whymper, who came from poor backgrounds, naturally hoped to become a member of the important club himself. The fact that he has already been talked about proved that he was not indifferent to the high personalities. His name made the rounds, and at least that made him an ideal part of the high assembly.

When Lord Douglas told the ambitious Whymper that he had a mountain guide in Zermatt, it was not long before they both went from Breuil to Zermatt in the Swiss canton of Valais. On the way there, they passed one of the numerous mountain farms. It belonged to the Swiss family Taugwalder. Peter Taugwalder was also a mountaineer and had worked with Edward Whymper several times. He and his son, Peter Taugwalder Jr. at the time 22 years old had also become curious about the Matterhorn, so that there was a Swiss-British connection between Whymper and Lord Douglas with the Taugwalders. For them, it was a fortunate circumstance that wealthy Britons financially supported the Matterhorn ascent. Nevertheless, it is unlikely that Taugwalder senior could be persuaded only because of the money to belong to the rope team of the first ascent. An old hand, as it was Taugwalder in mountaineering, loved climbing and exploring much more than the Mammon.