Heinrich Harrer, an Austrian mountaineer and former Nazi who fled a British prisoner of war camp in India for the northern Himalayas, where he befriended and tutored the Dalai Lama, died on Saturday. He was 93.
Harrer's family in the province of Carinthia did not mention a cause of death, saying only that "in great peace, he carried out his final expedition" when he died in a hospital in Friesach. His family said he would be buried next Saturday in the town of Huettenberg.
Actor Brad Pitt played Harrer in the film Seven Years in Tibet, which was based on his 1953 memoir about fleeing Tibet's holy city of Lhasa after Chinese forces invaded.
PHOTO: REUTERS
A renowned explorer, Harrer had close links to the Nazi party, but he was known better for the years he spent as an adviser, teacher and friend of a young Dalai Lama after escaping from British custody in India and trekking to Tibet in 1944.
His adventures became known to millions worldwide in the 1997 film starring Pitt, and it was only a few months before the movie's release that Harrer's deepest, darkest secret -- his Nazi past -- finally caught up with him.
Born on July 6, 1912, in the Carinthian village of Knappenberg, Harrer joined the Nazi party when Germany took control of Austria in 1938. The son of a postal worker, the prominent mountaineer also joined the SS, the party's police wing associated with atrocities during World War II, though he was interned by the British in India at the start of the war.
Documents cited by the German magazine Stern in an expose on Harrer just before the film's release showed that at a time when Nazi organizations still were banned in Austria, Harrer -- then just 21 -- joined Adolf Hitler's underground SA storm troopers in Austria in 1933.
The revelations prompted some minor changes to the film to depict Harrer with Nazi officials and the Nazi flag, Seven Years in Tibet director Jean-Jacques Annaud said in 1997. But Annaud credited Harrer for his postwar commitment to human rights and racial equality.
"This is a man who ... feels a tremendous shame," Annaud said at the time. "I respect him as a man who has remorse."
Simon Wiesenthal, the famed Nazi hunter who died last year, said Harrer was not involved in politics and was innocent of wrongdoing.
In a statement on Saturday, Austrian Chancellor Wolfgang Schuessel publicly thanked Harrer "for many beautiful and intriguing discussions."
"His life fascinated me," Schuessel said.
MONEY MATTERS: Xi was to highlight projects such as a new high-speed railway between Belgrade and Budapest, as Serbia is entirely open to Chinese trade and investment Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic yesterday said that “Taiwan is China” as he made a speech welcoming Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) to Belgrade, state broadcaster Radio Television of Serbia (RTS) said. “We have a clear and simple position regarding Chinese territorial integrity,” he told a crowd outside the government offices while Xi applauded him. “Yes, Taiwan is China.” Xi landed in Belgrade on Tuesday night on the second leg of his European tour, and was greeted by Vucic and most government ministers. Xi had just completed a two-day trip to France, where he held talks with French President Emmanuel Macron as the
With the midday sun blazing, an experimental orange and white F-16 fighter jet launched with a familiar roar that is a hallmark of US airpower, but the aerial combat that followed was unlike any other: This F-16 was controlled by artificial intelligence (AI), not a human pilot, and riding in the front seat was US Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall. AI marks one of the biggest advances in military aviation since the introduction of stealth in the early 1990s, and the US Air Force has aggressively leaned in. Even though the technology is not fully developed, the service is planning
INTERNATIONAL PROBE: Australian and US authorities were helping coordinate the investigation of the case, which follows the 2015 murder of Australian surfers in Mexico Three bodies were found in Mexico’s Baja California state, the FBI said on Friday, days after two Australians and an American went missing during a surfing trip in an area hit by cartel violence. Authorities used a pulley system to hoist what appeared to be lifeless bodies covered in mud from a shaft on a cliff high above the Pacific. “We confirm there were three individuals found deceased in Santo Tomas, Baja California,” a statement from the FBI’s office in San Diego, California, said without providing the identities of the victims. Australian brothers Jake and Callum Robinson and their American friend Jack Carter
CUSTOMS DUTIES: France’s cognac industry was closely watching the talks, fearing that an anti-dumping investigation opened by China is retaliation for trade tensions French President Emmanuel Macron yesterday hosted Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) at one of his beloved childhood haunts in the Pyrenees, seeking to press a message to Beijing not to support Russia’s war against Ukraine and to accept fairer trade. The first day of Xi’s state visit to France, his first to Europe since 2019, saw respectful, but sometimes robust exchanges between the two men during a succession of talks on Monday. Macron, joined initially by EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, urged Xi not to allow the export of any technology that could be used by Russia in its invasion