Gustav LANTSCHNER

Gustav Lantschner was born in Austria and gained German citizenship only ½-year before the 1936 Winter Olympic Games. His siblings Inge, Otto, Gerhard and Hadi Pfeifer (-Lantschner) and his cousin Hellmuth were also successful alpine skiers and world champions. His other brothers Otto and Gerhard were nationally successful. In 1932 Gustav became World Downhill Champion and placed third in the alpine combined. One year later he was runner-up in the slalom. He won those medals for Austria, but in 1936 won the silver in alpine combined at the Garmisch Winter Olympics for the German Reich, just behind his teammate Franz Pfnür.

In World War II Lantschner was a member of the SS and a war correspondent. Before 1945 he created several mountain and nature movies (Stürme über dem Mont Blanc (Storms over Mont Blanc), Der weiße Rausch (The white Rush), Abenteuer im Engadin (Adventure at Engadin)) He also acted in Leni Riefenstahl’s movies, and worked as a cameraman as well as an actor in her famous film on the 1936 Berlin Olympic Games. After the war he went to Argentina for seven years, where he produced several movies and built some ski schools, but at the beginning of the 60s he returned to West Germany. He reached the age of 100 and died around half a year later.