German Alpine Club

German Alpine Club
Sport Mountaineering
Category Amateur athletic association
Founded May 9, 1869 (1869-05-09)
Affiliation International Federation of Sport Climbing
Regional affiliation 355 sections
Headquarters Munich
President Josef Klenner
Official website
www.alpenverein.de
Germany

The German Alpine Club (German: Deutscher Alpenverein, DAV) is the world's largest climbing association and the eighth largest sports union in Germany. The Club is a member of the German Olympic Sports Confederation and the responsible body for sport and competition climbing, hiking, mountaineering, hill walking, ice climbing, mountain expeditions as well as ski mountaineering.

History

The German Alpine Club was founded as Bildungsbürgerlicher Bergsteigerverein on 6 May 1869 in Munich by 36 former members of the Austrian Alpine Club around the Ötztal curate Franz Senn, in order to promote the tourist development of the Eastern Alps by the erection of mountain huts, hiking trails and via ferratas. The association enjoyed a large clientele from the beginning, with a number of 1070 members after only 10 months.

Mountain hut notice prohibiting the entry of Jews and Donauland members, c.1930

The German and the Austrian societies merged in 1873 to form the German and Austrian Alpine Club (DÖAV). Already in the late 19th century, the association's policies were increasingly characterized by nationalism and antisemitism. In 1899 the Brandenburg section amended an "Aryan paragraph" to exclude non-Christian members, followed by the Vienna section in 1905 and the Alpine corporations of Vienna and Munich in 1907 and 1910. After World War I, the Jewish associates like Viktor Frankl and Fred Zinnemann (adding up to about one third of the membership) were banned in most of the sections and in turn established a separate Donauland section insisting on their DÖAV fellowship. The Donauland members were officially ousted in 1924. Jews were even banned from visiting the DÖAV mountain huts.[1]

Upon the 1938 Austrian Anschluss to Nazi Germany, the DÖAV was renamed Deutscher Alpenverein (DAV) under the leadership of Arthur Seyss-Inquart and incorporated as mountaineering division of the Nationalsozialistischer Reichsbund für Leibesübungen (National Socialist League of the Reich for Physical Exercise) organization. After World War II, the DAV was dissolved by the Allied authorities. Its assets were held by the Austrian Alpine Club as trustee.

The German Alpine Club was re-established in 1952. It joined the Deutscher Sportbund organization in 1992. After leaving the Union Internationale des Associations d'Alpinisme in 2008, mainly due to differences in respecting both competitions and recreational sports, the German and Austrian Alpine Clubs rejoined the Union Internationale des Associations d'Alpinisme in 2013.

Structure

DAV Edelweiss badge

The DAV is an umbrella organization of 355 legally independent regional sections with a total of around 939,000[2] members. Every section is a registered voluntary association (Eingetragener Verein, e.V.) in its own right; it exclusively admits to membership. The collective body of the sections is represented by the general assembly, association council, and presidium.

Main task of the Club is the maintenance of mountain huts. The sections currently provide 325 Alpine club huts to hikers and mountaineers as well as 180 indoor climbing gyms. The DAV publishes Alpine Club maps and the Alpine Club Guides in cooperation with Bergverlag Rother, organises hillwalks and Alpine style tours, has mountaineering equipment available and arranges collective insurances. It also runs the Alpine Museum on Prater Island in Munich. In recent years, the Club's policies have turned to habitat conservation of fauna and flora of the Alps.

Sources

References

  1. ↑ Helmuth Zebhauser: Alpinismus im Hitlerstaat, München 1998, ISBN 978-3-7633-8102-9. Neueres zum Antisemitismus des Vereins in Panorama. Mitteilungsblatt des DAV Heft 1/2007, S. 60–62, von Nicholas Mailänder, siehe Weblinks: Donaulandaffäre (German)
  2. ↑ DAV in Zahlen (German)
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