1. Skip to content
  2. Skip to main menu
  3. Skip to more DW sites

Our guest on 06.06.2010 Reinhold Messner, Extreme Mountaineer and Author

In light of ten years of Attac, Peter Craven talks to Reinhold Messner about political activism and a sustainable economy. They discuss the chances of the German national team at the World Cup in South Africa.

https://p.dw.com/p/NcHJ

Many consider him the greatest mountaineer of all time, and Reinhold Messner is certainly not one to do things by halves. He was the first person to climb Mount Everest without any supplementary oxygen and the first to climb the world’s fourteen eight thousand meter peaks. At the tender age of five, he climbed his first three thousand meter mountain with his father. By the time he was twenty, he had scaled some one hundred Alpine peaks and had already gained a reputation as an extreme mountaineer. But Reinhold Messner is perhaps most famous for his Himalaya expedition. In 1970, he and his younger brother Günther climbed the Nanga Parbat, the world’s highest steep face. But the successful experience turned into a disaster when Günther died on the descent. Although he still struggles with the events today, Messner has continued to devote himself to mountain climbing. He attracted international attention when he climbed the 8,848 meter high Mount Everest with his colleague Peter Habeler in 1978 without supplementary oxygen. Two years later he climbed Everest again, this time alone. By 1986 he had become the first person in the world to have scaled all fourteen of the world’s 8,000 meter peaks.Then in 1989 and he and German mountaineer Arved Fuchs set out to cross the Antarctic on foot. Three years later, he and his brother Herbert walked across Greenland. He has recounted his extreme experiences in several books and films, including Werner Herzog’s 1984 production "Dark Glow of the Mountains". More recently he worked as an advisor to Joseph Vilsmaier during the making of his film „Nanga Parbat. Besides his insatiable appetite for adventure Messner is outspoken in his support of environmental causes. He spent five years in the European Parliament as a representative of the Italian Green party. In 1993 Messner bought a listed mountain castle in South Tirol. He turned it into a family home complete with farm and vineyard and gave part of it over to one of the four museums he has founded in the region.