Reinhold Messner
Great excitement about his farewell words on Instagram
Reinhold Messner (here 2017) thinks about death.
© Markus Wissmann/Shutterstock
The all-clear after a kind of farewell letter: Reinhold Messner is thinking about death.
After Reinhold Messner (79) his followers with a cryptic The farewell text on Instagram had caused concern, but he now gives the all-clear. Two days ago, the mountaineer posted a photo of himself sitting in a boat with a thoughtful look.
“I’m coming to the end, that’s reality!” Messner wrote about the picture. “But I’m leaving with a clear conscience because I know that I was a good person, that I did my best, that I was a loving father, a good friend and a good brother,” the South Tyrolean continued. “Now it’s time to live my final dreams and love the people who mean a lot to me, but the most important thing is gratitude,” he concluded.
Is the famous mountaineer and conservationist about to die? Many followers expressed this fear after this type of farewell letter.
“Death is a fact”: Reinhold Messner gives the all-clear
On Monday, Reinhold Messner gave the all-clear. He also explained via Instagram: “I’ll be 80 next year and I realize I don’t have much time left. Death is a fact.”
But he didn’t want to worry anyone with this statement and his last post. “I’m doing well and I’m happy to be able to look back on a beautiful life with ups and downs and to now be able to enter my last decade calmly,” said the adventurer. By the way, he is not the only one who will die, he added.
Most famous mountaineer in the world
Reinhold Messner became the world’s most famous mountaineer in the 1970s. In 1978, he and Peter Habeler (81) were the first people to climb the summit of Mount Everest without bottled oxygen. By 1986, he was the first person to climb all fourteen eight-thousanders in the world – also without additional oxygen. Even though this record has now been revoked by Guinness World Records because many peaks have long been incorrectly calculated.
Messner is politically committed to nature conservation and was a member of the European Parliament for the Italian Greens.