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Outside Magazine November 2003

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Buried in the Past


	Porters descending from camp 2 (photo courtesy of Reinhold Messner)

"For years we talked to nobody," Saler told Outside. "I didn't even tell my wife. I wrote my book so Reinhold's untrue story doesn't go into the annals of alpinism without criticism."

Such charges have brought thunderous denials from Messner, now 59 and a Green Party member of the European Parliament. "Can you imagine I would leave my brother?" he says from his castle home in northern Italy. "This is crazy. It is a lie."

Charging libel and defamation, Messner has hired Hamburg-based lawyer Matthias Prinz, whose clients have included Princess Caroline of Monaco and actor Don Johnson. On July 14, Prinz's firm persuaded a Hamburg court to impose an interim injunction against Saler and von Kienlin's German publishers, halting reprints or translations, though they can sell remaining stock.

"It may take ten years or 30 years," Messner says defiantly. "But I must find Günther's body."

The ban is based on 13 disputed statements in von Kienlin's book and 11 in Saler's, but the debate is likely to explode beyond those points as civil proceedings unfold in Hamburg this fall. Von Kienlin says that he himself helped Messner concoct the tale of the avalanche, and that he will produce a 1970 diary entry in which he recorded Messner's emotional confession that he lost Günther high on the mountain. Messner insists that forensics will prove the diary is a fake. Portraying von Kienlin as a failed gambler looking to make back his lost family fortune with a bestseller, he cites a different reason for the attack: "Von Kienlin lost his wife to me in 1971."

That part, nobody disputes. Ursula Demeter was married to von Kienlin when Messner moved in with them after the expedition to recover from the amputation of his frostbitten toes. She left von Kienlin and became Messner's wife from 1972 until 1977. But von Kienlin says he got over that long ago and that his critique is a matter of honor, in defense of those "comrades of the expedition who can no longer defend themselves." Seven of those team members are now dead, including Kuen and Scholz. According to Saler, who was fixing ropes nearby, Messner said nothing to the two about being in trouble, and after a brief shouted exchange, he waved and continued his traverse.

The feud isn't the only legal wrangling Messner has had over Nanga Parbat. He and trip leader Karl Maria Herrligkoffer fought in court at least a dozen times after the expedition: Messner sued Herrligkoffer, alleging that his negligence in sending up a botched weather signal rushed the summit bid and caused Günther's death; Herrligkoffer sued Messner for violating the expedition's now-expired publishing embargo. Messner's 1971 book about the climb, The Red Rocket on Nanga Parbat, was ultimately banned in Germany.



	Günther Messner on Nanga Parbat, June 1970 (photo courtesy of Reinhold Messner)

Messner has now vowed to return to Nanga Parbat to scour the base of the Diamir Face. If he can locate Günther's remains, he believes, he can prove his story once and for all. "I must go back," he says. "There is no other chance for me to save my reputation."

Messner searched for Günther once before on the Diamir side, in 1971 with Demeter, who remains convinced that his tale is genuine. He was "obsessed with finding Günther," probing the dangerous icefall for four sleepless days, she said.

Finding Günther's remains in a churning, 12-square-mile glacier may be a long shot, but Messner is adamant that he'll comb the valley as early as next summer. Having rejected the use of metal detectors to locate his brother's crampons (the glacier bristles with expedition hardware), Messner plans to train local villagers to continue his search. "It may take ten years or 30 years, or it may happen after my death," he says defiantly, "but I must find Günther's body."

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