Ellery Schempp of the Pittsburgh Explorer’s Group Nanga Parbat Expedition which was to be the first American group to reach the peak of Nanga Parbat in Pakistan. Schempp, who is retired, currently resides in Boston, Massachusetts. Stephen D. Solomon, a professor at New York University, has written a book about Schempp and the Supreme Court case entitled "Ellery’s Protest: How One Young Man Defied Tradition and Sparked the Battle over School Prayer". On November 26, 1956, Schempp staged a protest against the school requirement that each student read 10 Bible passages and the Lord's Prayer each day during homeroom. That day he
Nanga Parbat faces Kanchenjunga was more difficult than Everest and neither expedition made much progress. K2 was known to be harder still, and its remoteness meant that even reaching its base would be a major undertaking. Nanga Parbat was therefore the highest mountain accessible to Germans and also deemed reasonably possible by climbers at the time. The first German expedition to Nanga Parbat was led by Willy Merkl in 1932. It is sometimes referred to as a German-American expedition, as the eight climbers included Rand Herron, an American, and Fritz Wiessner, who would become an American citizen the following year. While the