Heinrich Harrer

Heinrich Harrer was an Austrian mountaineer, explorer, and author who drew on direct experience in the Alps and Tibet. He joined Andreas Heckmair, Ludwig Vörg, and Fritz Kasparek in the first successful ascent of the Eiger's North Face in 1938. The White Spider combines Harrer's account of that climb with a history of earlier attempts and later expeditions on the mountain, making it both memoir and mountaineering chronicle. Tarcher published a later American edition, while Harper Perennial issued an edition translated by Hugh Merrick and introduced by climber Joe Simpson. Harrer also wrote Seven Years in Tibet after escaping wartime internment in India and spending years in Tibet, where he became close to the young Dalai Lama. His record is not simply heroic: his prewar membership in National Socialist organizations became a documented and contested part of his public biography. Reading Harrer therefore requires attention to both his influential adventure writing and the political history surrounding his early career.