Anderl Heckmair, 98; Legendary German Mountain Guide

Anderl Heckmair, 98, a German mountain guide who led the first team to conquer the north face of the Eiger in the Swiss Alps, died Tuesday at a hospital in Oberstdorf, Germany.

Heckmair already had tackled a series of demanding peaks -- such as the northwest face of Italy’s Civetta and France’s Grandes Jorasses -- before he teamed with three others for the attempt on the Eiger in 1938.

The north face, a sheer 5,905-foot wall of crumbling limestone with the summit at 13,025 feet above sea level, is considered one of Europe’s greatest challenges to mountaineers.

Heckmair’s four-man rope team reached the summit on July 24, 1938, after a 3 1/2 -day climb, propelling him to fame at home. The Nazi regime held up the group’s feat as “proof of German superiority.”

Although Heckmair took a job as a mountain guide at a Nazi elite school in Sonthofen, he did not join the Nazi Party. According to biographers, he was classed as politically unreliable by the regime in 1940 and sent to the Eastern Front during World War II.

A native of Munich, Heckmair left school in 1920 to work as a gardener but became interested in mountain climbing. After World War II, he found work as a climbing guide and ski instructor.