Heinrich Harrer, the Austrian climber and traveler who died on Saturday age 93, accomplished two remarkable feats of daring.

In 1938, in one of the greatest mountaineering feats of the time, he was in the first party successfully to climb the notorious North Face – or “Murder Wall” – of the Eiger, in the Swiss Alps. Later, after escaping from a British POW camp in India, he traversed the length of Tibet, reached the “Forbidden City” of Lhasa and became tutor to the young Dalai Lama.

At the outbreak of war in 1939, Harrer was on a German expedition in Kashmir, planning an assault on the unclimbed Nanga Parbat, the world’s ninth highest peak, for 1940. Captured and subsequently interned at the Dehra Dun camp, in the shadow of the Himalayas, he twice escaped and was recaptured. In April 1944 he finally escaped for good, disguised as an Indian workman.

After a brutal, 20-month journey, he made it to Llasa, where natives proved more inquisitive than hostile. Although the war was now over, Harrer resisted attempts to make him return. In 1948 he became a salaried official of the Tibetan government, translating foreign news and acting as court photographer. He became close to the Dalai Lama, then age 14, when he built a cinema to demonstrate the novel sport of skating. Harrer taught him English, science, and geography, a particular favorite of the young man, who was intrigued to find that so few countries exceeded his own kingdom in area. Harrer was forced to leave Tibet when the Chinese invaded, in 1950.

Harrer wrote a record of his adventures, “Seven Years in Tibet,” which was published in Britain in 1953. An immediate popular success, it has since been translated into 53 languages, and bears sympathetic witness to a devastated culture. A $70-million Hollywood film adaptation of the book, under the same title, brought Harrer’s exploits in Tibet before a worldwide cinema audience in 1997, with Brad Pitt starring as the young Harrer – “so handsome, such a sex symbol, not at all like me.” Other of Harrer’s exploits were also brought to light by the film, though unexpectedly.

As a result of the interest the project excited during the production stage, an investigation undertaken by an Austrian radio presenter, Gerald Lehner, in the German Federal Archives in Berlin and then published in Stern magazine, revealed Harrer to have had a Nazi past. It emerged that less than a month after the Anschluss in 1938, he had joined the SS.

He did not attempt to deny this. When asked for an explanation, he said, “Well, I was young. I was, I admit it, extremely ambitious, and I was asked if I would become the teacher of the SS at skiing. I have to say I jumped at the chance. I also have to say that if the Communist party had invited me, I would have joined. And if the very Devil had invited me, I would have gone with the devil.”

While some were outraged, Simon Wiesenthal, always careful to distinguish between war criminals and Nazis, did not consider Harrer to have been guilty of wrongdoing.

Harrer remained a staunch friend of the Dalai Lama; they shared the same birthday, and in 2002 the Dalai Lama attended his old tutor’s 90th birthday party in Austria,

Harrer wrote, lectured and made films about his travels, and he continued to climb in the Himalayas, the Andes, and New Guinea. With King Leopold of the Belgians, he went on expeditions to Surinam and North Borneo. He was also a keen golfer, winning Austrian national championships in 1958 and 1970.