Tait Keller. Apostles of the Alps: Mountaineering and Nation Building in Germany and Austria, 1860–1939 .

Abstract

In Apostles of the Alps: Mountaineering and Nation Building in Germany and Austria, 1860–1939, Tait Keller explores this mountain range as both a physical and a discursive space. The “apostles” of the title, champions of Alpinism, scaled the rugged landscape and later used mountaineering associations to propagate the joys of the mountains to a broader public. Increased tourism (and later war) reshaped the mountain landscapes with new roads, railroads, paths, and accommodations (and militarized the Alps by increasing the artillery presence). Discursively, the advocates of Alpinism celebrated the hardships of mountaineering as a healthy corrective to the deleterious impact of modern living; the mountains could also stand as a unifying space for both Austrians and Germans to celebrate their commonalities or unite in their mutual struggles in the interwar period. Yet on both levels, Keller ably demonstrates that the Alps could generate contradictions as hardcore Alpinists deplored changes wrought by mass consumerism on their beloved slopes, and Austrians and Germans often clashed over the meaning and even ownership of mountain spaces. Keller thus engagingly braids environmental, cultural, and political history around a core built on a close examination of the evolution of the Deutscher und Österreichischer Alpenverein (German and Austrian Alpine Association [DÖAV]) across the nineteenth and the first half of the twentieth centuries.