Katia and Maurice Krafft explored volcanoes, attended at least 175 eruptions – and died in one of them. An Oscar-nominated documentary tells of their mysterious love and the gift of burning for something.
From
Johanna Adorjan
Some love stories are more dangerous than others. On June 3, 1991, the eruption of the Unzen volcano in Japan killed 43 people, including two well-known French volcanologists, namely the couple Katia and Maurice Krafft. They had come specially to witness the eruption, as they often did, and for once gotten too close to the action. The only remains of them that were found were a camera and a clock, the hands of which had stopped just as the pyroclastic flow buried them both. Her end was tragic but not surprising. “With all the risks we take, it would be a real shame to die in our beds,” Maurice Krafft once said.