Book: Seven Years in Tibet
Author: Heinrich Harrer
Publication Year: 1952
Genre: Travel
Ok, so I have to admit this one is a bit of a cheat. However, it is one that is pretty standard for those of us seeking to read the world, especially in English. When turning to the tiny, doubled-landlocked European country of Liechtenstein, there are few if any national writers whose work has been translated into English. We either have to learn German, or make alternative arrangements.
Heinrich Harrer was an Austrian born mountaineer who was part of the first team to scale the north face of the Eiger mountain in Switzerland in 1938. Later in life Harrer moved to Liechtenstein and was resident there when he wrote Seven Years in Tibet. It’s not ideal, either in terms of the writer or their subject material. If I ever find someone more relevant to Liechtenstein (or learn German), I will return here. There are apparently a number of celebrated crime writers and in other genres amongst the literati of Liechtenstein. For now, Harrer will have to do.
The other issue we run into when considering Harrer and his work is his associations with the Nazis. Of course, anyone born in Germany or its neighbouring states during that epoch of history could not avoid being tainted by the stench of German fascism. Despite being a Nazi Party member and holding the rank of Sergeant in the SS, Harrer insisted he only wore his uniform once, on his wedding day, and came to regret being a member of the Nazi party.
You get the sense from reading Seven Years in Tibet, as well as Harrer’s biography, that the man had a single minded devotion to mountaineering and exploration in general. After Hitler's annexation of Austria in 1938 (Anschluss) , Austrian nationals had to play the game and make a good impression if they wanted to pursue their own personal interests. We should of course never forget than many in occupied Europe did not have that option.
That said, Harrer used the options available to him to get as far from Nazi Germany as possible. The attempt to climb the north face of the Eiger was partly a publicity stunt with his real aim being to bring him notice and be selected for an Himalayan expedition. It worked. It also resulted in being received by Hitler following his return from the Eiger expedition.
The comic irony is that upon reaching Karachi in modern day Pakistan (then still part of India), Britain declared war on Germany and Harrer and his colleagues were arrested and put in an internment camp. They seem to have been treated rather well by the British, but Harrer made a number of unsuccessful attempts to escape.
On his penultimate escape, Harrer and his fellow escapee got really quite far, well into the Himalayas, but they were eventually caught by the Indian army and placed in two weeks solitary confinement. He was, however, able to leave a bag of supplies that were to become essential during his ultimate escape.
It is perhaps a final irony that when Harrer did finally escape the internment camp and make it all the way to Tibet, it was April 1944 and D-Day was just around the corner. By the time he was attempting to gain entry into inner Tibet, the war was over.
Seven Years in Tibet is in many ways a fairly standard travel book, in the vein of The Adventures of Marco Polo or Arabian Sands or Scott’s diaries. It is a tale of frozen wastelands, roadside bandits and bureaucracy, as well as the extraordinary kindness of the Tibetan people. At one point Harrier and his compatriots are stranded in one village for nearly a year as local officials essentially place them under house arrest. Though they are allowed to roam the countryside during daylight hours.
I’m sure many know the book only from the Brad Pitt movie made in the mid-90s. I haven’t seen the film, but I can imagine it being the usual romanticised Hollywood version. Pitt probably meets the Dalai Lama five seconds after arriving in Lhasa, even thought Harrer only became a tutor to the fourteen year old spiritual leader much later in his seven years’ residence in the country (the title is a misnomer, by the way, as Harrer seems to have spent a maximum of six years in Tibet - which is a much less romantic title).
Harrer and His Holiness do eventually become good friends, Harrer being both the young man’s tutor and building for him a private cinema. The friendship, though, is short lived. When Mao’s Red Army invade Tibet in 1950, Harrer and his European colleagues are forced to flee.
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| Tibet |
Only two years later. as Seven Years in Tibet was being published, the Dalai Lama himself was forced into exile in India, from which he has never returned. Harrer did return to Tibet in the early 80s, during a brief improvement in relations between China and the outside world. Harrer heard stories of concentration camps and forced labour. It is worth noting that China has killed an estimated 1.2 million Tibetans over the years, as well as ethnically cleansing much of the indigenous population and replacing it with Han Chinese. Many of the same tactics used against the Tibetans are now being repeated against the Muslim Uyghur population in the nearby province of Xinjiang.
Seven Years in Tibet was Heinrich Harrer’s first published book. He would go on to write a number of other books about Tibet, including a biography of the Dalai Lama’s brother, Thubten Jigme Norbu. He also wrote about the scaling of the north face of the Eiger, as well as accounts of his later adventures. He is estimated to have made somewhere in the region of 40 documentary films.
Harrer took part in a number of subsequent mountaineering expeditions to Alaska, the Andes and the Mountains of the Moon (central Africa), as well as expeditions to the Amazon, Congo River and Borneo, amongst other faraway places. He died in 2006, at the age of 93. Which, as we have said before, is not a tragedy.
Despite the follies of his 20s Heinrich Harrer lived a fuller and more fulfilling life than most of us can even imagine. I can’t imagine Adolf Hitler or anyone else in Nazi High Command approving of his journeys into Bhutan, French Guiana or the Andaman Islands. Which I suppose is a kind of redemption, if any were needed.
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| Heinrich Harrer with the Dalai Lama |
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