Edited by:
Massimo Martini
Swiss mountaineer and writer, co-founder of the Swiss Alpine Club in 1863.
Biography
Johann Jakob Weilenmann was born on 24 January 1819 in St Gallen, the son of Jakob Weilenmann, a private school headmaster, and Dorothea Hägeli. He remained unmarried throughout his life. After completing an apprenticeship at the Johann Conrad Fehr textile firm in his home town, he represented the company as a merchant, first in New York and then in Pernambuco, in north-eastern Brazil (now Recife): acommercial, rather than mountaineering, experience which nevertheless left him with a lasting interest in natural history, as evidenced by the extensive entomological collection he assembled in Brazil and subsequently donated to the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich. He returned to Switzerland via London after 1850, by which time he was already in his thirties.
It was only after his return that he began his high-altitude mountaineering activities – rather late in the day compared with other pioneers of Swiss mountaineering who had trained as guides from a young age. The first documented expedition dates back to 1855: ten days after the first-ever ascent of Monte Rosa, achieved on 31 July by a British climbing party, Weilenmann reached Zermatt with the intention of climbing the same peak together with his companion Johan Bucher. Bad weather forced the pair to postpone the ascent and settle for a training climb on the Stockhorn (3,532 m); on 14 August, accompanied by Bucher, a German companion, two English mountaineers and four Zermatt guides, Weilenmann completed the second ascent of Monte Rosa. Eight years later, together with Bucher himself – who had since become a National Councillor – he spearheaded the initiative that led to Switzerland’s highest peak being named after General Guillaume-Henri Dufour.
In the 1860s, he concentrated his exploratory activities mainly in Valais, Graubünden and Tyrol, often climbing alone: he was the first to ascend the Muttler (3,294 m) on 29 July 1859, the Fluchthorn (3,399 m) in 1861 with the Galtür guide Franz Pöll, and the Ramolkogel (3,549 m) and the Weißer Kogel in 1862 in the Ötztal range. In August 1863, he reached the summit of theHelsenhorn (3,272 m): the ascent was not accompanied by a full published account; it remained known only through scattered references and was not repeated until 1894; a different route to the same summit, from the south-western slope of Heiligkreuz, is attributed to him in August 1887, when he was 68 years old. In 1863, he was also one of the founding members of the Swiss Alpine Club.
1865 was the year of his most famous exploits: on 14 July, with Joseph Anton Specht and the guides Franz Pöll and Jakob Pfitschner, he became the first to reach the summit of Piz Buin (3,312 m), on the border between Switzerland and Austria – on the very same day that, on the opposite side of the Alps, Edward Whymper’s party made the first ascent of the Matterhorn. With the same companions, he then climbed the Crast’Agüzza, in the Bernina massif, and on 11 September, with the guide Justin Felley, the Mont Blanc de Cheilon (3,870 m), in the Pennine Alps.
The descriptions of the landscapes traversed and the peaks reached, collected in the three volumes of Aus der Firnenwelt (1872–1877), established Weilenmann’s public reputation as one of the pioneers of high-altitude Alpine exploration. He died in St Gallen on 8 June 1896.
Personal details
name: Johann Jakob Weilenmann
born: 24 January 1819 - St Gallen (Switzerland)
Death: 8 June 1896 - St Gallen (Switzerland)
Nationality: Swiss
Occupation: mountaineer, writer, textile merchant
Affiliation: founding member of the Swiss Alpine Club (1863)