Carr-Saunders Alexander Morris

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Biografie:
Alexander Morris Carr-Saunders (1886- 1966)
Sir Alexander Carr-Saunders, K.B.E., F.B.A., was born in 1886, and educated at Eton and Magdalen College, Oxford, where his subject was biology. His early academic career was spent in the natural sciences, but soon after the end of the first world war he transferred his interest to the social sciences with which he had a temperamental affinity, and in which he saw that there was great scope for the application of the methodology of the natural sciences. In 1923 he was elected to the newly created Charles Booth Chair of Social Science at Liverpool and in 1937 became Director of the London School of Economics and Political Science, a post in which his administrative skill combined with patience, understanding and tact enabled him to consolidate, as well as to develop, the position of that unique institution, both in research into, and the teaching of, the social sciences. Such was the regard in which he was held at the School that he was prevailed upon to postpone his retirement until 1956, when he had passed his seventieth year.
He continued nevertheless to make outstanding contributions to the work of higher education over the best part of another decade, and in particular was at the time of his death the acknowledged authority on the universities of Africa, which are among the chief growing points of higher education in the word at the present time.
This is not the place to attempt an estimate of his contribution to the social sciences, which, in an exceptionally well-informed and sympathetic obituary notice in The Times of October 8, was assessed extremely highly.
His essay on The Population Problem (1922) could be said to have founded the science of demography, in this country at any rate, and his later study of The Professions with P. A. Wilson was also a pioneering effort within its own area of research, and has been claimed as the beginning of modern scientific sociology.
Carr-Saunders was not easy to get to know: to most people his reserve was impenetrable, though it was not difficult to get on to terms with him. In a somewhat complex character, certain basic traits stood out; among these integrity, patience, modesty and selflessness were those which appeared to me most evident: he had, however, a shrewd idea of the importance of his own contribution to the social sciences. He hated sloppiness almost more than he hated dishonesty, and his work as both a scholar and administrator was marked by a meticulous attention to detail. His scorn of those who fell below his high standards, at any rate on moral issues, could be withering in private: in public he always preserved his urbanity, and indeed was famous for his sphinx-like countenance.
Carr-Saunders became interested in mountaineering as a schoolboy, in rather unusual circumstances. His grandfather had accepted the responsibility of trusteeship for Mme. Charlet-Straton, the heroine of an early alpine romance she had married her guide and settled down to live in Argentiere. There was a friendship between the Straton and Carr Saunders families, and the trusteeship descended from father to son. Alec Carr-Saunders' father used to visit Mme. Charlet-Straton from time to time and took his schoolboy son with him on some of these visits. Old Jean Char let of Petit Dru fame would take him on to the Argentiere glacier and teach him to cut steps, and he explored the Aiguilles Rouges, of which he acquired an exceptional knowledge. All his earliest climbing seems to have been done in this district and the first ascent shown on his application form for membership of the Club is the Aiguille du Tour (1903). The Charlet-Straton trusteeship was eventually wound up by Alec Carr-Saunders himself, who was staying at Chamonix with the old lady in 1914 when the war began.
Carr-Saunders joined the Club in 1911, being proposed by R. 0. P. Paddison and seconded by Claude Schuster. By this time he had made expeditions in other parts of the Alps, and indeed in Norway. In 1906 he had done the High Level route, in 1910 the Matterhorn, Dent Blanche and Dom (amongst others), and in 1911 he had a successful holiday in the Oberland, climbing among other peaks the Finsteraarhorn, Mönch, Jungfrau, Eiger, Bietschhorn, Wetterhorn and Gross Schreckhorn (traverse).
During the years immediately after the 1914-1918 war, Carr-Saunders seldom missed a holiday in the mountains. At first he returned to the Mont Blanc massif, which indeed he visited from time to time later. I have an account from a companion who was with him in 1925 when some of the outlying huts were still in a dilapidated condition. The party reached the Trio let hut late in the evening much burdened with firewood, blankets, food and equipment only to find the bunks practically devoid of straw, what utensils remained were unusable, and floor boards and seats much gnawed by marmots. The smoke from a fire which they proceeded to light refused to go up the chimney, or indeed to leave the hut, so that the party, with smarting eyes, felt they would have been better without it. Here they remained weather-bound throughout the next day, during which Carr-Saunders' enlivening conversation did much to keep up the spirits of his companions. In the end they got up the Aiguille de Triolet and also did a traverse of Mont Blanc.
In 1921 he was a member, as marine biologist, of the Oxford University expedition to Spitsbergen on which Julian Huxley and N. E. Odell were with him. Here and on other expeditions his load-carrying capacity impressed his fellow travellers. During the following decade he was climbing in the Alps most years, usually with one of his Oxford friends such as Robert Strickland-Constable, C. G. Markbreiter, H. R. C. Carr and John Pilley. Even in the terrible weather of 1924 he managed to get up the South-east peak of the Kranzberg, the Finsteraarhorn, the Dreieckhorn, the Rimpfischhorn, Monte Rosa and some smaller peaks.
In 1926 he was at Saas-Fee and climbed the Laquinhorn, Weissmies and Nadelhorn. In both 1927 and 1929 he climbed with A. M. Binnie and William Younger. In the former year, after starting with the Königspitze they moved into the Engadine, climbing the Bernina, Piz Roseg and Disgrazia: on the last peak it was so cold that a flask of tea embedded in the rucksack was found frozen. After this the party had an exasperating and excruciating journey to catch a train down to Ardenno in a springless carrozza drawn by a flaccid horse. Just as hope of arrival in time had been abandoned, a peasant carrying a load of sticks on his back appeared, whereupon the driver jumped down and without uttering a word snatched a stick and belaboured his animal with it to such effect that the train was caught in good time.
In 1929 they were in the Tarentaise and climbed the Grande Motte, the Tsanteleina and the Grande Sassiere. Carr-Saunders came from England to join the others quite out of training, and they admired the pertinacity and endurance he displayed in struggling up his peaks while suffering from mountain sickness. In I 93 2, the last season about which I have any information, he was in Austria with Strickland-Constable and did the Gross Venediger and Gross Glockner.
Expeditions such as the above meant more in the 192o's than they do today, but the record is rather that of a man who enjoyed making expeditions among the mountains than that of a passionate climber, and this is the estimate of his friends. He had indeed a very real love of the hill country; while working at Liverpool he was often to be found in Snowdonia at the week-end though he never developed much enthusiasm for rock climbing. After the last war he bought a cottage in the Vale of St. John in the Lake District, to which he eventually retired and from which he would make expeditions on to the fells with the friends who delighted to visit him there, as long as his health permitted. While there he busied himself, characteristically, with forestry and with tracing out the Roman roads. He was a delightful companion: untiring, uncomplaining and a good carrier, he was a strong and steady member of any party. He kept his companions interested by his wide-ranging and well-informed conversation, ever and anon lighted up by flashes of mordant wit. His observant eye and capacity for analysis of mountain and glacier forms brought an unusual and valued element to his companionship.
Carr-Saunders was indeed a man in whom the awareness and appreciation of beauty was strongly developed. He was a connoisseur of pictures, of which he made an interesting collection, and on the occasion of the centenary of the Club he undertook a survey of our pictures (see A.J. 63, 96, and 64, 129). It was perhaps the beauty of the scenery which drew him into the mountains, 'their every shape and pattern in rock and glacier and snowfield attracted and occupied his keen and sensitive mind'. But he also found in the quiet of the mountains the solace and the opportunity for quiet reflection which a busy life intensely concerned with human happenings made so necessary to him, whose sensitiveness to the 'human situation' drove him into a life of social service, from the hurly-burly of which he needed at times to retire for peace and refreshment. This he found among the mountains. He enjoyed, rather, to be among the peaks than to fight his way up them, and indeed, as his sociological work developed, and he became conscious of its pioneering importance, he may well have felt that the risks inherent in big expeditions were unjustifiable for him. On one of his earlier expeditions he had had an unpleasant experience in a crevasse from which the assembled might of the Oxford University Mountaineering Club had extracted him with some difficulty. However, I must not convey the impression that he did not enjoy the actual activity of mountaineering. From the accounts of his companions it is evident that he really enjoyed his climbs and showed an obvious exhilaration on reaching the top. In this too there was a scientific factor involved: he wanted 'to see for himself what the map had told him, and to look beyond'.
Although his earlier residence in the north, and later, when living in London, his numerous important public duties, prevented his frequent appearance at meetings, he was a keen member of the Club, came to the Winter Dinner whenever possible, and served one period on the Committee. Both in the University of Liverpool and while Director of the London School of Economics he did much to foster and encourage a love of climbing among his students, whom he helped with his counsel and guidance in drawing up their plans for meets, and in other ways. Undoubtedly, in a career which touched life at many important points, mountains, and the climbing of them, was one of the more important facets.
Chorley.
Quelle: Alpine Journal Volume 72, 1967, Seite 184-187


Geboren am:
1886
Gestorben am:
1966