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ficulty but what builds around it and opposes us,” Cenzi von Ficker
writes many years later, at the age of seventy.
Yet she is part of a top-class team, and according to reports of the
time she is also its very soul that keeps things running. And, ultimate-
ly, she is also the one who saves the day. On 21 July, the rope team
is ascending when disaster strikes. Adolf Schulze, at the head of the
team, stumbles. His rope partner Heinz, Cenzi’s brother, is able to hold
his weight after a fall of twenty meters and to secure him, yet hurts
himself in the process. Cenzi and expedition leader Rickmers come to
their rescue and bring them back safely to the high camp, where the
alpinists take care of the injured men.
The queen
Five days later, the team once more sets out to tackle the summit.
Without Cenzi von Ficker. Why she didn’t come along that day, when
the conquest of the southern summit was finally to succeed, is not
known. Her mountaineering skills were definitely not the reason.
Those had not escaped the notice of the locals either. The Ushba
girl, as she was finally called, is still known in those parts to this day.
Mainly for one reason: it is said that the prince of the region, Tatarch-
an Dadeshkeliani, was so impressed by the pretty and brave Tyrole-
an that he presented the terrible mountain to her as a gift. And so it
came about that there is a Tyrolean mountain more than 2,000 kilo-
meters beyond Tyrol’s borders. The deed of gift, including the princely
seal, today is kept at the Munich museum of the Deutscher Alpenvere-
in (German Alpine Association). The prince, whose generosity shocked
many a contemporary, who moreover asked themselves how you can
give something away that doesn’t really belong to you, saw the whole
thing quite nonchalantly. After all, the lady could not take the moun-
tain with her. But she was welcome at any time to visit it. Cenzi von
Ficker never again climbed Mount Ushba. However, another mountain
in the region, nameless until its first ascent through her, is named af-
ter her: Tsentsi Tau.
“I cannot remember that there has ever been a time when the
mountains have not been part of my life,” said Cenzi Sild, as she was
finally called after her marriage. The only female honorary member of
the Austrian Alpine Club to this day, she was celebrated on her return.
Her later life was full of tragedy. She survived her husband Hannes Sild
as well as her three sons Uli, Henning and Meinhart, and finally died
in 1956, at the age of seventy-seven. “For me,” writes Otto Langl in his
obituary, “she was the Queen of the Alps, and she wore an invisible
crown on her head throughout her lifetime, by the grace of Ushba.”
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