South Tyrolean Reinhold Messner, 80, has repeatedly pushed boundaries as a rock climber, high-altitude mountaineer and adventurer.

For him, adventure is a cultural expression of life and his endeavours are not based on records, but on experience. He is interested in the confrontation between mountain and human nature, which finds its strongest expression in traditional alpinism.

In over fifty books and a dozen films, Reinhold Messner tells the story of the mountain and desert adventure that has driven enlightened man for 250 years.

In doing so, he has written down a sustainable way of dealing with nature that has remained wild, and rewritten an attitude that builds on generations of adventurers.

With the "Reinhold Messner Stiftung", Diane and Reinhold Messner assume social responsibility for the mountain peoples. Designed to help people help themselves, the aim is to ensure the survival of the local people high up in the mountains of the Himalayas, Karakoram, the Hindu Kush, the Andes or the Caucasus through agriculture and tourism.

In his endeavours to carry traditional alpinism into the future as a narrative, he has created a museum structure - the Messner Mountain Museum in the mountains of South Tyrol - that is without comparison. Now in his later years, he is no longer setting off for the highest peaks in the world, but is embarking on his final expedition around the globe in order to sustainably secure alpinism as a way of life. At the same time, meeting places are to be created with "Reinhold Messner Horizons" - a start-up founded by Diane and Reinhold Messner - in the Himalayas, High Tatras, Dolomites, Caucasus and other areas that will secure the basis for globally developed alpinism.