Beyond the Past? Mountains as a Contested Space

WITH THE DEMISE OF THE THIRD REICH in 1945, Germany, for the second time in less than thirty years, was faced with the challenge of renewing itself, of (re-)defining its identity as a nation. This time around the situation was even more complicated than after the First World War: split into four occupation zones (American, British, French, Soviet) and divided by two political philosophies (Western-style democracy and Soviet-style communism), the occupied zones would eventually pursue competing paths to this identity, resulting in the founding of the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG or “West Germany”) in May 1949 and the German Democratic Republic (GDR or “East Germany”) in October of the same year. While the architects of the new West German state looked to the brief democratic tradition of the Weimar Republic for guidance, many average Germans in the West initially avoided this challenge, opting not to deal with the recent past at all, to characterize themselves as having been apolitical and therefore unknowing (with the implication that they were innocent), and to focus on the challenge that lay immediately ahead: rebuilding West Germany in a physical and economic sense.

A similar “ideological” competition may be observed in regard to the future leadership and, consequently, the role and mission of Germany's (and Austria's) largest mountaineering organization, the German Alpine Association DAV. The dissolution of National Socialist Germany, the dissembling of its administrative structures, including the Fachamt Bergsteigen im Deutschen Reichsbund für Leibesübungen, as well as the organizational ban of the German Alpine Association by the Allied Control Council on October 10, 1945, had created an organizational and ideological vacuum that needed to be filled. As Fritz Schmitt, head of the Munich Sektion Bayerland, described the situation in the fall of 1949: “When, after 1945, despite collapse, ruins, misery, and occupation, the mountains still proved their idealistic and romantic charisma; when the culture-seeking vision of the Alpine Association once again stirred in the minds and souls, different paths were taken to reach a new beginning, although not a goal.”