Konzeption and Engagement

With the Reinhold Messner Foundation, 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 and the Caucasus through agriculture and tourism.

Since the devastating earthquake in Nepal in April 2015, the Reinhold Messner Foundation has been involved in the reconstruction of the badly damaged hospital in Khunde and continues to support this vital infrastructure for the local people with donations to this day.

To this day, the MMF supports the schools founded by Reinhold Messner in the most remote valleys of the Karakoram in Pakistan. The Günther Messner School and the opening of a girls' school in Jail in 2015 are matters close to Reinhold's heart.

In their foundation, Diane and Reinhold Messner are committed to promoting charitable causes as defined in Section 53 of the German Tax Code (AO), education and upbringing, youth and elderly care, art and culture, environmental and climate protection, development aid, disaster prevention and relief, public health care and international understanding.

Reinhold Messner Stiftung

under the auspices of Bridges Nachlassmanagement GmbH,
Oettingenstrasse 25, D-80538 Munich 

Tel. +49 89 242129
Fax +49 89 242129 10 

HypoVereinsbank AG München
IBAN DE53 7002 0270 0658 7534 44,
Swift Code/BIC HYVED EMMXXX

For further information, please contact Büro Reinhold Messner

School for 50 children

Reinhold Messner is supporting a school construction project for 50 children in the Diamir Valley in the Kashmir region of Pakistan. That is where he was rescued by local people in 1970 after completing the first traverse of Nanga Parbat with his brother Günther. The dramatic scenes on the mountain and the death of his brother are described by Messner in his book “The Naked Mountain”.

The school – the first in this valley – is located at an altitude of about 2590 meters. The next school is a 12-hour walk away. Messner’s contribution will cover the salary for a teacher for the first five years. The then President Musharraf assured him that the Pakistani government would assume responsibility for the school after that.

Disaster relief in Pakistan

Pakistan's biggest flood disaster in the last 80 years has already killed thousands of people, and millions more are suffering from hunger and the spread of cholera and other deadly diseases. Maurizio Giuliano, a spokesman for the United Nations, told the Reuters news agency: “The challenges are absolutely enormous and the flooding is not yet over.” Countless bridges and roads have been destroyed, and an unprecedented effort is needed to transport emergency supplies and doctors to the remote valleys of the Karakoram Mountains. According to hikers and mountaineers returning from the area, the entire region is affected by the disaster.

The United Nations is coordinating the relief work but the organisation is overwhelmed by the sheer scale of the destruction. Only a fraction of the 6 million Pakistanis who urgently need food and safe drinking water have so far been supplied, while over a hundred thousand children are threatened by cholera. They need your help. The Reinhold Messner Foundation has been active in the valleys of northern Pakistan for many years, building schools and clinics there. The MMF helped the people of those remote valleys with the reconstruction work following the 2005 earthquake.