From Bergsteiger to Bergkrieger: Gustav Renker, Luis Trenker, and the Rebirth of the German Nation in Rock and Ice WILFRIED WILMS U NIVERSITY OF D ENVER This essay examines reflections on and representations of the changed nature and meaning of the Alps during World War I and the Weimar years as well as the closely related emergence of a new type of soldier in the films and fiction of the later years of the Republic: the «Bergkrieger» (Renker, «Bergtage» 179). While the discovery and adulation of the mountain warrior in the late 1920s and early 1930s of course coincides with the rise of National Socialist ideology, such pre-fascist emphasis obscures that the emergence of this interest in the Alpine battles of World War I also reflects post-traumatic aspects that permeated German society after 1918. In this discursive context, the Weimar mountain film of the midto late-1920s acts as a key ingredient in the cultural transfer of wartime ideas and ideals. While at least initially not explicitly concerned with war, the mountain film responds nonetheless to Germany’s loss of World War I. The films are centered on a remarkably coherent set of themes: exploration and triumph, survival and perseverance, loss and defeat, purification and renewal, death and sacrifice, fraternal masculinity and camaraderie - all notions that determined the front experience of the modern soldier fighting in the Great War. Not only Weimar Germany’s modernity in general, but postwar Germany’s culture and affect of defeat in particular, provide the perfect breeding ground for a discursive confrontation of Germany’s recent past and present. In my understanding of the genre, therefore, mountain films exhibit psychological mechanisms for coming to terms with defeat. Aside from a few exceptions, however, accounts of the Alpine conflict itself appeared in the public sphere only from around 1930 onwards. 1 In the following, I will demonstrate how Luis Trenker’s mountain war film Berge in Flammen (The Doomed Battalion, 1931) not only intensified, even radicalized the themes of the classical mountain film of previous years, but also played a crucial role in generating a broader engagement with the war in the Alps in the years after its release. In fact, it might not be hyperbole to claim that for several generations prior to, during and after World War II, it was Trenker who personified the Alps for the average consumer in Germany and Austria. CG_42_3_s193-288_End.indd 229 CG_42_3_s193-288_End.indd 229 28.06.12 16: 18 28.06.12 16: 18 230 Wilfried Wilms Generally speaking, the mountain warrior figure still receives comparatively little interest today. In scale, impact, and attention the war in southern or southwestern Europe simply pales in comparison with the gargantuan battles on the Western Front. 2 And yet, the memoirs of the war in the Alps provide plenty of substance for interdisciplinary investigations. In one of the earliest reports from the Alpine front, which between 1915 and 1918 stretched from the Swiss border in the West to the Adriatic Sea in the East, mountain enthusiast and climber Dr. Gustav Renker, sent to the mountains as a consultant for the military, shared with fellow members of the Deutscher und Österreichischer Alpenverein impressions of permanent change brought to the peaks of the Alps by the conflict between Austria and Italy. In a 1917 essay for the Alpine club’s journal entitled «Bergtage im Felde,» Renker reports: Die Berge im Felde […] haben ihr wahres Antliz verloren […]. Was wir dereinst dort suchten, Menschenfernheit und Natur, werden wir nicht mehr wiederfinden […]. Wir werden auf ausgesprengten Wegen wandeln, werden alte Kavernen und Hütten finden, werden verlassene Geschützstände sehen und zeitweilig […] grüßt uns wohl ein schlichtes Kreuz, darunter einer der Männer in die Ewigkeit hinüberträumt, einer jener, die einst hier mit ihrem Leibe die Heimat vor Not und Kriegsgrauen schützten. (185) Reporting current events from the Alpine battlefield while, at the same time, anticipating a distant future, Renker bemoans the loss of the mountains’ purity and wholesomeness, in particular their significant existence as an alternative to life in the modern metropolis that he characterizes on a number of occasions as degenerate, artificial, and «überhitzt» (180). What was true and uncontaminated is now perpetually spoiled. But amidst his somber reflection on that loss, Renker also points to a salvation woven into the tainted grandiose nature that surrounds him. The salvation is signified in the cross that will extol the deeds of men who sacrificed their life in defense of their homeland to a degree that their bodies, hardened by an unbelievably difficult war, have become one with the rock itself: Aber haben diese Berge auch ihre Reinheit, ihr alpines Ideal verloren, so sind sie uns etwas anderes geworden, das ich zumindest ebenso hoch einschätzen möchte: gewaltige Denkmäler einer heroischen Zeit, Künder von Treue und Opfermut sondergleichen. Die Helden, die in Winterstürmen und sommerlichem Blitzgefunkel da oben lebten, kämpften und starben, haben sich in diesen Bergen, denen sie machtvoll Züge ihres eigenen Wesens eingruben […], Denkmäler gesetzt. (185) Kindred in their fundamental nature, the mountain warriors and the mountains themselves have fused their energies and spirits. The more primitive and challenging the surroundings for these men, the closer they have come to surmounting the barrier that separates man from the powers of nature. «Geht er CG_42_3_s193-288_End.indd 230 CG_42_3_s193-288_End.indd 230 28.06.12 16: 18 28.06.12 16: 18 From Bergsteiger to Bergkrieger 231 dann zugrunde, der Troglodyt […], stürzt er im Bogen über die Wand, scharrt ihn eine Lawine ein oder reißt ihm ein Granatsplitter den Leib auf, so ist es, als stürze ein hangender Block aus des Grates Zackenkrone zur Tiefe» (180). Through this fusion of men and mountains the former have become heroes, the latter monuments. The memorials resulting from this amalgamation of men and rock, Renker claims, will outlast and outshine all those synthetic monuments that will be thought up and erected on the cheap in the cities. «In den Felsbergen eurer Heimat, die ihr zu Festungen gewandelt habt, lebt ihr Männer des Alpenkrieges zur Ewigkeit» (185). 3 Renker’s new ideal of masculinity, of course, closely resembled the desires of the ultra-nationalistic forces of Germany’s shaky democracy, in particular those of Ernst Jünger’s early malodorous reflections on renewal through war - reflections that stemmed from his own experiences in the West but were certainly not limited to men fighting on these fronts. 4 And it was one of these fighting men, Luis Trenker (1892-1990), a Tyrolean climber who became an Alpine soldier before transforming through the mountain film genre into one of Weimar’s biggest movie stars, who would embody Renker’s and Jünger’s unspoiled ideal of manhood that connected toughness, closeness to the homeland, and renewal through war. In what follows, I will explore their respective visions for the rebirth of the German nation in detail. Already in his first report from the Alpine front, «Der Krieg in den Bergen,» published one year prior to his monumentalization of the new mountain warrior, Renker praises the courage and tenacity with which the Austrian and German troops defended their home against a «italienische Überschwemmung» (219). To his astonishment and distress, the mountains and their peaks have become a battle ground and are no longer the reward solely of the Alpinist who yearned for their peaks in order to refresh his «ausgepumpte Nerven» (219) and to find himself closer to eternity. 5 The Alps - in his case the Julian Alps - are faced with inevitable change. «Doch die gleichen Alpen, die gleichen Berge […] sind es nicht mehr, die wir nach Kriegsende vorfinden werden» (219-20), he writes, anticipating repercussions for those who sought rejuvenation and inspiration away from their modern lives in an environment that has been drastically altered by the hand of war. It is Renker’s stated goal to narrate this transformation, and to share it with his mountaineering readership at home. Renker’s report centers almost exclusively on the changes brought to the mountains. Actual combat is of little importance in this initial reportage from the front. Man, Renker stresses, has wounded the mountain. In his desire to make the mountains habitable, modern man has subordinated the rock and, in the process, harmed the mountains as much as the region’s flora and fauna. By blow- CG_42_3_s193-288_End.indd 231 CG_42_3_s193-288_End.indd 231 28.06.12 16: 18 28.06.12 16: 18 232 Wilfried Wilms ing trails into the rock and by building caverns, magazines, shelters, and lines of support, the modern troglodyte has changed the mountain forever. The craftiness and tenacity of the initial «Guerillakrieg, der seine Krieger hinter Felsblöcken und Graten sitzen läßt» (223), executed initially by a handful of local militia men, was soon buttressed by modern technology and by the arrival of regular troops. While the Italian Alpini made the mountain look like «eine von Maulwürfen durchscharrte Wiese» and developed «in seinem Innern ganze Systeme von Kavernen, Höhlenmagazinen und Gängen» (223), including a shaft inside the mountain leading to the summit, the Austrians turned Mittagskofel and Köpfach into «Festungsberge» (224), equipped with electricity, telephone, radio, and even music. «Der Krieg hat für die Erschließung unserer Berge mehr getan, als es jahrzehntelange Friedensarbeit hätte leisten können» (225). 6 Expressed here is Renker’s appreciation for the rapid changes introduced to the Empire’s backwater. But articulated is also a measure of doubt regarding the enduring effects on the mountains and the exclusive mountaineering community - a community that seems to carry within itself a propinquity to those men fighting, and for whom climbing skills, knowledge of the terrain, and «Berggewandheit» («Bergtage» 186) are as important as operating the war machinery. «Die Urkraft des Krieges aber ist […] der Mensch selbst. Und mehr als irgendwo anders gilt dies vom Kampf im Hochgebirge.» That our splendid «Alpenländler» fully hold their own is absolutely clear to all who know these «Volksstämme» («Krieg» 230). What Renker effectively establishes is this: the mountaineer, due to his acquaintance with the mountains, is always two steps closer to that new, admirable generation of mountain warriors. In fact, the mountaineer’s climbing experience has lifted him into a semi-militarized realm of hardship and risk, courage and tenacity, camaraderie and destiny; elements and qualities that the individualistic modern «Großstadtmensch» lacks altogether (227). What stands before the mountaineering community is a new race through which dawns a new postwar era led by unsere schneidigen, jungen Bergkrieger. […] Wo unsereiner pickelschlagend und vorsichtig geht, setzen sie sich auf der Natur diskretesten Körperteil und rutschen; wo wir Griffe suchen, fassen sie Unebenheiten; wo wir lawinenängstlich über den Firn huschen, stapfen sie singend und lachend dahin. («Bergtage» 179-80) These soldiers, Renker asserts, represent a new and incredibly cheeky generation. Death means little to these men for whom only deed and creation matters. War in the Alpine regions has transformed these men by reactivating within them a fine, instinctual sense of the animal - an instinct that the highlydeveloped homo sapiens had lost when he no longer needed to adapt himself to nature but rather adapted nature to himself. War is portrayed as transform- CG_42_3_s193-288_End.indd 232 CG_42_3_s193-288_End.indd 232 28.06.12 16: 18 28.06.12 16: 18 From Bergsteiger to Bergkrieger 233 ing the essence of mankind itself. The effect of war on pre-war Alpinism is one of reciprocity: Ich möchte die Ausübung der Alpinistik, die der Krieg gebracht hat, eine gedankenlose, mechanische nennen. Das Bewußtsein der Gefahr, das als mächtiges Stimulans auf unser Tun wirkte, das uns für das Talleben neue, tiefe Werte gab, ist […] abgetötet worden. […] Wird das Spielen mit der Gefahr nicht vielmehr das Selbstverständliche, der Beruf? (180) While often drastically altered through war, the mountains also fought back and became actors in this titanic clash. Though the high Alpine region could offer images and experiences of unrivaled beauty even in wartime, it could (and did) also deliver death on a massive scale. Aside from bullets, grenades, and even mined tunnels drilled into the rocks to blow up strongholds on mountaintops along with the peaks, 7 the equally grim forces of nature confronted the soldiers, at times claiming more lives than the fighting itself. The soldier found himself fighting what Tait Keller calls the «dual struggle with the weather and war» (266). Avalanches, followed by rescue attempts undertaken with vigor and a sense of comradely duty in the face of death (see Renker, «Krieg» 232), rockslides, cold, and lightning were a constant threat and reality. The winter of 1916-17, the years in which Renker is active as a consultant, proved especially disastrous, with record snowfalls and brutally cold temperatures. Renker contemplates the dual nature of the mountains, which both protect and devour men and country, when he recalls how an avalanche buried a great number of his comrades. Das ist die Natur unserer Berge: furchtbar und erbarmungslos in ihrer Gewalt. Und ihr Sterben, ihr Morden ist nicht der Soldatentod, der sich in den großen Gedanken des Vaterlandes dem Feinde opfert, sondern es ist die Grausamkeit des wehrlosen jähen Endes, die dem Tod die Größe und Weihe nimmt. («Bergtage» 195-96) Renker refers to these challenges, but writing for the mountaineering community he is in the end concerned with the future of Alpinism itself. While this war has changed the face of the Alps for good, it will also give birth to a generation purified and empowered by this epic struggle. «[N]eue Menschen, ein kraftvolles, sieggestärktes Geschlecht» will ascend these peaks in the future: [W]o einst der Kampf tobte, wird der lebensfrohe Gott Alpinismus zweierlei suchen: Kraft und geistige Gesundung aus der Tretmühle des täglichen Lebens und tiefe, dankbare Erinnerung an ein Heldentum, das auf jenen wilden Höhen mit unvergleichlicher Heimatsliebe seine Scholle verteidigte. («Krieg» 235-36) In Male Fantasies, Klaus Theweleit investigated the language, narrative structure, and metaphors of a vast body of Freikorps novels and memoirs, produc- CG_42_3_s193-288_End.indd 233 CG_42_3_s193-288_End.indd 233 28.06.12 16: 18 28.06.12 16: 18 234 Wilfried Wilms ing what might very well be the best analysis of the construction of a mythical masculine identity in the 1920s. Hostile to the Weimar Republic, the Freikorps members desired to restore Germany’s lost military grandeur and to refurbish the nation with a masculine ideal that longed to fuse not with the dreaded (and disintegrating) female «liquid» counterpart, but rather sought fusion of its «hard» body with the military machinery. Albeit not a member of the Freikorps proper, the young Ernst Jünger, probably more than anyone else, produced literature that united a desire for renewal through war with cogitations of masculine prowess - deliberations that will help us understand how a man like Luis Trenker could eventually be perceived as a masculine ideal by broader bands of Weimar society. In the following, let us analyze for a moment Jünger’s attempt to theorize the experience of war in one of his most notorious essays, «Der Kampf als inneres Erlebnis» (1922). If initially attracted to the ideology and hiking excursions of the Wandervogel movement, it was the Great War - and its now militarized, armed, and marching youth - that provided Jünger with the new religion he needed: it was headed by a divinity of power, a formative force that begot, in his words, an old and comfortable and over-cultivated society with new values, one that was willing and able to tear down «das graue Gemäuer der Städte» (38). Jünger’s sublime deity was war itself. What made war for Jünger an inner experience instead of a mere outer one was the recognition of war not as a negation of life, but rather as its magnificent affirmation on a higher plane. For him, behind the experience of war pulses nothing less than Hegel’s «Weltgeist» (89, 106). All of Jünger’s writings of the Weimar period, from the breakthrough literary success In Stahlgewittern (1920) to the political agitation he published throughout the 1920s, bespeak the centrality of the war experience in his conceptualization of nationhood and self, and identify him as a key figure of the new nationalism. 8 For Bernd Weisbrod, In Stahlgewittern can thus best be read as an «ego-document, a testimony to the author’s search for his identity» (Weisbrod 71). Infatuated by a desired intensification and radicalization of life, Jünger’s imagined masculinity puts forward what Weisbrod calls a «male fundamentalism» as the mythic core of a national hope of revival. The costs of a moral self-realization rooted in battle, so Weisbrod, become noticeable quickly. «His ego-documents are aesthetic and political confessions for a historical model of masculinity that reveals its final, fundamentalist basis: in the ‹will to sacrifice› lies the ‹saving deed.› In the ‹obsession with sacrifice› the ‹will to power›» (87). Not unlike Renker’s romanticized bourgeois notion of life on the edge a few years earlier, Jünger describes life in the big cities as decadent, as devoid of manliness and heroes, as guided by the false gods of the «donnernde Masse» CG_42_3_s193-288_End.indd 234 CG_42_3_s193-288_End.indd 234 28.06.12 16: 18 28.06.12 16: 18 From Bergsteiger to Bergkrieger 235 and «Gleichheit.» Life in the democratic modern metropolis, Jünger asserts, is a mere «Opiumtraum» that covers up any sign of the warrior’s singularity, masculinity, and deed with the «dünnen Tünche einer sogenannten Kultur» («Erlebnis» 58). The city hosts the tamed modern man, surrounding him with «tausend Überflüssigkeiten» (26). But no matter what codes of conduct mankind may have developed over thousands of years, in Jünger’s anthropology homo sapiens is ultimately defined and guided by his blood. Already the scarcely controlled conditions of the modern city dweller in the «aufgepeitschte Städte» (19) indicates, according to Jünger, that man’s animalistic nature has never come to rest and is today at best «gedämpft» and masked (17), but not altered. Deep down reigns what he calls the «Wollust des Blutes» (19), and we can safely assume that his notion entails the affirmative lust for blood as well. It is the experience of battle that tears the veil away; and it is in battle that the individual can reach the «Gipfel der Persönlichkeit,» expressed in the form of courage and experienced as «etwas Heiliges» (51-52). According to Jünger, the spirit of war has permanently entered those who found it on the battle fields between 1914 and 1918, holding them in its edifying grip for all times. Nicht nur unser Vater ist der Krieg, auch unser Sohn. Wir haben ihn gezeugt und er uns. Gehämmerte und Gemeißelte sind wir, aber auch solche, die den Hammer schwingen, den Meißel führen, Schmiede und sprühender Stahl zugleich, Märtyrer eigener Tat, von Trieben Getriebene. (14) Jünger eulogizes the ideal of the professional soldier as the direct opposite to an effeminate, bourgeois hodgepodge of city, peace, and democracy, identifying the universal mercenary of the renaissance, the lansquenet, as the historical forerunner of the modern trench soldier. In him Jünger sees the expression of a vigorous, strapping race that loved combat for combat’s sake. Through the lansquenet (and, by extension, his modern descendant) pulsates Hegel’s world-spirit most powerfully, surrounding him with a «männlichste [Umgebung]» expressed in «Gesichtern wie geschliffene Klingen, voll Sprung, Rasse und Energie» (60-61), and altogether lacking the soft and superfluous, the sentimental and paltry. The man reborn in storms of steel and on the freezing peaks of the mountains carries the experience on his face. It is, we are expected to believe, a chiseled or hammered face, sharp and clear. The visibility of this new countenance and age will prove to be of importance when we turn our attention to Luis Trenker as the most prominent representative of a film genre that owes much to the experiences of this war, whether it was fought on the fields of Flanders, or whether it was endured on the Alpine peaks. 9 Jünger lingers on the public CG_42_3_s193-288_End.indd 235 CG_42_3_s193-288_End.indd 235 28.06.12 16: 18 28.06.12 16: 18 236 Wilfried Wilms prominence of this supposedly inner experience to a surprising degree, using the metaphor of the face as a point of reference that alludes to a decipherable underlying character. If we believe him, this war created a holy community of men that has «das neue Gesicht der Erde gemeißelt» (53). The soldiers’ faces «die im Schatten des Stahlhelms liegen, sind scharf, kühn und klug.» Repeatedly, Jünger refers to the «Antlitz» of this new race, breed, and humanity. «Ich weiss,» Jünger writes, «sie zaudern vor der Gefahr nicht einen Augenblick; sie springen sie an, schnell, sehnig und gewandt.» And summarily: «Der Starke […] steht mit versteinertem Gesicht» (76-79) amidst the fire. During years of professional, craft-like fighting, this new man established a hard and European morality (54) oriented solely along a shared goal, irrespective of the means necessary to reach it. The torrential flood and bombast of Jünger’s ruminations finally conclude with an assurance: «[Ü]bermorgen wird von der besten Mannschaft eines großen, kriegerischen Volkes der Meißel an das neue Gesicht der Erde gelegt» (104). We are encouraged to expect that their communal work at home will be done in the same way it was done during the war: professionally and in lockstep. «Der Graben […] machte den Krieg zum Handwerk» (33) and it has molded these soldiers into one body and one will «durch Tat, Blut und Gesinnung» (103). Film soon discovered the potential of the Alpine war. Luis Trenker, himself a veteran of the war in the Dolomites, turned the conflict in the Alps into a cinematic spectacle that fascinated Weimar audiences due to its portrayal of soldierly courage, duty, and heroism, embedded in an Alpine landscape which few at the time had seen for themselves. 10 Berge in Flammen, Trenker’s account of his war experiences in the Dolomites, reached cinemas in the autumn of 1931. 11 In a society that had yet to digest two major anti-war films, Georg Wilhelm Pabst’s Westfront 1918. Vier von der Infanterie (1930) and, above all, Im Westen nichts Neues (1930) by Lewis Milestone, Trenker’s film was met with reverberating enthusiasm. F. Dammann’s review in the paper Lichtbildbühne on 29 September 1931 could barely contain his excitement: Zwei Stunden äußerster Spannung, Erregung, Aufgepeitschtheit lösen sich nach Sekunden schweigender Ergriffenheit in tosendem Beifall. […] Jeder Moment voller Spannung, Kraft, von einer Wirklichkeit, die man zu greifen meint. Schlechthin vorbildlich alles, was die «Stimmung der Mannschaft» anbelangt. There is neither histrionic heroism nor shrill mutiny against the war. It is not fun to be in this mess, we are assured, but one does one’s duty. On the same day, Hans Feld in the Filmkurier writes of a masterpiece and recalls the general «Ergriffenheit» of an audience affected by images of a deeply impressive nature. Feld’s esteem for the film is closely linked to, perhaps exceeded by, his CG_42_3_s193-288_End.indd 236 CG_42_3_s193-288_End.indd 236 28.06.12 16: 18 28.06.12 16: 18 From Bergsteiger to Bergkrieger 237 admiration for Trenker the man, when he points out how much more comfortable the actor’s life could be if only he had decided to become what Feld calls a «Ski-Fairbanks,» a swashbuckling movie star celebrating his own good looks and athleticism. To Feld, Trenker seems to possess qualities of a different nature from those of the American filmstar. He is characterized by a sober «Herbheit,» playing his part with what Feld calls «männlicher Selbstverständlichkeit.» «Luis Trenker, Bergsteiger, Bergmensch, Architekt, Schauspieler und Produzent: ein Filmkerl.» Before Trenker was even permitted to make this film he had to defend himself against charges of plagiarism coming from - of all people - his former mentor Arnold Fanck. 12 By 1930 he had begun working on the script for the film with a former wartime comrade and fellow Alpinist, Walter Schmidkunz. Though pretty much forgotten today, Schmidkunz was a highly respected writer in mountaineering circles at the time. He had published his own recollections of the war in the mountains as early as 1917, followed by a lecture tour addressing the mountaineering community. These lectures were meant to raise interest in the fates and fortunes of the forgotten soldiers of the Alps, amongst whom he could certainly count himself. 13 As Trenker’s ghostwriter for several years, he helped produce not only the script (and book version) of Berge in Flammen, but was also behind other triumphs that were publicly associated with Trenker alone. Cinematic examples of their fertile collaborations are Der Sohn der weissen Berge (also known as Das Geheimnis von Zermatt, 1930) and Der Rebell (1932). Following in the wake of these cinematic successes, Schmidkunz co-wrote the novel for Der verlorene Sohn and actively supported the rapid publication of what are known as the «Luis- Trenker-Bücher.» Aside from the above-mentioned book version of Berge in Flammen, which appeared almost simultaneously with the film, these books are Meine Berge (1931), Berge und Heimat (1933), and Bergwelt - Wunderwelt (1935). That from around 1930 onwards it was more and more en vogue to associate mountain climbing with struggle and even war, that it had become increasingly militarized, we can deduce, for example, from Trenker’s brief introduction to Meine Berge. The significance of Alpinism, Trenker claims, lies in experiencing nature where nature has created for itself its great symbol out of rock and ice: the mountain. «Und es ist wohl eine Bestätigung tiefer Gemeinsamkeit, wenn ein Mensch, der Berge umkämpfte, in mancher alltäglichen Stunde des Flachlandes an sie als seine Berge zurückdenkt. […] Der Kämpfer findet in der Vielheit der Berggefahren den Sieg.» 14 Der Rebell had its premiere in December 1932 in Stuttgart and Berlin and was met with fervent approval. The film caught the attention of Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels and opened political doors for the ambitious CG_42_3_s193-288_End.indd 237 CG_42_3_s193-288_End.indd 237 28.06.12 16: 18 28.06.12 16: 18 238 Wilfried Wilms Tyrolean filmmaker. 15 Embraced by the National Socialists as exemplary for the desired new cinema, it ensured Trenker party support and inclusion in the Nazi pantheon. In a time ripe with nationalistic prattle of the shame of Versailles and a desired national uprising, the story of Tyrol’s valiant albeit unsuccessful resistance to Napoleonic suppression seemed opportune. Trenker plays the student Severin Anderlan, a dauntless protagonist who resists subjugation but is ultimately captured and executed by the French soldiers. In the final scenes of the film he is shown to rise from the dead along with his fellow martyrs, clenching the banner of freedom in his fist while ascending to heaven. The close-up of flags throughout the film, the use of patriotic songs, and a promised resurrection at the end of the movie all point ahead to the looming Nazi film industry. «Idealized Alpine panoramas and village celebrations,» observes Rentschler, «thus took their place in a Nazi Kulturkampf (culture war) in which homeland militated against the New World, undergoing political instrumentation to rise up as pastorale militans» (43). That Trenker corresponded well with the image of a vigorous masculinity prescribed in such films (as well as with models set out in texts like Jünger’s «Erlebnis») can easily be discerned if one takes a closer look at the stir his Alpine war film Berge in Flammen caused at the time. Hermann Sinsheimer sees in Trenker a man who can knuckle down when he writes in the Berliner Tageblatt: «Was er uns da vormacht, das können ihm wenige nachmachen. Denn selten ist eine solche Leidenschaft in einen solchen Körper gepflanzt, und nochmals selten spiegelt sich soviel Kraft und Wille in einem solchen Gesicht.» Where Trenker’s face and body mirror the triumph of his will and power, it is his colloquial language of the mountains that reflects the integral moral fiber of this admirably different character from the countryside. An anonymous review on 26 September 1931 in the Filmkurier titled «Filmkrieg in den Bergen» tellingly highlights Trenker’s «Heimatverbundenheit» by pointing out that his career took off outside the established bourgeois artistic circles of the metropolis. «Luis Trenker ist nie bei Reinhardt gewesen,» we can read, referring to Max Reinhardt, the Austrian (and later naturalized American) theater director of Jewish descent, as the direct opposite of this «German» phenomenon. «Seine Karriere begann er als Viehhirt […] und Bauernbursche in Tirols Bergen,» a difference that also shows linguistically when Trenker recalls the hardships of war and of filming in the mountains: «Trenker erzählt von diesen Dingen in der Sprache seiner Heimat.» A similar focus on Trenker’s masculinity can be found in an interview (Anon., «Krieg in Süd-Tirol») published in the Lichtbildbühne months prior to the actual film: «Ein faszinierender, sympathischer Bursche» who is «[überrumpelt] von den Erinnerungen an seine Kriegserlebnisse» and who remembers his war days as «eine Art Sport. CG_42_3_s193-288_End.indd 238 CG_42_3_s193-288_End.indd 238 28.06.12 16: 18 28.06.12 16: 18 From Bergsteiger to Bergkrieger 239 Ein verteufelter Sport allerdings! » As one of these «famosen, stämmigen, sonnenverbrannten Gestalten,» these «Naturburschen» (Anon., «Vom Film»), Trenker’s presence ensured that the audience was guaranteed to see cinematic fare different from what they might only recently have viewed in Remarque’s All Quiet on the Western Front. Instead of a pale, malnourished, and doubtful youth stumbling into the meaningless meat grinder of the Western Front, Berge in Flammen promised the Weimar spectators an uplifting tale of heroic homeland defense, executed by gallant German-speaking men. Trenker himself was fully aware of what he was producing. In his autobiography Alles gut gegangen, published in 1965, he recounts his own experience of having watched Milestone’s anti-war blockbuster. He writes: «Im Westen Nichts Neues zeigte die gottlose Sinnlosigkeit des Krieges und Selbstaufopferung einer militärisch gedrillten Jugend. Keine Liebe zum Vaterland, keine Tugend, nichts gab es da, und was blieb war eine gähnende, trostlose Leere» (260). Trenker contrasted what he had seen with a set of martial virtues like devotion to duty and honorable defense of the native soil. 16 The Berliner Börsenzeitung reveals the close proximity of Trenker’s film with the blood-and-soil propaganda of an ever-stronger Right in Weimar Germany. «An die Darstellung des Gebirgskrieges hat sich bis bisher noch niemand herangemacht […]. Man erhält ganz starke Eindrücke von den Leiden und dem Heldentum der einfachen Soldaten […]. Es sind echte Söhne der Berge […], die sich Trenker hier für den Film ausgewählt hat, knorrige, wetterfeste Gesalten,» we read. Others, we are assured, could not have stood up even to the demands of such filmmaking, never mind the war itself. The article closes by praising the «Herrlichkeit dieses echt vaterländischen Filmwerkes» (Anon., «Berge in Flammen»). What these depictions have in common is their adulation of Trenker as an antidote to an implicitly effeminate and ailing Weimar modernity. Raised outside the infected metropolis, and educated far away by the Alps as much as by war, Trenker was able to preserve and/ or bring into being a masculinity that was held up as exemplary in its physical athleticism, moral integrity, and patriotic dedication. The process of filmmaking in the mountains is ultimately discussed as one that resembles the experience of war itself: a grueling and perilous endeavor that only the fittest can tackle (as is highlighted admiringly in the Filmkurier), undertaken by former soldiers who were hardened by war and molded into a community of fellow sufferers. Trenker and his main cameraman, Hans Schneeberger, the Filmkurier informs us, were former wartime comrades. Furthermore, the desire to produce an authentic impression of the Alpine war necessitated the use of live ammunition and explosives during the filming, which resulted in co-director Karl Hartl losing an eye during an ex- CG_42_3_s193-288_End.indd 239 CG_42_3_s193-288_End.indd 239 28.06.12 16: 18 28.06.12 16: 18 240 Wilfried Wilms plosion. As if wearing these mishaps as badges of honor, the piece concludes in the manner of a battle report: «Einige dreißig Verletzte hat es während der Aufnahmen gegeben» (Anon., «Filmkrieg»). Only one reviewer, Herbert Ihering, saw the film for what it really was: «Ein sehr guter, peinlicher Film. Ein glänzend gemachter Anachronismus,» because war is presented as one mountain adventure among others. Berge in Flammen was only the cinematic conclusion and climax of a development that from 1918 onwards increasingly looked to the Alps for renewal. 17 During the Weimar years, amidst pessimistic cultural diagnoses of decline and degeneration, there stood the promise of rejuvenation and salvation in the form of the challenges created by the mountains, whether pristine or, as Renker imagined, altered but nevertheless sanctified by war. The enthrallment of Weimar audiences vis-à-vis cinematic Alpine adventures played out in the supreme beauty of the Alps is thus hardly surprising. Their thunderous applause for the deeds of heroic men bound by comradeship and sacrifice, Jüngerian apostles of a stronger future race of warriors hardened by the experience of war, could already be heard in the years before Trenker’s war film. While it was no doubt the cinematic production of 1931 that generated an avalanche of publications promoting above all a militarized version of the mountains into the public imagination of Weimar Germany and beyond, Weimar’s fascination with the Alps began with the mountain film genre of the 1920s. 18 In the handsomely carved Trenker, the mountain warrior’s appearance in the German public sphere already had a recognizable face in the mountain climber. For a number of years prior to his appearance as Florian Dimai in Berge in Flammen, Trenker had made a name for himself as a bold mountaineer and male role model, initially acting in successful mountain films directed by Arnold Fanck, such as Der Berg des Schicksals (1923/ 24), Der Heilige Berg (1925/ 26), and Der grosse Sprung (1927). Following his success with Der Kampf ums Matterhorn (1928), Trenker began to direct more frequently. In 1931, for Berge in Flammen, he replaced his hat with a helmet, and his ice pick or ski poles with a rifle. Part of the attraction of mountain films in the 1920s was their response to a perceived crisis of identity and a longing for power and rejuvenation, if not salvation. Operating with a standard set of types and conflicts, both mountain films and the literature of the Alpine war generally juxtaposed the effeminate, greedy, and materialistic bourgeois of the city with the idealistic and virile man of the mountains. The latter’s triumph is rooted in his existence away from the masses of the metropolis. In these projections of modern angst the Alps enabled the men of the mountains to remain in close contact with an incorruptibly primordial and elemental manhood that was increasingly CG_42_3_s193-288_End.indd 240 CG_42_3_s193-288_End.indd 240 28.06.12 16: 18 28.06.12 16: 18 From Bergsteiger to Bergkrieger 241 deemed capable of rescuing all of Germany. Men like Trenker offered models for identity in their idealization of an alternative masculinity, one that was decidedly anti-bourgeois, anti-modern, and by implication anti-democratic and thus capable of the heroic deed. 19 What characterized the mountain climber (and later the mountain warrior) was his ability to act, to endure, to persevere and overcome, and to be heroic to the point of self-sacrifice. For a society plagued by the bitter wounds of war, the Alps and its suntanned idols provided a much-needed tonic. In a society weighed down by the remnants of defeat in the Great War, the heroic new man coming out of the rock and ice of the Alps had to be a hit. 20 He provided codes of conduct for a society in poor health; he afforded an emotional economy that depicted the mountains and Alpinism as a pugnacious activity for the fittest of the nation. By linking the mountain climber with the mountain warrior, and by linking Alpinism with Alpine war, the new man of rock and ice did his part in the militarization of German society in the 1920s and 1930s. Notes 1 See, for instance, monographs by von Ompteda, Weber, and Röck in the 1930s; in 1941 the contribution by Kabisch. See also Trenker’s illustrated edition of Berge in Flammen entitled Kampf in den Bergen. Das unvergängliche Denkmal der Alpenfront (1931) and Helden der Berge (1936). 2 Rare exceptions only confirm this rule. See, for instance, Keller’s «The Mountains Roar.» See also Thompson, The White War; Hentzschel, Festungskrieg; Kuprian and Überegger (eds.), Der Erste Weltkrieg im Alpenraum; Wachtler, The First World War in the Alps. The Alpine war has recently been made available on film. See, for instance, Gesprengte Berge. Der Krieg in den Alpen 1915-1918 (ZDF production, 2007) and Der Alpenkrieg. Front in Eis und Fels (originally a production of Bayerischer Rundfunk, 1981-82; made available on DVD in 2004). The German weekly Der Spiegel published a brief piece in 2004 entitled «Die toten Augen im Berg» (Spiegel Special 1/ 2004: 84-87). 3 In 1918, Renker published the monograph Als Bergsteiger gegen Italien, detailing his exploits. 4 Wohl’s The Generation of 1914 (especially chapter 2) provides a compelling account of the extensive investments in youth (and war) for a desired rejuvenation of Wilhelmine German society. 5 See also Handl’s contribution to the Alpine club’s publication entitled «Von der Marmolata-Front II.» 6 While anticipating the touristic exploitation of the Alps, Renker certainly could not foresee that remnants of the war would become attractions for travelers in a distant future. See books by Hüsler and Dumler. 7 The Italians introduced mine warfare. One famous example is the explosion of the Col di Lana in the Dolomites. The Alpini drilled a tunnel underneath the enemy troops who occupied the peak, filled the chamber with high explosives, and blew up the mountaintop along with the German Alpenkorps on top of it on 17 April 1916. CG_42_3_s193-288_End.indd 241 CG_42_3_s193-288_End.indd 241 28.06.12 16: 18 28.06.12 16: 18 242 Wilfried Wilms 8 See examples in Jünger’s Politische Publizistik 1919-1933. 9 On the desired visibility of the front experience in general, and the «visual turn» of the 1920s in particular, see Jünger’s Das Antlitz des Weltkrieges; in this context see also Uecker, «The Face of the Weimar Republic.» 10 On Trenker’s life in general see König and Florian Trenker’s at times uncritical biography Bera Luis. Also of interest are Nottebohm and Panitz, Fast ein Jahrhundert; Panitz, Luis Trenker ungeschminkt; and Luis Trenker’s autobiography entitled Alles gut gegangen. 11 An English-language version of the film, The Doomed Battalion, was made in Hollywood and premiered in New York’s Rivoli Theater on 16 June 1932. «You never saw anything like it before! », promised large advertisements outside the building. Trenker’s film (co-directed by Cyril Gardner) became a major success, paving the way for Trenker’s «American» career that included films like Der verlorene Sohn (1933/ 34) and Der Kaiser von Kalifornien (1935/ 36). 12 See König and Trenker 152-64. 13 Schmidkunz’ 1917 publication is entitled Der Kampf über den Gletschern. On his past and present status within the mountaineering circles see the collection by Peter Grimm for the German Alpine Club. 14 While a detailed analysis of these coffee-table books is desirable, in particular to understand if and how the photographic images therein are overpowered by a restrictive ideological dis-course, it cannot be done in the context of this essay. 15 See, for instance, Goebbels’s first speech to representatives of the German film industry on 28 March 1933, in which he mentions Der Rebell as exemplifying the new Weltanschauung (see Leiser, Deutschland erwache! 10). On Trenker’s association with the National Socialist regime and his identification as an opportunistic political chameleon see, for instance, Leimgruber, Luis Trenker, Regisseur und Schriftststeller. See also Mehring’s «Mein Freund Hitler» who sees in Trenker the perfect example of a collaborator. Rentschler characterizes Trenker as «a calculating, resourceful, and compulsive self-promoter, a man of undeniably ruthless ambition» (41). 16 On the overlaps between mountain films and «national films» see Kracauer 259-72. 17 This process had, evidently, its uncanny parallel in post-World War II Germany, a time when Germans in bombed-out cities craved the wholesomeness and peace of an idealized countryside and Alpine meadows untouched by destruction. 18 On the Bergfilm and Weimar culture see my forthcoming essay «The Essence of the Alpine World is Struggle.» 19 See here also Hämmerle’s study of Fritz Weber, a well-known Austrian officer in the Alpine war, «Es ist immer der Mann, der den Kampf entscheidet, und nicht die Waffe…» On the crisis of masculinity in Austria see Hämmerle, «Vor vierzig Monaten waren wir Soldaten, vor einem halben Jahr noch Männer…» 20 On the memory of mass violence in post-World War I Germany see Whalen, Bitter Wounds. Works Cited Anon. «Berge in Flammen. Ufa-Palast am Zoo.» Berliner Börsenzeitung 29 September 1931. Anon. «Filmkrieg in den Bergen. Luis Trenkers letzte Filmarbeit.» Filmkurier 26 September 1931. CG_42_3_s193-288_End.indd 242 CG_42_3_s193-288_End.indd 242 28.06.12 16: 18 28.06.12 16: 18 From Bergsteiger to Bergkrieger 243 Anon. «Krieg in Süd-Tirol. Interview mit Trenker und Junghans.» Lichtbildbühne 4 September 1930. Anon. «Vom Film. Verfilmter Bergkrieg.» Berliner Börsenzeitung 30 June 1931. Dammann, F. «Berge in Flammen. Luis Trenker-Film der Vandal und Delac Produktion.» Lichtbildbühne 29 September 1931. Dumler, Helmut. Höhenwege in den Dolomiten. Panoramawege, Hüttenwege, Klettersteige, Gipfel. Munich: Bruckmann, 2003. Feld, Hans. «Luis Trenker: Berge in Flammen.» Filmkurier 29 September 1931. Grimm, Peter. Walter Schmidkunz. Ein Klassiker im Hintergrund. Munich: Bruckmann, 1989. Hämmerle, Christa. «Es ist immer der Mann, der den Kampf entscheidet, und nicht die Waffe…». Der Erste Weltkrieg im Alpenraum. Erfahrung, Deutung, Erinnerung. Ed. Hermann J.W. Kuprian and Oswald Überegger. Innsbruck: Athesia, 2006. 35-59. -. «Vor vierzig Monaten waren wir Soldaten, vor einem halben Jahr noch Männer…» L’Homme. Europäische Zeitschrift für Feministische Geschichtswissenschaft 19/ ii (2008): 51-73. Handl, Leo. «Von der Marmolata-Front II.» Zeitschrift des Deutschen und Österreichischen Alpenvereins 47 (1916): 112-18. Hentzschel, Rolf. Festungskrieg im Hochgebirge. Bolzano: Athesia, 2008. Hüsler, Eugen E. Auf alten Kriegspfaden durch die Dolomiten. 35 spektakuläre Wanderungen auf historischen Militärpfaden. Munich: Bruckmann, 2008. Ihering, Herbert. «Berge in Flammen.» Berliner Börsen-Courier 29 September 1931. Jünger, Ernst. «Der Kampf als inneres Erlebnis.» Essays I. Betrachtungen zur Zeit. Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta, 1960. 13-108. Vol. 5 of Werke. -. Politische Publizistik 1919-1933, Ed. Sven Olaf Berggötz. Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta, 2001. -. Das Antlitz des Weltkrieges. Fronterlebnisse deutscher Soldaten. Berlin: Neufeld & Henius, 1930. Kabisch, Ernst. Helden in Fels und Eis. Bergkrieg in Tirol und Kärnten. Stuttgart: Loewis, 1941. Keller, Tait. «The Mountains Roar: The Alps during the Great War.» Environmental History 14 (2009): 253-74. König, Stefan, and Florian Trenker. Bera Luis. Das Phänomen Luis Trenker. Eine Biographie. Munich: Berg, 1992. Kracauer, Siegfried. From Caligari to Hitler. A Psychological History of the German Film. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1947. Kuprian, Hermann J.W., and Oswald Überegger, eds. Der Erste Weltkrieg im Alpenraum: Erfahrung, Deutung, Erinnerung. Innsbruck: Wagner, 2006. Leimgruber, Florian, ed. Luis Trenker, Regisseur und Schriftststeller. Die Personalakte Trenker im Berlin Document Center. Bozen, Frasnelli-Keitsch, 1994. Leiser, Erwin. Deutschland erwache! Propaganda im Film des Dritten Reiches. Hamburg: Rowohlt, 1968. 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Berlin: Ullstein, 1935. Schmidkunz, Walter. Der Kampf über den Gletschern. Munich: Bonsels, 1917. Sinsheimer, Hermann. «‹Berge in Flammen› im Ufa-Palast am Zoo.» Berliner Tageblatt 29 September 1931. Theweleit, Klaus. Male Fantasies. Trans. Erica Carter, Stephen Conway, and Chris Turner. 2 vols. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 1989. Thompson, Mark. The White War: Life and Death on the Italian Front 1915-1919. New York: Basic Books, 2008. Trenker, Luis. Alles gut gegangen. Geschichten aus meinem Leben. Hamburg: Bertelsmann, 1965. -. Helden der Berge. Berlin: Knaur, 1936. -. Kampf in den Bergen. Das unvergängliche Denkmal der Alpenfront. Berlin: Neufeld & Henius, 1931. -. Meine Berge. Das Bergbuch von Luis Trenker unter Mitarbeit von Walter Schmidkunz. Berlin: Neufeld & Henius, 1931. Uecker, Matthias. «The Face of the Weimar Republic: Photography, Physiognomy, and Propaganda in Weimar Germany.» Monatshefte für deutschsprachige Literatur und Kultur 99 (2007): 469-84. Wachtler, Michael. The First World War in the Alps. Bolzano: Athesia, 2006. Weber, Fritz. Feuer auf den Gipfeln. Südtiroler Alpenkrieg. Regensburg: Manz, 1932. -. Alpenkrieg. Klagenfurt and Vienna: Artur-Kollitsch Verlag, 1935. Weisbrod, Bernd. «Military Violence and Male Fundamentalism: Ernst Jünger’s Contribution to the Conservative Revolution.» History Workshop Journal 49 (2000): 69-94. Whalen, Robert. Bitter Wounds. German Victims of the Great War, 1914-1939. Ithaca and London: Cornell UP, 1984. Wilms, Wilfried. «‹The Essence of the Alpine World is Struggle›. Strategies of Gesundung in Arnold Fanck’s Early Mountain Films.» Heights of Reflection. Mountains in the German Imagination from the Middle Ages to the Twenty-First Century, Eds. Sean Ireton and Caroline Schaumann. Rochester: Camden House, 2012. 267-84. Wohl, Robert. The Generation of 1914. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1979. CG_42_3_s193-288_End.indd 244 CG_42_3_s193-288_End.indd 244 28.06.12 16: 18 28.06.12 16: 18