Henry Crowther (Heinrich Karl Krausz)

by his daughter Christina Crowther

My father was born in the Austrian city of Graz in 1904 and studied electrical engineering at Technische Universitat in Graz during which time he skied with Heinrich Harrer, later of Eiger and. Seven Years in Tibet fame. Alter qualifying he worked as an electrical engineer for ELIN for a couple of years before the 1930's great depression set in. Thereafter only sporadic jobs were available to him as an engineer.

Henry Crowther

In 1936 my father had a job offer at the Austrian State Tourist Office in London that proved a real lifesaver in the very real sense of the word. During the period leading up to the war he met a travel company owner by the name of Walter Ingham who specialised in tours of Austria. On the day of the Anschluss in Vienna he made the decision to remain in England, although several months later the Austrian State Tourist Office was dismantled by the Nazis and all personnel ordered home. He was issued with a new passport [German Reich] but did not return.

Internment of Aliens followed soon after war broke out in September 1939. My father's tribunal was in January 1940 and I think he was sent to the Isle of Man in March or April. Letters to my mother, Theodora Baird to whom he was engaged, though heavily censored, start around that time in 1940. He was released a year later and got married on 14 June 1941. But he had to do another 3 months on kippers and porridge when the scare of Hitler's British invasion in Autumn 1941 reached fever point. From 1942 until the end of the war he worked as an electrical engineer for various firms including Handley Paige, obviously considered a trustworthy citizen by them, having married a native girl with Scottish roots and buying a house in Purley, London.

After the war Heinrich became a British National in 1946 changing his name to the English sounding Henry Crowther. Soon he would pitch-up with his old friend Walter Ingham who was keen to re-establish his travel company business F & W Ingham specialising in tours of Austria which got underway in 1948. Henry became a co-director with Walter Ingham until the firm was sold in 1965 though he remained as a manager until retiring in 1969.

Along with Walter, Henry was keen to re-establish his links with the ÖAV and for establishing a new section for his adopted homeland, working with Walter to form Sektion England in July 1948. Henry would serve the newly formed section throughout his life, serving first as an Executive Committee member then as the Club's First President for almost 20 years from 1969 to 1988.

Letter from our President Henry Crowther for the 40th Anniversary in 1988

When the UK daughter of the Austrian Alpenverein (ÖAV) came into being in 1948 the future of the parent was not very promising.

Some 125 years previously, when the ÖAV was founded as a roof organisation of a hundred small local associations, it soon had to twin with the much larger, urban based German Alpenverein (DAV). When Walter Ingham joined the youth group of the Vienna Teachers section and I joined the University section in Graz (coincidentally both in 1929) it was called the German and Austrian Alpenverein (DuÖAV).

After the Anschluss in 1938 all traces of Austria had to be removed and the name was changed to the German Alpenverein. At the end of World War II this became fatal as all German property in Austria was to be expropriated as war reparations. Unlike much of the vast Hermam Goring Works, (which included the Austrian industry's largest (steel) plant in Linz an der Donau), the Alps could not be dismantled and shipped to Russia.

Long negotiations started in which Walter Ingham, our founder and a member of the British Military Control Commission in Vienna could take a hand and a lead.

First the original Austrian element was shelled out but this could not survive without the much larger German element. A small rival group, the Naturfreunde, politically more acceptable to the Russian occupation forces, was considered and ready to take over but, with no support in the provinces and the mountain areas, it could not cope.

Eventually a trusteeship of the German element by the Austrians saved the complex of mountain huts in Austria as a whole. After the peace heaty in 1955 it was not difficult to restore the rights of the West German sections, and to keep the East German and Sudeten interests in a shared trusteeship which still survives (1988). Still, in 1948, it needed a lot of optimism on Walter Ingham's part to embark on the creation of a UK branch of the ÖAV that should also reach mountaineers in the Commonwealth, (Ed: and other alpine countries).

Unlike the Austrian sections with their long historical, local support, our section is a British Institution stretching over the British Isles, with a large transient membership. How we manage to keep at about 2,500 faithfuls every year is a bit of a miracle. The peak figure around 1960 when we numbered 4,500, made up of pre-war members, an Austrian emigre contingent and former service personnel in the British occupation forces will probably not be reached again. (Ed: our 2017 membership was 14,265!)

Economically the hard Austrian Schilling and the varying degree of international popularity have not always helped Sektion Britannia. The effort of a continued annual recruiting drive and spreading of the gospel should assure our survival.

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