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WELCOME
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38
E
very age has its own mountains. Places that instill fear in
some, and a deep longing in others. And so every age also has
its own heroes, people who see the summit and not the seem-
ingly impossible path leading to it. When the twentieth century be-
gins, there is a mountain everybody is talking about, at least every-
body who has fallen under the spell of alpinism. And it carries the
emotion ascribed to it in its name: Ushba, the “terrible mountain,” a
twin summit – with a southern summit 4,737 meters and a northern
summit 4,698 meters high – situated in the main range of the Great-
er Caucasus in Georgia. Yet, ultimately, it too found its conquerors.
And a new owner.
Aloof
“Mount Ushba resembles the vision of a feverish person rather than
something real. A sensational work, in which nature surpasses itself.
I don’t remember a single summit whose sight would surpass Ush-
ba in boldness and beauty,” the German alpinist and geographer Gott
fried Merzbacher stated in 1891. The terrible mountain, one of the
highest in Georgia, is deemed as difficult to climb as the Matterhorn.
Which nobody was aware of at the time, of course, because Ushba,
the bull with two horns, as the locals call it, had not been fully con-
quered as yet. The northern summit had been scaled as early as 1888,
but the great challenge was the southern summit, in those days still
very much covered by glaciers. Twenty expeditions set out. All of them
failed. Among them a group of Tyroleans around Ludwig Purtschel-
ler from Innsbruck, which undertook the adventure in 1889. But even
Purtscheller, who probably knew the Alps, where he climbed more
than 1,700 summits, better than anybody else in those days, had to
turn back.
Ushba’s southern summit should remain untouched for fourteen
more years. On 26 July 1903, finally, the first people stood on top of
the mountain, all of them men. It probably hadn’t been planned that
way. For the expedition, made up of some of the best Austrian, Ger-
man and Swiss mountaineers, also had something special about it.
One of its members was a woman.
The other mountain
Cenzi von Ficker, one of the best female alpinists of her day, was
a celebrity even in her lifetime. Today, hardly anybody knows her
name. Born in 1978, she had been out and about in the mountains
around Innsbruck, especially the Karwendel and Wetterstein rang-
es, with her father Dr. Julius von Ficker, a famous legal historian, and
her brother Heinz, who later was to become a renowned meteorol-
ogist. With hemp ropes weighing several kilos and clothing which
would appear almost a hindrance to present-day mountaineers. In
1903, the siblings finally are part of an expedition of eleven people,
headed by Willi Rickmers, to the Caucasus. The goal: the southern
summit of Ushba.
We may assume that Cenz, as she was called, was regarded an
equal member of the team, which no doubt was an unusual thing at
the time, for women in alpinism were both a rarity and generally not
welcome. “For us women it is not the mountain itself that is the dif-
Die waren auch den Einheimischen nicht verborgen geblieben. Das
„Ushba-Mädl“, wie man sie schließlich nannte, kennt man in der Regi-
on heute noch. Vor allem aus einem Grund: Der Fürst der Region, Tat-
archan Dadeschkeliani, war angeblich dermaßen beeindruckt von der
schönen und mutigen Tirolerin, dass er ihr den schrecklichen Berg
schenkte. Und so kommt es, dass ein Tiroler Berg über 2.000 Kilome-
ter außerhalb der Landesgrenzen liegt. Die Schenkungsurkunde samt
fürstlichem Siegel befindet sich heute übrigens im Münchner Museum
des Deutschen Alpenvereins. Der Fürst, dessen Großzügigkeit so man-
chen seiner Zeitgenossen erschütterte, die sich darüber hinaus frag-
ten, wie man etwas verschenken kann, was einem genau genommen
gar nicht gehört, sah das Ganze mit Nonchalance: Die Dame könne den
Berg ja schließlich nicht mitnehmen. Aber sie sei jederzeit willkom-
men, ihn zu besuchen.
Bestiegen hat Cenzi von Ficker den Ushba nie mehr. Dafür ist aber
ein anderer, bis zu seiner Erstbesteigung durch die Innsbruckerin na-
menloser Berg in der Region nach ihr benannt – der Tsentsi Tau.
„Ich kann mich nicht erinnern, dass die Berge einmal nicht in mei-
nem Leben gewesen wären“, sagte Cenzi Sild, wie sie schließlich nach
ihrer Heirat hieß. Sie, die bis heute das einzige weibliche Ehrenmit-
glied des Österreichischen Alpenklubs ist, wurde nach ihrer Rückkehr
gefeiert. Ihr weiteres Leben verlief tragisch. Sie überlebte ihren Mann
Hannes Sild sowie ihre drei Söhne Uli, Henning und Meinhart und starb
schließlich 1956 mit 77 Jahren. „Für mich“, schreibt Otto Langl in sei-
nem Nachruf, „hieß sie die Alpenkönigin, die zeitlebens eine unsichtba-
re Krone auf ihrem Haupte trug – von Ushbas Gnaden.“
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