Translator's Introduction Arnold Fanck (1889-1974), pioneer of the specifically German genre of the Bergfilm (mountain film), began life as a sickly child with breathing problems. As he recounts in his 1973 autobiography Er führte Regie mit Gletschern, Stürmen und Lawinen: ein Filmpionier erzählt (He Directed Glaciers, Storms, and Avalanches: a Film Pioneer Recounts), his early years gave no indication that he would later direct and film movies under demanding conditions in the Alps and Greenland. Fanck was so prone to asthma attacks that he was homeschooled until the of nine, at which point his wealthy family sent him off to a boarding school in Davos, Switzerland. There, in the town immortalized for its sanatoria in Thomas Mann's Der Zauberberg ( The Magic Mountain, 1924), a local physician told Fanck's father, it is said that the children never have problems with asthma.

Haque, Kamaal, trans. and introduction. Arnold Fanck, He Directed Glaciers, Storms, and Avalanches: A Film Pioneer Recounts (1973)---Excerpts. In Mountains and the German Mind: Translations from Gessner to Messner, 1541-2009, edited by Sean Ireton and Caroline Schaumann, 249-267. Rochester, NY: Camden House, 2020.

Kamaal Haque is a professor of German at Dickinson College.

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