Reinhold Messner
Reinhold Messner was born on September 17, 1944, in Brixen, and holds Italian citizenship. He has worked and written in both German and Italian, a bilingual practice that runs through his career as a whole. That grounding in two languages reflects something of the cultural complexity from which he came.
Across his working life, Messner has occupied several distinct roles, often at the same time. As a mountaineer, explorer, and athlete, he pursued demanding physical environments, while as a writer and author he brought those experiences to the page. He has also worked as a film director and cinematographer, extending his engagement into visual form, and served as a politician, adding a public dimension to an already wide-ranging career. The combination of physical endeavor, literary output, and civic participation gives his biography an unusual breadth.
Recognition for his work has come from several fields. He received the Princess of Asturias Award for Sports, acknowledging his contributions to athletic pursuit. He also received a Bambi Award and the Patron's Medal, distinctions that together reflect the range of arenas in which his activities have registered. These three awards, arriving from the worlds of sport and broader public life, serve as concrete markers of a career conducted across multiple disciplines and in more than one language.
Quotes by Reinhold Messner
Reinhold Messner's insights on:
The mountains are dangerous. Only an unintelligent person will say they are not dangerous.
An account of an expedition is not a novel. Therefore an authentic account can never be given, let alone written down by someone who was not present.
For years I was a rock climber and nothing else. I went to school, yes, and university, yes, but in my heart I was a rock climber.
I am not so famous. I'm known in a few countries like Italy, Austria, Germany, Switzerland and around the Alps. Some climbers in Beijing know my name, and some in America, but I am not really famous. It's very relative, my fame.
Climbing is more of an art than a sport. It's the aesthetics of a mountain that compels me. The line of a route, the style of ascent. It is creative.
In politics, you have to compromise from morning to evening. Democracy is the art of compromise.
There is no joy involved in climbing mountains, there is simply the challenge, the self-invented challenge, the play.
I want to look into the dark spaces in people's souls. At what happens to us when we go to the mountains.