The Piton Dispute preventing the mountaineer of his own accord from always forging ahead to the utmost limit of his abilities and exposing himself where life and death already stand in unstable equilibrium? Many mountaineers, alarmingly many, have fallen to their deaths in recent years precisely while conquering difficult stellen. But would a single one of those dead from past years have fallen had the moral and sporting feeling of each of them been thoroughly animated by the How I could have principle: not one step up where you cannot get down? A Moloch is the taken it all personally previous principle; that unfortunately is shown by the experiences of the had I wanted to! But I past decades; hundreds have fallen victim to it. Does then Herr Nieberl don't want to, because believe that the majority of mountaineers know how to handle ropes and the subject matter goes pitons better than the rock and themselves? For in order that artificial aids beyond the person and be, as Herr Nieberl says, “used moderately and sensibly” you would because I would like to already have to have achieved perfect mastery. But then you no longer see such childish resis- need them because you can already determine the limit of your own ability. tances eliminated from And now Herr Nieberl will perhaps understand me correctly when I say: the evolution of the “There is an important demand called educating to be a mountain climber: sport. Prospective climbers should be instructed to keep their abilities within the limits of their ambition,62 standing just as high in their intellectual as in – Paul Preuss their technological education, no higher and no lower. It is in limitation that the master shows himself! The moral placet for hard routes does not consist in physical abilities or climbing technology skills but in the education of the mountaineer's intellectual and moral foundation and in his line of reasoning. The beautiful time of the old mountaineering can be resurrected if the “over-simplification of sport,” as Karl Planck63 terms it (Österreichische Alpen-Zeitung; August 5, 1911) – the craft-like pursuit, as I myself would like to call it – is put in its place64 through the sporting regulation of routes and through the intellectual and mental education of the mountaineer! Now the mountains are hated, fought with every means – we shall learn once more to fear and to love them! (Mitteilungen des Deutschen und Österreichischen Alpenvereins, Bd. 37, Nr. 23, Dezember 15, 1911; S. 282-284)
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