Encountering – retracing – mapping : the ethnographic legacy of Heinrich Harrer and Peter Aufschnaiter

Abstract

In 1939 the Austrian mountaineers Heinrich Harrer (1912–2006) and Peter Aufschnaiter (1899–1973) set off for the 8,000 meter-high Nanga Parbat in Kashmir. On their return they were caught off-guard by the outbreak of the Second World War and interned by the British Army. Five years later they managed to escape to the highlands of Tibet and on to Lhasa, where they remained. A good seven years later they left the Tibet capital once more – each with his own personal collection of ethnographic everyday and ritual artefacts, numerous blac Show more