Q1: Describe the background and rise to prominence of Leni Riefenstahl. (10 marks)
Leni was born on the 22nd of August 1902 on the outskirts of Berlin into a respectable middle-class family. From an early age, she had learnt the skill of manipulation that would underpin the nature of her career and her life. Her personal background and the historical context in which she matured was crucial in influencing the fundamental figure she became; Hitler’s star propagandist film maker, debated Nazi and alleged girlfriend.
Leni was an adolescent during the years of WWI. She grew up first in Wedding, one of Berlin’s working-class industrial areas, before moving to Berlin-Neukollen. Her father, Alfred Theodor Paul Riefenstahl, owned a successful heating and ventilation company and wanted his daughter to follow him into the business world. Leni’s passion for dancing led her mother to enrol her into Grimm-Reiter Dance School in Berlin, where she quickly became a star pupil. When her father found out that Leni was dancing, it infuriated him and he immediately sent her to a boarding school. Leni’s ability to manipulate people proved a pivotal skill that she utilised to become the star film maker we know her as today. Leni used her good looks and deceiving nature to manipulate key figures in her industry and many have labelled her since as an opportunist.
Leni had become the girlfriend of Otto Froitzheim, a famous tennis player at the time, who she swiftly abandoned in favour of a Jewish banker by the name of Harry Sokal. Sokal’s money and adoration bankrolled Leni’s own solo dance recital, an allegedly promising career ended by a devastating knee injury. Leni frequently exaggerated her talent as a dancer, and biographer Steven Bach claims that Riefenstahl’s tragic story made her career ‘loom larger and more brilliantly than it had in life’.
Leni’s relationship with Harry Sokal also bought her the acquaintance of Arnold Franck, who is considered to be the father of “Bergfilm”, a genre that involves a battle of human against nature. Whilst Leni bragged that Franck was allured by her beauty and talent, the true story suggests otherwise. Sokal agreed to fund Franck’s endeavours with the condition being that Leni would star in his films. This acquaintance marked the beginning of Leni’s career in film. When the Nazi party rose to power in 1933, Leni cut all ties with the Jewish banker and denied any previous association with him.
Having learnt from Franck, in 1932, Leni released her own film, ‘The Blue Light’, which she allegedly wrote, directed, produced and starred in herself. The film was funded by Sokal and the script was mainly written by Jewish writer Bela Balazs. Leni claimed she could not afford to pay Balazs initially but charmed him in a way that secured his devotion to the project. Balazs was never paid for his contribution and both Jewish men were cut from the credits in Nazi Germany. This film greatly assisted in her rise to prominence as it caught the eye of Adolf Hitler, and she had been drawn into Hitler after she first viewed him at the Berlin Sports Palace in February 1932.
Even though the film was not well received within the German public, it caught the attention of Adolf Hitler, who invited Leni to meet with him in the small village of Horumersiel near Wilhelmshaven. When the Nazi Party gained power, Leni was commissioned to film a number of propaganda films. ‘Victory of Faith’ (1933), ‘Triumph of the Will,’ and ‘Olympia,’ were all filmed by Leni in glorification of Hitler and his Nazi ideology. Leni was applauded as a director and photographer for her innovative camera angles and technology to film running events in the Olympics. The ban on Jews in the film industry (which she complied with) made sure that the number of directors/film makers was decreased significantly, allowing her films and talents to thrive and rise in a German dominated industry.
Leni Riefenstahl rose to fame in an era where film and art were thriving. Her childhood upbringing and her manipulative nature protected Leni’s sympathy towards Nazi ideology and her capability to use events and individuals to further her personal career. This allowed Leni to quickly arise through the hierarchy of her industry. It is disputed whether her films can be classified as propaganda, however it is clear that Leni’s work largely aided Hitler’s public perception and image as a god like, father figure. Through studying Riefenstahl’s personal background and historical context, we see the way her personality, career and fundamental role as Hitler’s propagandist was shaped.
Q2: Explain the controversies that impacted upon her later life. (20 marks)
Leni had many controversies that followed her in her later life after her trial at Nurnberg, where it was found that she was a “fellow traveller” (Mitläufer) who sympathised with the Nazis. Some of those controversies included her supposed obliviousness to the execution of the Roma and Sinti gypsy extras used on the set of her movie, Tiefland and her photography of the Nuba tribe in South Sudan, supposedly promoting the fascist aesthetic.
Throughout the war, Leni had the freedom to work on her personal project throughout occupied Europe, a movie called Tiefland, in which she plays a gypsy dancer seduced by an evil nobleman. Filming of the movie commenced in 1945 but did not finish until 1954, due to the end of the war and her de-Nazification trial. In the Dolomites, people from the Sarntal were recruited as (paid) extras. However, for extras with a specific “Spanish look”, Riefenstahl picked children and adults of Roma and Sinti background who were held in Nazi collection camps, so-called “Zigeunerlager”. Fifty-one Roma and Sinti prisoners were chosen from the Maxglan-Leopoldskron camp (near Salzburg) for filming in the Alps in 1940, and, in 1942, at least 66 Roma and Sinti prisoners were taken from the Marzahn camp for scenes at Babelsberg. After the filming had concluded, these extras were taken back to the concentration camps and executed, something that Leni claimed she had no idea about.
However, a Sinti gypsy who was an extra on the film set, refutes the claims made by Riefenstahl proclaiming her innocence. Rosa Winter said that not only did Riefenstahl know about the fate of the gypsies after the conclusion of the movie, she also decided what would happen to them. Winter said that she was responsible for sending her to the Ravensbruck concentration camp. ‘A very angry Riefenstahl arrived with a high-ranking SS officer and demanded an apology from me. I refused and she said: “Right, you can go to the concentration camp.” My mother went down on her knees and to beg for mercy, but she wouldn’t listen.’ Winter’s mother, Maria, was transported to Ravensbruck two days later. Rosa was sent days later, but never saw her mother again. The nature of this controversy was the allegations initially placed forward by Nina Gladitz in her 1982 film, ‘Time of Darkness and Silence’ which led to a highly publicised court case which Riefenstahl won, but the allegations levelled by Gladitz and the testimony by Winter would follow her until her death on the 8th September, 2003 aged 101.
Another of Leni’s many controversies was her photography expedition to the Nuba tribe in South Sudan, in which her photography supposedly promoted the ‘fascist aesthetic’. The fascist aesthetic is propaganda or art glorifying authoritarian regime. The Fascist aesthetic art emphasized on beauty and purity. The art conveyed the message of a disciplined body for a disciplined state. These claims were levelled by Susan Sontag in her piece, ‘Fascinating Fascism’, published on February 6, 1975.
This parallel between the propaganda she produced during Nazi-era Germany and her photography of the Nuba people some 30 years later was made by Susan Sontag in her article ‘Fascinating Fascism’.
“Riefenstahl’s? ?work? ?reveals? ?in? ?the? ?fascist? ?aesthetic, ? ?dwells? ?on the? ?purity? ?of? ?the? ?Nordic? ?body? ?and? ?pushes? ?all? ?the? ?messages? ?that? ?the? ?Nazis? ?wanted? ?pushed”. This, along with many other claims made by Sontag regarding Leni’s photography work makes a very strong case for Leni actually being a Nazi, a theory that was never proven and that many people argue about to this day.
All four of Leni’s works for the Nazi party celebrate the rebirth of body and the purity of the male form, which is facilitated through the worship of a divine leader. In Olympia, the use of vertical shots of the mountains and horizontal movements of a figure straining to attain victory with a crowd of pure Germans and Hitler in the crowd willing them to victory. The main components of Leni’s photography of the Nuba are wrestling matches and funerals, portrayals of a pure male body in life and death.
Although the Nuba are not Aryan, Riefenstahl’s photography allows us to view some of the larger, more over-arching themes of Nazi ideology that we may have been oblivious to i.e. the contrast between the pure and impure and the incorruptible and tainted.
By revelling in a society where the display of physical skill and courage and the victory of the stronger man over the weaker are, as she sees it, the joining symbols of the common culture—where success in tribal grappling is the “main aspiration of a man’s life”— Riefenstahl has not at all modified the ideals of her Nazi films. And her portrait of the Nuba goes further than her films in bringing to prevalance one aspect of the fascist ideal: a society in which women are merely breeders and helpers, excluded from all ceremonial functions, and represent a threat to the integrity and strength of men.
“History is a debate.”- Pieter Geyl. How accurate is this statement to the understanding of Leni Riefenstahl as a twentieth century personality? (30 marks)
The statement “History is a debate” is applicable to gain an understanding of Leni as a twentieth century personality. Leni’s life and career revolved around controversies, from the supposed Nazi propagandist, to her promotion of the fascist aesthetic through the photography of the Nuba people in the 1970s and also her personal life through her many lovers and a string of rumoured lovers, although many of these were unverifiable, it is still debated about quite regularly.
After the collapse of the Third Reich and the Nazi Party in 1945, Leni often played the victim in many circles, often claiming that she was a mere woman, following orders in a male-dominated world. She also claimed that she was the naïve film-maker, who saw life through her camera lens, seemingly oblivious to the fact she was making some of the most rousing, provocative propaganda films seen even to this day. Historical judgements of her range from her own claims that she was not actively involved in Nazism, going as far to state in a New York Times interview, ‘I didn’t do harm to anyone. What have I ever done? I never intended to harm anyone.’ However, Glenn Infield claimed in his 1976 book ‘Leni Riefenstahl: The Fallen Film Goddess’ that Leni was actively supporting Nazism after its potential for evil became clear, and that she was aware that ‘Triumph of the Will’ would have aided the Nazi cause, by making Hitler “Safe for Germany” (Steven Bach). He summarised his thoughts with the following statement: ‘Those who believe in freedom have not forgotten her actions during the period when so many men, women and children were losing their freedom and lives.’ It should also be noted that the Nazis would not have given her full creative control and unlimited budgets if she wasn’t creating what they wanted.
Steven Bach, in his biography “Leni: The Life and Work of Leni Riefenstahl” overturns many of Riefenstahl’s self-defence claims regarding her contact with Hitler and the Nazi regime. Within the book, Bach discusses the discovery of previously unheard of primary sources (interviews with her friends and colleagues and also recordings of Riefenstahl) accurately disproves her lifelong portrayal of herself as an apolitical artist who knew nothing of the Holocaust, firmly denying her connection to the Nazi regime that she had helped to promote. The early meetings with Hitler before the rise of the Nazi party had been completed in Germany, her passionate involvement with the party from the early beginnings and her use of gypsies as movie extras from the concentration camps speak volumes about Leni as a woman and completely juxtapose everything that she lead us to believe about her involvement with the Nazi party and her true political beliefs. Bach also writes about her encounters with another controversial figure in the 1950s, the founding father of Scientology, L. Ron Hubbard. This came about due to Hubbard being assigned with the task of assisting Leni in turning “The Blue Light” into a film ballet. This association ended before any notable events could transpire due to Hubbard leaving to undertake and expedition in South Africa.
Not only did Leni work during one of the great historical shifts in world history, she was sought by Hitler for her cinematical prowess, and his main motivation was to use someone who could match his eye and taste. Even though there are arguments to be made that Leni was in fact working as an apolitical artist, the evidence of her being heavily associated with the Nazi party are simply too much to neglect. Her films fully coincided with the message that was being conveyed by the Nazis: Clear promotion of the Fuhrer cult, the power of the state, the unimportance of the individual and the power and importance of the state and race. The rise and success of Nazi control of culture would not have succeeded without people like Riefenstahl, whose propaganda films greatly assisted in the moulding of the German minds, facilitating Hitler’s totalitarian reign over Germany and its other occupied countries.
Despite Leni’s claims that she was above Nazi politics due to never being an official member of the party, it has become clear to us that she never had a need to. Not only was she one of Hitler’s favourite directors, Goebbels also was an admirer of her work even though they clashed heads on several occasions and the Nazis basically gave her a blank chequebook, meaning that she never acted as an independent agent when she composed her greatest works, under the Nazi umbrella, for propaganda purposes. So even though she never became a Nazi officially, she was always linked to them by association due to her constant work churning out propaganda for the German people.
Even though Leni was in incredibly talented woman, it becomes inconceivable that someone could have been so oblivious of the effects of living in a totalitarian regime such as Nazi Germany. Propaganda, terror and repression became a fixture of everyday life and the Nazis made no efforts to conceal the more reprehensible aspects of the regime. The openings of Auschwitz and Treblinka became major news stories in the government-controlled media, book burning was done in the streets and the Nurnberg Laws were publicly announced rather than shuffled in through back-door political methods. This was Leni’s world. She made her bed with covers of the Nazi regime, it now became time to sleep in it and promote their messages, something that would fester inside her despite her constant denial of aforementioned connections to Hitler and the Nazis.
In conclusion, the statement, “History is a debate”, becomes vital to the understanding of Leni Riefenstahl as a twentieth century personality, from her time as a Nazi propagandist film make, to her promotion of the fascist aesthetic through the photography of the Nuba people and the influence she had on deciding the fate of gypsy extras used on the set of Tiefland, and her other encounters with controversial figures throughout the decades along with her string of lovers influences our thoughts dramatically.
