On Hidden Trails – Mountaineers and Adventurers in Communist Germany (GDR)

As mountaineering was a non-Olympic sport and of no military relevance, it did not obtain any support of the socialist state. Consequently, it was very difficult for the mountaineers to obtain visas and financial or material resources. Invitations from the Soviet Union (SU), well-paid side jobs and self-made equipment were just some of the things necessary to be able to get into the highlands. From the end of the 1970s the emerging ‘hippie-generation’ brought new life into the scene of traditional alpinists. These young people travelled into the Soviet Union with the help of a so-called ‘Transitvisum’. They stayed in the SU illegally for several weeks or even months, always being weary of the police. Not having much financial possibilities, they travelled mostly by train or by hitchhiking and thus got into close contact with the Soviet people. Due to their experiences the alpinists were able to distance themselves from the official socialist discourse in the German Democratic Republic (GDR) and to realise the possibility of liberty. They can be considered as an avant-garde of the massive exoduses or escapes of thousands of GDR citizens in 1989 through one or more eastern countries which initiated the collapse of the GDR.