Mountain Rescue in Translation: Neuzeitliche Bergrettungstechnik and the Cultural Resignification of Alpinism

Abstract

This essay reconstructs the story of the 1963 English translation of Sebastian “Wastl” Mariner’s classic mountain rescue manual Neuzeitliche Bergrettungstechnik, published by the Alpenverein in 1949, by two members of the Seattle-based Mountain Rescue Council. Both translators, Otto T. Trott and Kurt G. Beam, were refugees of National Socialism. In tracing the story of Mountain Rescue Techniques, the essay suggests some of the ironies that attended the historical process through which German and Austrian Alpinism gradually lost its Nazi associations. The essay also offers a case study in the growing field of the history of migrant knowledge.