Born in South Tyrol in 1944, Reinhold Messner is one of the world’s most successful mountaineers. In over 3,000 mountain tours, he has mastered around 100 first ascents, climbed all 14 eight-thousanders and crossed Antarctica and Greenland on foot. He climbed Mount Everest, the highest mountain on earth, twice, the first person to do so alone and without oxygen.

Lecture topics Reinhold Messner

• Challenges & obstacles on the way to the top
• Management & Leadership
• Risk management & borderline experiences
• Motivation & Success
• Back in the mountains: Mountaineering as a way of life

As an extreme sportsman, mountaineer, border crosser, author, filmmaker, mountain farmer and lecturer Reinhold Messner has experiences that can best be transferred to management training: Incentive, fulfillment, doubt, self-knowledge, learning to act on one’s own responsibility, strategic planning, structured execution and self-realization are only mentioned here as meaningful keywords. The “asceticism in concentrating on the essentials” is the focus of Messner’s motivational lectures, which he gives to workforces and managers in leading companies.

Keeping realism and idealism in balance applies to sporting and adventurous challenges as well as to legislation for managers in business enterprises and experts in political institutions. Born in 1944, Messner wrote a large number of books and expedition reports, essays and reportages, one bestseller followed the next. As a motto greets the interested reader when clicking on Messner’s homepage the following sentence: “I am what I do.” Not least for this reason, Reinhold Messner is highly honored and appreciated by a wide audience because of the authentic power of his language and his rhetoric, which is both visually powerful and rich in metaphors, as an interview partner, commentator in the most diverse media formats, and as a brilliant speaker excellence.

Adventurer, Impulse Giver & Lecturer

Reinhold Messner studied civil engineering at the University of Padua and taught mathematics before devoting himself entirely to mountaineering. An avid climber, he undertook climbing tours in the Alps and Dolomites in the early 1960s before embarking on his first Himalayan expedition in 1970, climbing the 8,125-meter Nanga Parbat in the Himalayas. His ascent of the 8,848-meter Mount Everest without oxygen equipment in 1978 with a friend caused a worldwide sensation. Two years later, he conquers Everest a second time, this time solo. Messner experiences a somewhat different adventure when he marches 2,800 kilometers across Antarctica in 1989, without the help of dog sleds or snowmobiles. In 1993, he succeeds in the longest Greenland crossing to date without technical support.

From 1999 to 2004 he sits in the European Parliament as a member of the Group of the Greens/European Free Alliance. Following this mandate as an Italian MEP, Reinhold Messner devotes more time to his project Messner Mountain Museum (MMM), which is officially opened in 2006.

He also publishes numerous articles for various magazines, such as Spiegel, Stern, Geo or National Geographic, and publishes numerous books and illustrated books that are translated into several languages. Again and again he has reached and pushed the limits of human performance. Messner about himself: “I am a border crosser. Someone who tries to go a little further out at the limit of what is possible …”.

Reinhold Messner’s charismatic and extraordinary personality make him an internationally sought-after speaker. In his lectures, Reinhold Messner advises companies on the subject of leadership, motivation and teamwork and shows how to achieve peak performance through motivation. He is regarded as a source of inspiration for managers worldwide. Messner speaks in German, English and Italian.