Leni Riefenstahl: A Life - Hardcover

Jurgen Trimborn

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0374184933 ISBN 13: 9780374184933

Publisher: Faber & Faber, 2007

Synopsis

Dancer, actress, mountaineer, and director Leni Riefenstahl's uncompromising will and audacious talent for self-promotion appeared unmatched--until 1932, when she introduced herself to her future protector and patron: Adolf Hitler. Known internationally for two of the films she made for him, Triumph of the Will and Olympia, Riefenstahl's demanding and obsessive style introduced unusual angles, new approaches to tracking shots, and highly symbolic montages. Despite her lifelong claim to be an apolitical artist, Riefenstahl's monumental and nationalistic vision of Germany's traditions and landscape served to idealize the cause of one of the world's most violent and racist regimes.

Riefenstahl ardently cast herself as a passionate young director who caved to the pressure to serve an all-powerful Führer, so focused on reinventing the cinema that she didn't recognize the goals of the Third Reich until too late. Jürgen Trimborn's revelatory biography celebrates this charismatic and adventurous woman who lived to 101, while also taking on the myths surrounding her. With refreshing distance and detailed research, Trimborn presents the story of a stubborn and intimidating filmmaker who refused to be held accountable for her role in the Holocaust but continued to inspire countless photographers and filmmakers with her artistry.

About this title

About the Author:

Jürgen Trimborn, born in 1971, is a professor of film, theater, and art history at the University of Cologne and serves as a consultant on films of the Third Reich for the German and American film industry. He lives and writes in Cologne and east Belgium.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.:

LENI RIEFENSTAHL
The Ascent1BERLIN IN THE TIME OF THE KAISERCHILDHOOD AND YOUTH 
 
WHEN KING WILHELM I OF PRUSSIA was proclaimed German kaiser in 1871, Berlin became a center of political power. With its three million inhabitants, the metropolis on the Spree became an economic, civic, and, in particular, social and cultural hub. At the turn of the century, Berlin possessed an expressly international flair, even if restrictive Wilhelmian policies repeatedly checked modern developments and avant-garde movements. But this had little effect on the fascination that the city held. Visitors, both German and foreign, strolled along the elegant Unter den Linden, past spectacularly ostentatious architecture and tributes in stone to the Hohenzollern rulers. They visited the well-stocked department stores, the opulent opera houses, the magnificent revue palaces, and Max Reinhardt's celebrated theaters, sampling the various worlds that Berlin nurtured in the Gründerjahre, the years of expansion in the early 1870s when it basked in the light of its newfound importance.The policies established in the Berlin of the monarchy, the "fastest-moving city in the world," were to set the course the German Reich was to follow in the years to come. Kaiser Wilhelm II, known for his comic opera costumes and his exaggerated rhetoric, came up with the catchphrase, embraced by the aristocracy as well as the bourgeoisie, that Germany, too, needed a "place in the sun." The quest for colonies that followed, enthusiastically supported by a complacent Reichstag, was to find its premature end in the years of the First World War.In turn-of-the-century Berlin, the economy flourished. The city was in the grip of a near euphoric period of development, and a large number of ambitious enterprises were established during the building boom. And sharing in the general optimism was Alfred Theodor Paul Riefenstahl, trained as a master fitter.Born in Berlin on October 30, 1878, as the son of the journeyman locksmith Gustav Hermann Theodor Riefenstahl and his wife, Amalie, Alfred Riefenstahl grew up with two brothers and a sister. He abandoned the artisan milieu of his forefathers to become a salesman and make his way on his own. Shortly after receiving his master's certificate, he took over a prosperous installation business, which he ran with a combination of practical knowledge and commercial farsightedness. His daughter Leni later portrayed him as a large and powerful man with blond hair and blue eyes. Contemporary photographs reveal a well-dressed figure mindful of his appearance, who commanded respect and appeared proud of the social standing he had achieved on his own. Alfred Riefenstahl had a strong character, and insisted on staying in control and exerting his authority. He was full of life, temperamental, and inclined to violent outbursts if anyone stood in his way, whether in business or private. He seldom tolerated argument.He married Bertha Ida Scherlach, born to German parents in Wlo-clawek, Poland, on October 9, 1880. Her father, Karl Ludwig Ferdinand Scherlach, a carpenter from West Prussia (in Memoiren, Riefenstahl promoted him to an "architect"1), had found work in neighboring Poland and settled there. Together, he and his East Prussian wife, Ottilie, had eighteen children. Ottilie died giving birth to their eighteenth child, Bertha, and the thirty-eight-year-old widower suddenly found himself alone with his offspring. Shortly after the death of his wife, he married a woman who had been a governess in the Scherlach household and who would bear him three more children in the years that followed.When Scherlach made the decision to move with his family to Berlin, he was too old to seek new employment. So it was the children, including Bertha, who supported the family. Bertha had completed her training as a seamstress and, as the youngest offspring of a large family well accustomed to working from a young age, quickly found a position in the country's capital. Even with her own earnings she was forced to lead avery modest life, as she had to support her out-of-work father and her young siblings.When the respectable businessman Alfred Riefenstahl entered her life, her rise in society was assured. But with her wedding she had to bury the secret dream of her youth of becoming an actress. Bertha Scherlach met Alfred Riefenstahl, two years her senior, at a costume ball in 1900. It was not a long courtship; the two quickly realized they would stay together--not least because Bertha soon was expecting her first child. The wedding took place in Berlin on April 5, 1902.The relationship between Alfred and Bertha Riefenstahl was a difficult one, but typical for the times. On one side was a husband who demanded total authority, and on the other a woman who was not only unprepared but also probably unable to challenge him. The rules of Wilhelmian society dictated that she subordinate herself to her husband's wishes, and the two adjusted to a petit-bourgeois life, in which the young family soon was firmly rooted.The birth of Bertha Helene Amalie Riefenstahl was recorded at the Berlin Registry Office XIII on August 22, 1902. As was customary at the time, the birth took place at home, in a simple, modest apartment on Prinz-Eugen-Strasse in the working-class quarter of Wedding. From infancy on, she was called "Leni."Leni Riefenstahl led a protected childhood, free of material cares. The family slowly worked its way up from a petit-bourgeois milieu to the middle class. Alfred Riefenstahl quickly prospered in the heating and ventilation systems firm that he opened on Kurfürstenstrasse, but this prosperity was based more on luck than on business acumen. His business expanded owing to the installation contracts resulting from the city's countless new construction projects and the renovation of older buildings. These increased the family's earnings and guaranteed a certain standard of living.As he did from his wife, Alfred Riefenstahl expected discipline and absolute obedience from his daughter. He had been raised to rule his family with a firm hand and tolerate no disagreement, and he considered the example set by his father to be the ideal for his own family. He was as uncompromising at home as he was in business, routinely imposing his own habits on his wife and his child, which led to constant conflict. Riefenstahl flew into a rage at the least disturbance of his daily routineand could "stamp like an elephant if the button on his starched collar proved hard to undo."2Leni secretly wished for a gentle, loving father, but when she attempted to break away from his cold and severe control, rebelling against her predetermined role as the obedient daughter, he reacted with outbursts of rage. Nor did he shrink from beating and humiliating his daughter and locking her in the house for the slightest infraction, or from punishing her with a silence that would last for weeks. "Once, when I was caught [stealing apples] and my father found out about it, he gave me a terrible whipping and locked me in a dark room for an entire day. And I suffered his sternness on other occasions as well."3 The girl suffered from her father's coldness and spent her whole childhood trying to wrest from him some proof of his love, but again and again she encountered only harsh rejection or emotional distance.4And yet her father quickly registered that Leni had inherited his own stubbornness and, as she grew older, was prepared to battle her father's authority. More and more often she made decisions without first asking her father's permission, which she tried to keep secret. For example, she kept from him the fact that she had registered at a gymnastics club and, later, at dancing school. The volatile relationship between father and daughter was always threatening to explode, and the most innocuous event could turn into a contest of wills: "It was often difficult to get along with him. He liked to play chess with me--but I always had to let him win. Once, when I beat him, he became so mad that he forbade me to go to a costume party I was so looking forward to."5As mother and wife, Bertha Riefenstahl often found herself caught between two fronts in the arguments between her daughter and her husband. Though emotionally she usually sided with her daughter, she dared not go against her husband. As a rule, she tried to mediate between them, at the risk of finding herself trapped in the minefield of family quarrels as soon as she took one side or the other.Nor did the birth in 1905 of a second child, named Heinz--the son Alfred Riefenstahl had so wished for--improve the atmosphere at home. Things relaxed only when the father was out of the house on business or enjoying himself with his friends. "Luckily, my father often went hunting, and only when he was gone could we all finally feel free at home."6Leni, Heinz, and their mother established something resembling a secret society. When Riefenstahl was away, they all were happy to go about their activities without reservation, activities he didn't approve of or simply forbade. Leni quickly developed a very affectionate relationship with her brother, who was three years younger. For the whole of her life she felt closely connected to him, though with his essentially reticent and shy personality he was totally different from his quick-witted and audacious sister.From the outside, the Riefenstahls epitomized a happy family. No one was privy to the tensions that went on behind the scenes in an effort to appear a promising young middle-class family. A photo from the period shows the two children in their Sunday sailor suits, a symbol at the time not only of pride in the kaiser's navy but also of belonging to "better society."Alfred Riefenstahl's flourishing businesses required that the family demonstrate a certain standard of living. Leni Riefenstahl's childhood, therefore, was marked by frequent moves and changes of neighborhood, which always called for her to adapt to a new location. The family first moved from Wedding to Hermannplatz in Berlin-Neukölln, then to Yorckstrasse in Schöneberg and on to Wilmersdorf before temporarily settling southeast of the city, in 1921, in Rauchfangswerder in the Brandenburg March."IN MY YOUTH I WAS A HAPPY PERSON"Even before moving to Rauchfangswerder, located on a peninsula of the Zeuthener See, the outdoors played an important role in the Riefenstahl family's life. In portraying her childhood, Leni Riefenstahl always stressed how important nature was to her. The well-to-do family soon bought a small weekend house in a little village that Riefenstahl calls Petz and which presumably is the town of Pätz, located on the Pätzer Vordersee near the small Brandenburg city of Bestensee. Fleeing the hectic pace of big-city life, the Riefenstahls spent nearly every weekend here, an hour by train from Berlin. Leni Riefenstahl, by her own account, grew into a true "child of nature, beneath trees and bushes, with plants andinsects, watched over and protected."7 Being outdoors in nature was essential to her.The girl who became accustomed to life in the country from an early age welcomed the family's later move to Rauchfangswerder, even though the daily hour-and-a-half trip to Berlin was time-consuming and exhausting. The idyllic country surroundings appeared more important to her than the comforts of the city. The Riefenstahls' property included a large overgrown meadow that ran down to a lake bordered by old weeping willows, the branches of which dipped into the water. The family owned a rowboat and also made outings to the nearby forest and meadows. Their not always simple family life became noticeably more relaxed in this bucolic setting, and, far from his business concerns and the noise of the metropolis, even Alfred Riefenstahl, with his weekday moods and his tendency to angry outbursts, became calmer here. He would lie for hours on the shore of the lake or work in the small garden where the family grew fruits and vegetables for their table.Leni Riefenstahl tried her whole life to recapture the idyllic experience of nature that she had known as a child. Being outdoors in harmony with nature provided an important and incomparable source of strength. Particularly important to the young girl was the privacy and time for herself she found there. She played with the neighborhood children, of course, climbing trees and organizing foot- and swimming races: "Nothing was too high for me or too steep or too dangerous."8 But, at least as she presented it in retrospect, she continually withdrew to spend whole hours and days in her own dreamworld. Even in early childhood she needed to withdraw from her playmates as well as from her family from time to time, often to the little wooden hut that her father built for her as a refuge amid the huge sunflowers in the garden. There she could get away from the world and enjoy the leisure time that her parents uncritically granted her: "It was here that I could dream."9Riefenstahl's harmonious transfiguration of her past runs like a thread through all of her versions of her life. Despite the considerable burdens imposed by her hot-tempered, authoritarian father, and though she was a child and youth during the First World War and the revolutionary unrest in Berlin that followed, Riefenstahl's descriptions of this time culminate in a portrait of an Eden removed from the historical moment. No passagesin Memoiren address material want or the existential fears that were endemic, or one single confrontation with political events. Instead, there is the simple declaration, "In my youth I was a happy person."10In 1908, Leni Riefenstahl was enrolled in school in Berlin-Neukölln. She impressed her teachers as an inquisitive and alert young girl who was very mature for her age. At school she could at least partially satisfy her wide-ranging thirst for knowledge. But her spontaneity and vitality did not always conform to the strict Prussian school system, which insisted on discipline and order. As a student she often was at odds with the curriculum, interrupting her teachers with countless pointed questions that went far beyond the teaching materials and earned her many a bad grade in deportment.While in school she forged a characteristic that marked her entire life: when something captured her interest, she was not satisfied until she had completely sated her quest for knowledge about the subject. Following elementary school, she attended the Kollmorgen Lyceum, a girls' school from which she successfully graduated. In her favorite subjects, including gymnastics, drawing, and math, she was said to be at the top of her class.The Germany she had been born into was changing dramatically. In 1914, when she had just turned twelve, the First World War broke out in Europe, the end of which would mark the fall of the German monarchy, followed by a period of political upheaval and the declaration of the Weimar Republic. Soldiers marched out of Berlin to war with smiles on their faces, fully convinced they would be victorious. Political discussion among all levels of society in the German empire heated up; countless patriotic pamphlets were published on the war, and even the country's pulpits generated militant and chauvinistic slogans.The war was soon to have an enormous effect on everyday life. By 1916, the blockade enforced by the Allies had led to serious food shortages and rationing. Many people went hungry. In the final two winters of the war, schools were no longer heated. And 1917...

About this edition

• Publisher: Faber & Faber
• Publication date: 2007
• ISBN 10: 0374184933
• ISBN 13: 9780374184933
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 368