Max-Engelhardt von Kienlin (born July 22, 1934 in Erolzheim ) is a farmer , forester , writer and mountaineer . In 1970, together with Günther and Reinhold Messner , he took part in the Sigi Löw memorial expedition to Nanga Parbat , led by Karl Maria Herrligkoffer .

Life

Erolzheim Castle

Max-Engelhardt was born at Erolzheim Castle, municipality of Erolzheim in Upper Swabia . He lost his father in a plane crash in 1940 during World War II . He witnessed how on September 13, 1945, the central building of Erolzheim Castle burned down to the outer walls for reasons that are unclear. [1] At the time, Württemberg was a French occupation zone and the castle housed the regional headquarters of the French occupation forces.

After attending high school, he took over the administration of the family property at the age of 21. In 1966 he flew from Munich to Tripoli ( Libya ) in a Bölkow Junior 208 , the smallest aircraft that had ever flown over the Mediterranean Sea, as a representative of the Bölkow company .

He was a guest of the Sigi Löw Memorial Expedition to Nanga Parbat in 1970. [2] From 1978 to 1988 he sailed the seven seas with his sailing yacht . Erolzheim Palace, the ancestral seat of the von Kienlin family, was sold in 1987.

In 2003 he wrote a book about the Nanga Parbat expedition entitled The Transgression. Max-Engelhardt von Kienlin was reacting to Reinhold Messner's accusations against fellow expedition members on October 4, 2001 in the Alpine Museum on the Praterinsel in Munich. In this book, he cast doubt on Reinhold Messner's descriptions and put forward his own hypotheses as to the circumstances under which Messner's brother Günther Messner could have died during the expedition at the time. [3] Messner then filed a lawsuit against some of the illustrations in the book [4] and thus achieved partial legal success. The process ended with a settlement before the Hanseatic Higher Regional Court in Hamburg. Max-Engelhardt von Kienlin wrote, among other things, another book, The Lonesome Death, about the 1970 expedition and its consequences.

Max-Engelhardt von Kienlin has lived in Munich with his family since 1989.