Preparing for war by fostering alpine winter tourism: Hermann Czant and his ideas on infrastructure for fighting in high altitude

Neither in historiography of alpine (winter) tourism nor in that on the First World War in mountainous regions has (Austro-)Hungarian mountaineer and officer Hermann Czant received a lot of attention, although he was amongst those, who promoted alpine winter tourism not least as an important training for military operations in a war in mountainous terrain such as the Alps or the Carpathians. This article analyses the ideas of Hermann Czant on the relationship between mountaineering, future military operations in high altitude and the construction of infrastructure in mountainous terrain and claims that he was probably looking for recapturing the Carpathians lost by Hungary in 1918–1920 through the fostering of alpine (winter) tourism and the building of infra-structure related to this process. At the same time he was very much aware of the inte-grative as well as disintegrative impact of the building of infrastructure in a mountainous environment. Therefore human agency and conduct took precedence over more or less permanent civilian or military infrastructure in such areas.