SWISS VALLEY RESIDENT POINT OF VIEW
Protestant minister Peter Eichenberger on base jumping
The valley in which his parish lies is a mecca for extreme sports fanatics who jump into the void from its steep cliffs… sometimes to their deaths. Peter Eichenberger is a Protestant minister, and his thoughts on the hot topic of base jumping are those of a member of the clergy and a resident. He doesn’t think a blanket ban on base jumping would get to the root cause of the problem.
I don’t have any contact with the other base jumpers that come to the Lauterbrunnen Valley. They sometimes walk past my house. They used to say hello, but that’s a rare occurrence now. They have become increasingly closed. It was different in the 1990s, when base jumping in Switzerland was a nascent sport. The jumpers had a different attitude then and they were real pioneers. Ueli Gegenschatz was one of them.
I don’t like using the word «Sensationsgeilheit» [lust for sensation; sensation seeking]. But in this case, it’s not far from the truth. People want to see these films, like the one made by Red Bull that has in the meantime claimed two lives. They want to see these jumps, like the one by Ueli Gegenschatz in Zürich. In these moments, the factors of lust and agony are close together. I don’t understand this pursuit of sensation.