Heroes of Everest: Swiss stand on top of the world

Swiss mountaineers made history around the world with their spectacular ascent of the peak of Mount Everest in 1956. Prior to this, only Sir Edmund Hillary and Sherpa Tenzing had successfully reached the summit.  In Switzerland, the mountaineers came to personify much more than their feat on Everest, impressive  as it was. They also embodied a desire among the Swiss for a leading role in the technology boom of the post Second World War years. The climbers were seen as harbingers of a more open Switzerland – a country in need of burnishing its reputation on the world stage after its cooperation with the Nazis.  On May 1956, the first two-man Swiss team of Ernst Schmied and Jürg Marmet reached the summit of Mount Everest, followed the next day by a second two-man Swiss team, Dölf Reist and Hans Ruedi von Gunten.  The four mountaineers became the second and third teams to reach the top of Everest’s 8848-metre peak following Hillary and Tenzing’s climb in … Show more
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– SWI swissinfo.ch