Eternal mountains---Eternal Germany: The Alpine Association and the ideology of Alpinism, 1909--1939

My dissertation analyzes the German and Austrian Alpine Association ( Deutscher and Osterreichischer Alpenverein) and its evolving definition of Alpinism from the club's fortieth anniversary in 1909 to the start of World War II in 1939. Through Alpinism, the Alpine Association promoted the connection between a broader cultural community---Deutschtum ---and the mountains in the minds its members, and later the broader Austrian and German populations. It defined a vision of the Alps and a way of organizing the perception of the mountain landscape, and in doing so offered a program of control and power. By qualifying the Alpine Association as a political organization it becomes possible to employ spatial or geographic terms to understand the historical processes of creating a viable community in modern Germany and Austria.;Yet the Alpine Association was rife with tension, which spilled into the Alps and complicated their meaning. The mountains became contested space. The shifting genius loci of the Alps matched the political wrangling of modern Germany and Austria. Once portrayed as the realm of light and freedom, the mountains now also harbored darker, more despotic urgings. The impact of defeat in 1918 and the traumatic passage from war to peace was pivotal to this development. Alpinism became an ideology born of the need for national renewal and the desire for a political state that matched Deutschtum's cultural community. Ascending mountains now meant something more than searching for the personal sublime. Imbued with environmental concerns, the mountaineering mystique, and a sense of racial superiority, the ideology proved alluring.;Extending across three different political regimes, my work shows the extent to which political agendas were manifest in recreational activities and mountain metaphors. My dissertation contributes to the debate on the role of conservation, nature protection, landscape management, and tourism in recent German history, and suggests that geographical factors are basic to an understanding of political trends and social transformations in modern Germany and Austria. Using associational publications, memoirs, archival holdings, and government documents, my study offers a new perspective on German and Austrian civil society and national development.