In 1938 Anderl Heckmair made the first ascent of the North Face of the Eiger, a climb marked him as one of the greatest Alpine climbers of all time. Climbing with Ludwig Voerg and teaming up with Heinrich Harrer and Fritz Kasparek mid-climb, Heckmair led the group to the top. It was one of the most important ascents ever made.
Leaving school in 1920, Heckmair dedicated himself to climbing, becoming a full-time 'mountain vagabond'. Penniless, he lived in Alpine huts and cycled from climb to climb, even riding from the Alps to climb in the High Atlas mountains of Morocco. He rapidly developed as a mountaineer, making an ascent of the Walker Spur in awful weather, and a solo ascent of the Matterhorn in walking shoes, a feat which nobody believed. But his crowning achievement, climbed in full media glare, would always be his Eiger ascent.
During this period he had his first brush with the Nazi party, guiding the film-maker Leni Riefenstahl in the Dolomites. Riefenstahl invited Heckmair to Nuremberg, where he found himself face to face with Hitler. Heckamir had a difficult relationship with the Nazis, who seized upon his Eiger success, promoting it for their own ends. But Heckmair was no Nazi and was sent, due he said to 'political unreliability', to the Eastern Front in World War II. Luckily, he was soon posted to a mountain training unit near Innsbruck.
After the war Heckmair returned to the mountains and guided a number of long trips with the wealthy industrialist Otto Flick - to Africa, the Himalaya and North and South America. Heckmair died in 2005 in his home town of Oberstdorf in the Bavarian Alps, aged 98.
