200 years ago Joseph Naus was the first to climb the Zugspitze. This was celebrated with a gala evening in Garmisch-Partenkirchen.
Garmisch-Partenkirchen - The most important man of the birthday party was missing. Which of course was not surprising, since Joseph Naus has not been alive for 149 years. So how do you celebrate the first person to climb the Zugspitze, who never noticed his fame, exactly 200 years after his big day?
First of all, it needed the right place. Otherwise there will be nothing with a decent party. The summit was no longer an alternative due to the corona. The guests met in the spa gardens in Partenkirchen. “I'll just say hall number 1, Partenkirchen,” says Elisabeth Koch boldly into the microphone. The summit and the Munich House are officially part of Partenkirchen, the mayor's territory. She grew up there and, as she says, “worked her way up” from there. On the way through the Oberreintal, her place of strength, she learned humility. “It's a miserable hatcher from Partenkirchen Mitte.” A photo of the east wall hangs in Koch's office. The summit made Garmisch-Partenkirchen famous. And somehow her way to the top of the place was a tough tour with surprising twists. But this is another story.
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Now a party lives mainly from its guests. It couldn't be more than 100. Regulation these days. Organizer Wolfgang Pohl selected his speakers so well that the audience looked into the soul of Josef Naus and his companions without getting to know them. Moderator Marco Wanke brought eight mountain guides to the front in the hour and a half. Everyone gave this activity, which is more than just fulfilling hikers' wishes, a personal touch, practically its own route to the summit. Ralf Dujmovits are described by some as mad, which in turn is understood in his stories. He was the first German to have climbed all 14 mountains over 8,000 meters on this earth. He crossed the anniversary ridge to the Zugspitze when he was 13. In winter. But the man did much crazier things, for example fighting for months on a side peak of Mount Everest against snow, cold and death, as he said in his lecture. Hans Ettl (80) introduced the moderator as a "legend". Anyone who climbs the Zugspitze more than 400 times may possibly bear this title. He grew up below the wax stones and used to climb with hemp ropes and stolen heels. And he describes this feeling, the urge to go up, which the normal person does not know, with the following words: “It becomes like an addiction. That's not normal."
Mountain guide trio from Grainau
The evening also belonged to the mountain guide trio from Grainau around Sebastian Buchwieser, Stephan Schachtl and Julia von der Linden, who climbed an old route in very old clothes and had themselves filmed. Buchwieser's great-grandfather guided people upwards as early as the 19th century. As a homage to him and the Zugspitze, one could recreate a tour à la 1900, thought the Grainau resident, asked his colleagues, rummaged through the archive and the museum. The audience saw what became of it on a big screen (the program will also run on BR on September 13). They laughed when the Waschtl, as he is called, pulls out his cell phone to check the weather, because it was so unreal in a hike that was supposed to take place 100 or 120 years ago. At the end of the film, Buchwieser lights a summit pipe that is said to have belonged to his great-grandfather. Julia von der Linden takes a photo of the setting sun. At this moment everyone suspects that one thing has not changed in 200 years: the feeling of looking beyond everyone else in Germany, the feeling of boundlessness.