Reviews Harald Höbusch: Mountain of Destiny: Nanga Parbat and Its Path into the German Imagination. Rochester, NY: Camden House, 2016. 328 pp. $ 90. Today, the Himalayan mountain Nanga Parbat is relatively unknown outside the mountaineering community, even though at 8,126 meters, it is the ninth-highest mountain in the world and one of the most dangerous of all to climb� But from the nineteenth century to the 1950s, Nanga Parbat loomed large in German popular culture, contributing to intellectual and social life as it was made to reflect the ambitions of political leaders and the dreams of those who would summit it� Mapped by three brothers from Munich, the focus of numerous - and tragically unsuccessful - German climbing expeditions in the 1930s, including expeditions supported by the National Socialist state, the subject of adventure novels for youth extolling working-class values and a star of the wildly popular genre of Bergfilm (mountain film), Nanga Parbat became-- as it was often called-- Germany’s “Mountain of Destiny�” Harald Höbusch traces the representation of Nanga Parbat in German climbing history and social life, arguing that over time, Nanga Parbat became central to the German imagination, calling it a German “mountain of the mind” that encapsulated at different times German ideas about health, struggle, suffering, comradeship, the role of propaganda and German identity� When Hermann Buhl stood on the summit of Nanga Parbat in 1953 only one month after Sir Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay had summited Mount Everest, that climb seemed to symbolize the resolve of the new West German republic to leave National Socialism behind and join other nations on the world stage� Making such claims, Höbusch observes, involved an elaborate process of “forgetting” how Nanga Parbat had been explicitly linked through expedition support, print culture and films to the ideals of National Socialism, just as the Nazi party itself had repurposed earlier ideas about Nanga Parbat and mountaineering for its own purposes� Höbusch tracks the complex political changes that led to the use of Nanga Parbat as a symbol of German nationalism and social life at different times in the twentieth century, linking mountaineering history to a discussion of literature and film in order to make the case that Nanga Parbat was central to the German imagination at key points in its recent past� Ending with Joseph Vilsmaier’s 2010 film Nanga Parbat about superstar climber Reinhold Messner and the death of 438 Reviews Reinhold’s brother Günther on the mountain in 1970, Höbusch shows that contemporary representations of Nanga Parbat are still invested in rethinking past conflicts between older approaches to climbing and the idea of comradeship, and newer ideas about individuality and freedom from restraint� There is much to admire in Mountain of Destiny , a book that should take its place beside Maurice Isserman and Stewart Weaver’s Fallen Giants (2008) and Peter Hansen’s The Summits of Modern Man (2013) as a classic of the intellectual history of mountaineering� It is no easy task to work through the political battles of the Alpine associations of the 1920s, 1930s and 1950s to show how mountaineering was promoted by its adherents in the wake of the First World War as “an activity perceived as leading the nation back to an equal standing with its former adversaries and subsequently opening the door to not only a symbolic, but very real status as a European and, in some minds, even world power” (30)� Höbusch’s meticulous research demonstrates how mountaineering clubs, government agencies and political leaders came to realize in the decades that followed that mountaineering could be a propaganda tool for National Socialism because, as Höbusch carefully points out, those ideals were already present in films, juvenile fiction and expedition accounts popular with German audiences of the 1930s who saw stories of survival on Nanga Parbat as an opportunity to escape the difficulties of daily living� Audiences and readers also understood the struggles of Willy Merkl, Paul Bauer and many others-- particularly those who died in the 1934 and 1937 expeditions-- as accounts of comradeship and resilience in the face of suffering, values that could be read into their own lives� Höbusch is particularly adept at working through the many approaches in German and English to Bergfilm and the legacy of filmmakers Luis Trenker, Leni Riefenstahl and Arnold Fanck� His review of the scholarship will be valuable to those who have not seen its full range, particularly when it is connected to the readings of popular literature and expedition accounts of the same period� It may well be, as Höbusch writes, that Nanga Parbat “will eventually reenter the German imagination” (226)� If that happens, this volume will be an indispensable resource for anyone interested in what Nanga Parbat meant to the German imagination in the twentieth century� University of Alberta Julie Rak