The Alps in panorama

Rudolf Rother was born in Munich in 1927. After the war and French captivity, he began an apprenticeship as a typesetter and publishing merchant. From 1951 to 1953, he attended the master school for Germany's book printers in Munich. His years of travel took him to Frankfurt, Zurich, Düsseldorf, New York and Springfield/Illinois. When he returned to the Federal Republic of Germany in 1956, he joined the mountain publishing house Rudolf Rother, founded by his father in 1920, which he took over in 1964. He built this company into the leading publisher of German-language alpine literature for summer and winter mountaineering. Rudolf Rother's very original enthusiasm for mountaineering and high alpine skiing entered into a happy union with this professional challenge. Almost every weekend he climbed the peaks of the Alps. At the beginning of the sixties, he took up panorama photography. In addition to his alpine equipment, he then carried the heavy panorama camera in his backpack. It was often necessary to walk the same path a second and third time in order to find the right weather and the most favourable incidence of light. Thus, in the sixties, seventies and eighties, he created a collection of five hundred panoramas, initially in black and white, later in colour.