Alfons Hochhauser was an Austrian, whom life took to Pelion in the early 20s. Alfons, a versatile, controversial and mysterious man, once he learned he was terminally ill, in 1981, he decided to climb onto a high mountain top in Pelion and meet a death from cold.
Featuring:
Kostas Akrivos and locals from Pelion, Volos and Trikeri.
Camera:
Yannis Daskalothanasis
Screenplay / Directed by
Elias Giannakakis
Alfons Hochhauser is an extraordinary and controversial case. An Austrian naturalist, who first arrived in Pelion in the 1920s.
He took part in the illicit recovery of the famous Artemision Bronze in the Pagasetic Gulf, before the authorities tracked down the operation and delivered the sculpture to the Archeological Museum.
He lived in the area for years, making a living as a fisherman. He left and returned during the German occupation in a Nazi uniform, as an interpreter for the Wehrmacht. It is rumored that he was involved in extensive antiquity looting, organized by a high ranking official in the gulf.
After the war, he was captured by the British and imprisoned in Vienna, but he was acquitted and quickly released.
He spent time on the Galápagos Islands, where he made a name for himself as a marine and natural life explorer. He became the subject of several books and films.
In the late 50s he returned to Magnesia and set up on Trikeri, (a small island and former place of exile for women communists) a pioneering prototype ecotourism model with guesthouses without any electricity, excursions to untrodden spots, instructive evenings during which ancient classics were read and a likely sexually promiscuous environment. Many famous personalities, like Greta Garbo, had visited the place, which operated until the late 60s.
Alfons, as everybody called him, would go away for a while but always returned to Magnesia. Always.
At the end of 1979 he was diagnosed with cancer and in 1981 he made the choice to climb an untrodden mountain peak on mount Pelion and die of exposure.
Kostas Akrivos' book about Alfons became the handbook for this documentary, which also features some very touching testimonies and amazing archival footage of Alfons himself.
