Cities, Mountains and Being Modern in Fin-De-Siècleengland And

Cities, Mountains and Being Modern in fin-de-siècle England and Germany Ben Anderson Cities, Mountains and Being Modern in fin-de-siècle England and Germany Ben Anderson Cities, Mountains and Being Modern in fin-de-siècle England and Germany Ben Anderson Keele University Department of History Keele, UK ISBN 978-1-137-53999-1 ISBN 978-1-137-54000-3 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-54000-3 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2020 The author(s) has/have asserted their right(s) to be identified as the author(s) of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institu- tional affiliations. Cover illustration: bilwissedition Ltd. & Co. KG / Alamy Stock Photo This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Limited. The registered company address is: The Campus, 4 Crinan Street, London, N1 9XW, United Kingdom To the memory of Chris Polden PREFACE In 2004, as an undergraduate I made an off-the-cuff remark to a lecturer that rural space might have been just as much about ‘conducting’ oneself as the city. It has taken almost two decades, but I hope that this book justi- fies that comment. I have spent over a decade working on this project—in that time, my work and life has been guided, influenced, improved, critiqued and dis- cussed by an astonishing array of friends and colleagues from across Europe. When I began, this book was my objective and goal; along the way, I realised that those connections were the real gain, and that this book is a reflection and celebration of them. Doubtless I will have missed someone in the following list, but in roughly chronological order, many thanks to: Catherine Feely, Jim Greenhalgh, Ben Wilcock, Tom White, Sheona Davies, Kat Fenelly, Charlie Wildman, Eloise Moss, Ian Boutle, Matt Adams, Beck Conway, Patrick Doyle, Tom Sharp, Dafydd Launder, Alex Mitchell and anyone who likes picnicking on Wednesdays. Andy Lole, Helen Boothman, Alex Cannon, Sarah Rouse, Simon Bates, Jo Solomon, Jamie Hill, Sam and Chris Watson, Dave Barrans, Andrew and Claudia Parker, Chris Todd, Dave Morse, Sophie Fosker, Merc Incles, Mark Stowe, Jane Graham, Ali Iredale, Lizzie and Sam Moxon, Jago and Sarah Warburton, Tim Marjot, Graham Johnson, Deano Maywhort and anyone else who has been dragged/dragged me climbing, running, swimming, riding or skiing when there wasn’t enough time. Luke and Jilli Taylor and Simon and Sonya Hudson for being old friends abroad, and the many resi- dents of the brilliant Pater-Rupert-Mayer-Heim for being new ones. vii viii PREFACE Stephan Ritter, Martin Achrainer, Monica Gärtner, Doris Hallama, Ingeborg Schmitt-Mummert, Mike Dent, Florian Rosenberg and other colleagues at archives in Munich, Innsbruck, the Ötztal, Leutasch and Vienna. The enormously helpful co-workers at other archives—Greater Manchester County Record Office, Frankfurt City Archive, Munich City Archive, Bavarian State Archives, the Musterschule, Bavarian State Library, Mountain Heritage Trust and others. Paul Readman, Clare Roche, Jonathan Westaway, Marco Armiero, Paul Gilchrist, Mark Freeman, Marianne Dudley, Leona Skelton, Thomas Ebert, Rosamund Ridley, Douglas Hope, Robert Gray, Iain Robertson, Matt Kelly, Franziska Torma, Charlotte Lauder and many others for advice and comments. Tine Blum, and friends in Tübingen and Innsbruck for helping me through my PhD. Iain Robertson and Vicki Leanne Randall for helping me after it. My Keele colleagues and friends, but especially Rachel Bright, Alannah Tomkins, Anthony Kauders and Shalini Sharma for reading chapters. Special thanks to my PhD supervisors Leif Jerram and Max Jones, whose advice and support far transcended supervision, as well as my exam- iners Simon Gunn and Maiken Umbach, who have offered such support since, and to the reviewer for their kind, but helpful comments. Finally of course, my parents, who have put up with a lot, and most of all Gemma Ford and Olive Ford Anderson, without whom I might never have actually finished the thing. This work was supported by the Arts and Humanities Research Council Doctoral Award no. 7133670. Keele, UK Ben Anderson 2019 CONTENTS 1 Introduction 1 2 Mountaineers in the City 25 3 Mountaineers Against the City 65 4 Constructing the Alps 99 5 Time 139 6 Risk and Danger 175 7 Beyond the Nation 219 8 The Indoors in the Outdoors 253 9 Conclusion 281 ix x Contents Glossary 289 Index 291 ABBREVIATIONS AAVM Akademischen Alpenvereins München ADAV Archiv des deutschen Alpenvereins Alpenverein Deutsche und Oesterreichische Alpenverein AOeAV Archiv des Oesterreichische Alpenvereins AVAST Alpenvereinsarchiv Südtirol. CCJ Climbers’ Club Journal CHA Co-operative Holidays Association Comradeship Comradeship: The magazine of the Co-operative Holidays Association, in connection with the National Home Reading Union DAZ Deutsche Alpenzeitung FRCC Journal Fell and Rock Climbers’ Club Journal GMCRO Greater Manchester County Records Office MDOeAV Mitt(h)eilungen des deutschen und oesterreichischen Alpenvereins MNN Münchner neueste Nachrichten Naturfreund Der Naturfreund: Zeitschrift des Touristenvereins “Die Naturfreunde” Naturfreunde Touristenverein “Die Naturfreunde” ÖAZ Oesterreichische Alpenzeitung ODNB Oxford Dictionary of National Biography ÖTC Österreichische Touristen-Club/Österreichische Touristen-Klub/ Österreichische Touristenklub ÖTZ Oesterreichische Touristenzeitung RC Archive Rucksack Club Archive RC Journal Rucksack Club Journal SA München Stadtarchiv München Sektion(en) Alpenverein branch(es) StBBerlin Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin ZDOeAV Zeitschrift des deutschen und oesterreichischen Alpenvereins xi CHAPTER 1 Introduction In 1908 and 1909, the East-End railway engineer and one of the great eccentrics of pre-war mountaineering, Oscar Eckenstein (1859–1921), published his improved design for crampons—metal foot-spikes for cross- ing ice—in the Oesterreichische Alpenzeitung.1 He began his articles with a comment on the state of ‘Ice-craft’: More than 30 years have passed since I first went to the Alps, and in this time, Alpinism has in some ways made quite enormous progress. Compare, for instance, today’s knowledge of rock and rock-climbing technique to that of before! It is therefore all the stranger to me, that there are areas in which Alpinism, generally, remains almost at the same level as it was 50 years ago. This is particularly true of ice-technique, and everything related to it.2 Eckenstein was born to German émigré parents in London in 1859, but retained strong links to German culture, both as a well-known railway innovator and as a member of a European climbing network centred around meetings at Pen-y-pas in Wales, Courchevel in Italy, Zermatt in Switzerland and Vienna in Austria.3 Excluded from climbing elites in London because of his social background, controversial techniques and relationship with the ‘founder of modern magick’ and ‘Great Beast 666’ Aleister Crowley (1875–1947), Eckenstein found a place amongst the emerging avant garde of European climbers based in Vienna, Munich and the cities of Northern England.4 He has been credited with inventing a © The Author(s) 2020 1 B. Anderson, Cities, Mountains and Being Modern in fin-de-siècle England and Germany, https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-54000-3_1 2 B. ANDERSON new, more gymnastic technique of ‘balance’ climbing in the 1890s, along with advice on knots common to other European elite mountaineering circles, and the improved designs for ice-climbing equipment which accompanied this article and others.5 Eckenstein’s apparently innocuous justification of his new crampon designs, and their accompanying techniques, summarised a new relationship between mountains, mountaineers and modernity which this group had been developing for the previous three decades. For Eckenstein, ‘progress’ in the mountains—he used the German term Fortschritte—was not synonymous with first ascents, or gaining a ‘summit position’ from which to exert personal or group sover- eignty, as Peter Hansen has so carefully elucidated.6 His version of what it meant to be modern instead involved traversing the mountains more quickly, gracefully or efficiently, using improvements to equipment and body alike. Like many ‘haptic’ alpinists and rock climbers, he saw the mountains not primarily as a series of unclimbed peaks nor as

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