Apostles of the Alps
Mountaineering and Nation Building in Germany and Austria, 1860-1939
Tait Keller
Publisher: University of North Carolina Press
Subject: History, Nature
| University of North Carolina
Print ISBN: 9781469625034
eBook ISBN: 9781469625041
DESCRIPTION
In the mid-nineteenth century, the Alps were regarded as a place of solace from industrial development and the stresses of urban life. Soon, however, mountaineers, or the so-called apostles of the Alps, began carving the crags to suit their whims, altering the natural landscape with trails and lodges, and seeking to modernize and nationalize the high frontier. Disagreements over the meaning of modernization opened the mountains to competing agendas and hostile ambitions. Keller examines the ways in which these opposing approaches corresponded to the political battles, social conflicts, culture wars, and environmental crusades that shaped modern Germany and Austria, placing the Alpine borderlands at the heart of the German question of nationhood.