Hannes Schneider, a brief history of the great man and his influence on my first PIS.

Born 24/06/1890 Stuben Vorarlberg, Hannes Schneider was the son of a cheese maker, he had two great loves in his life, skiing and a decent Vorarlberger Fehlsenkase. In the very early days, as a young boy, Hannes skied in the Nordic style similar to those masochists who still Telemark today, he lunged and plunged his way down the steep terrain on a couple of heavy skis which would have been better suited as floorboards, he often returned home bruised and battered. One day, just before his seventeenth birthday, Hannes was dividing one of his father’s cheeses into equal sections using a cheese wire when he had a flash of inspiration. You can almost hear him say ‘Holy Vorarlberger Bergkase’ as he looked down at the triangular sections of cheese, ‘That’s how to do it, form a wedge with the skis, that way you can slow down and control your speed’ it wasn’t very long before he had the beginnings of what became ‘The Arlberg Technique’. In 1907 he became a ski guide at the Hotel Post in St. Anton am Arlberg and there he stayed, with a break to act as a ski instructor in the Austrian army during the 1914-18 war, until in 1921. In that year he became semi independent and made a film which demonstrated his new skiing technique. By 1924 he had formulised a completely new method of instruction which involved the ‘Wedgie’ now renamed ‘the snow plough’ (heaven knows where it got that one from), stem turns and parallels, he placed great emphasis on speed control and safety but let’s be honest prior to that it had been a case of ‘strap these planks of wood on and throw yourself down the mountain’, it was hardly a tough act to follow. Hannes Schneider was almost solely responsible for turning a hazardous sport into a safe recreation and let there be no doubt he new what a winner he was on, he made films, published books and basically wrote his own rules for teaching skiing and teaching ski instructors. In 1936 he went to the U.S.A. and demonstrated his technique in a number of places, not least of all, Madison Square Gardens, he undoubtedly realised there was a massive market to be addressed in North America. Sadly 1938 saw Austria come under German occupation and Hannes Schneider was imprisoned by the Nazis, he was removed as head of the Arlberg Schule and his certification as a ski instructor was revoked, it was said that he was a Jewish sympathiser and that he refused to join the German army. Now we come to the murky bit, it is not clear who was behind these accusations but it certainly cleared the way for someone else to step into his shoes as head of the most prestigious ski school in the world but they hadn’t calculated for Hannes’s resourcefulness. An American businessman, Harvey Gibson, was made aware of Hannes’s plight and he used his connections (plus plenty of the ‘fragrant grease’) to get the German Minister of Finance to arrange for his release and safe passage to the U.S.A. where, bugger me, Harvey had bought a hotel, half a mountain and had already set up a ski school called, you guessed it, The Arlberg Ski School and Hannes was made head honcho.

Now I guess you are asking yourself how has all this effected my own aspirations, I have, for a long time wanted a PIS, and I have considered trying to do it in the traditional way but Hannes Schneider demonstrated that you can do it any way you please regardless of what the authorities, not to mention The Fuhrer, might say.

Regards

Doctor Ski