Willo Welzenbach

Alpine mountaineering Welzenbach began climbing in the Northern Limestone Alps in the 1920s and soon became an excellent rock climber and alpinist. He joined the in 1921 (within just a few years he became the club's president, for 1925–1926) and climbed with a number of club members who were much older, one in particular was , 27 years his senior. it was Welzenbach's first big success, and at the time "this was the most difficult ice course in the Eastern Alps". Following their ascent, which took less than 16 hours, the climb "soon became a prestigious objective" for the most capable ice-climbers of their generation and was at the time "acknowledged as one of the most difficult ice faces in the Alps".

North face of the Grands Charmoz In the Western Alps the first ascent of the north face of the Aiguille des Grands Charmoz in 1931 with Willy Merkl (who later died with Welzenbach on Nanga Parbat) was "a long and sustained epic in atrocious weather". The two climbers started on June 30, but after a night on the face they were caught out by bad weather and had to endure a second night out before they were able to descend. On 5 July, they returned to their previous high point and again became storm-bound high on the face, after enduring four days and nights in the storm they managed to reach the summit and then return to Montenvers, above Chamonix, where no one had expected them to survive the ordeal.

North faces in the Bernese Oberland In the 1930s Welzenbach and his parties "took the lion's share of almost all the high North face climbs" in the Bernese Alps. The campaign started in 1929 on the Grosses Fiescherhorn, Welzenbach and Heinz Tillmann climbed the north ridge in only 8.5 hours. When they returned the following year they started to ascend the mountain's north face, the Fiescherwand, on the morning of 5 September 1930, taking a line that ran directly to the summit. They reached the top that evening, after a 12-hour ascent.

He returned to the area in 1932 and tackled a "series of unsolved mountaineering challenges". The campaign started with the first ascent of the high north wall.

Injury His record is more remarkable by the fact that he was largely incapacitated for the period from the autumn of 1926, after his ascents in the Hohe Tauern, through to the summer of 1927 by a medical condition which primarily affected his right arm and which required a lengthy period of hospitalisation and surgery. Although he hadn't made a full recovery, and was restricted by a rigid right elbow which kept him away from long or difficult expeditions, he attempted to climb again in the summer of 1927. Despite his illness, and even with a stiffened elbow-joint, amongst his ascents in 1927 were the Gross Glockner by the Pallavicinirinne, and Mont Blanc by the Brenva Spur (with Karl Wien, and Erwin Schneider). By 1930, however, thanks to surgical skill, he had recovered much of his former power and the American alpinist Jeff Lowe wrote in 1996 that the "climbs that he undertook, such as the north faces of the Gross Fiescherhorn, the Aiguille des Grands Charmoz, the Gletscherhorn and the Lauterbrunnen Breithorn, remained, even into the 1960s, some of the most difficult in the Alps", In 1930, the central committee of the DuOeAV had given their backing (and financial support) to the detailed plans he presented to them, he had obtained permission from the British Government who then administered the area and had obtained leave from his employers but his plans were blocked by the German Foreign Office in favour of the 1930 International Himalaya Expedition to Kangchenjunga led by Günter Dyhrenfurth. Two more attempts were also thwarted before they left Germany and it was not until 1934 that Welzenbach went to attempt Nanga Parbat and he was then not the expedition leader but the deputy-leader to Willy Merkl, one of his alpine climbing rope-partners. died from the effects of exposure, exhaustion and altitude sickness. Several more suffered severe frostbite. Welzenbach died in the tent (at the Silver Saddle) sometime during the night of 12/13 July 1934.

Paul Bauer led a group of young German mountaineers to Nanga Parbat in 1938; they tried to recover the bodies of several of their unfortunate countrymen who were lost on the mountain during an expedition led by Karl Wien the previous year. Bauer's team found the body of Merkl along with a letter written by Welzenbach which was dated 10 July and signed by both Welzenbach and Merkl, in the letter they said that they had nothing hot to eat for six days and were also running out of water. Their deaths had been slow and extremely arduous, caused by extended exposure to the cold and starvation. (The letter is reproduced on page 75 but in hindsight the cause is believed to have been pulmonary edema), and Wien who was to die in 1937, in an avalanche on another expedition to the same mountain.)

Nazi Party Welzenbach, like many prominent mountaineers of his era, joined the Nazi Party. He was also a Scharführer in the Sturmabteilung, the Nazi paramilitary wing. Rigele, Welzenbach's early climbing partner who climbed sporadically with him from 1923 to 1930, (Starting from their first meeting in 1923 when, within of few days of being introduced they traversed both the Pointe de Zinal and the Zinalrothorn in quick succession.)

Even when Welzenbach was restricted by his arm they climbed together; returning in 1926 to the Zermatt area they climbed the south face of the Obergabelhorn and, on 1 August 1926, Welzenbach, Rigele and Fritz Bachschmidt made what they then believed to be the first ascent of a route up the north-west face of the Breithorn. who in 1912 had married Olga, the sister of Hermann Göring. His funeral in 1937 was attended by Göring with a military honour guard. It is less clear whether Welzenbach's motivations for involvement in the early Nazi movement reflected a belief in the Nazi philosophy or were more a matter of convenience – during the period that he was a mountaineer it was difficult for a government employee to avoid joining state and party organizations and it was almost a prerequisite for participating in state-funded, high-profile expeditions, such as the 1934 Nanga Parbat expedition.

Within a few months of Welzenbach's death a street in Munich, Welzenbachstraße, was named after him.

Several features on the Rupal face of Nanga Parbat now bear the names of the German mountaineers who lost their lives on the other side of the mountain in 1934. In the middle parts of face these include the Welzenbach Icefield, Welzenbach Couloir and Welzenbach Spur. Those names, along with the Merkl Icefield, Merkl Gully, Merkl Notch (near the top of the face), Wieland Glacier and Wieland icewall (near the foot of the face), were coined by Herrligkoffer (who led several expeditions to Nanga Parbat from 1953-1982 and was Merkl's half-brother) before the party of German mountaineers he led in 1964 had reached the mountain and the names now feature in many reports of mountaineering attempts on the Rupal side of the mountain.

In 1923 Welzenbach refined the system used in the Alps for grading climbs. One of the new features he introduced was a sixth grade of difficulty, that grading system bears his name and was adopted by the UIAA in 1967, it has since become the universally accepted grading system for alpine climbs.

Among his many first ascents across the Alps were at least seventeen new rock climbs in the Wetterstein Alps A book containing Welzenbach's original accounts of all of his ascents across the Alps and the Himalayas has also been published.