In reply to Al Evans and Luca and others:
When I read The White Spider I thought it an incredibly wonderful book. Not all of it perhaps, but the chapter on Toni Kurz moved me deeply, beyond the level at which it is comfortable to be moved by someone else's tragedy. I am certain that many people reading it feel just the same. To me, that chapter on Kurz is like some terrible distorted parallel to Touching the Void, in which Simpson crawls into camp an hour too late, and dies alone in the cold. Both men struggle and struggle to live, death seems inevitable many times, and yet at that final throw of the dice, Simpson lives, Kurz dies ... I read that chapter wanting history to change, knowing it could never change, but wanting so much for Kurz to live. I don't think I've ever cared so much about a man I've never met and who died before I was born.
I am sure that a great part of the power of that chapter lies simply in the story, the unbearably cruel twists of fate that meant Kurz died after all, when everything in your heart believes that he should've lived. And how much or little is due to Harrer's power as a story teller I could never now say. But still, he brought us that story, he told the stories in a way that brings you close to all those who died attempting the Nordwand; I think he was a wonderful writer.
This is obviously something different from historical accuracy. When I first read The White Spider, even though at that point I had no other knowledge of the attempts on the Eiger, still there were little hints (which in my absorption I ignored) that Harrer's account is not pure objective information. Looking back, I think now that he is what would in fiction be called 'an unreliable narrator'. His account is coloured, even distorted, by his particular perspective. Well, we can't blame him for that, whose voice could he write in other than his own? He was part of the story, why would his voice be objective.
The chapter on Corti is an unpleasant muddle of suspicion and innuendo. Did it ever add much to the book? I don't think so. The White Spider's strength lies in its early chapters. I think once Corti's innocence was proved by the discovery of the bodies of the men who'd so generously helped save him by leaving him their tent, Harrer should've removed the chapter from future editions. Or completely re-written it. Personally I can't imagine writing a book that implies one climber has murdered two others, finding out that I'd got it wrong, and not withdrawing it.