Berlin Beginnings

he was Hitler’s favorite director. She was beautiful and talented. She was a woman in a man’s field. Three strikes and you’re out.

Leni Riefenstahl (REEF-en-shtal), who remained active into her late 90s, was never able to shed the historical contamination that attached to her during the last half of her 101 years. Despite (some say because of) her demonstrated talent as actor, dancer, director, cinematographer, and still photographer, Riefenstahl could not shake off her Third Reich associations. Although her films have had enormous impact on world cinema, the woman herself found it difficult to gain public respect. Her attempt to revive her directorial career in the 1950s proved futile. The often-imitated, seldom-honored artist remained a controversial and unrepentant pariah up until her death on 8 September 2003. Ironically, her own well-crafted black-and-white motion-picture images of Hitler, Nazi pageantry, and the Jesse Owens Olympics helped keep both her genius and her past alive. In the words of Ray Müller, director of the documentary The Wonderful, Horrible Life of Leni Riefenstahl, “Her talent was her tragedy.”

NEW! Leni Riefenstahl Biographies
Two recent biographies of Riefenstahl offer new insights into her life and legacy. Leni: The Life and Work of Leni Riefenstahl by Steven Bach is a well-researched investigation into the many myths the ambitious Riefenstahl helped create herself.

German historian Jürgen Trimborn’s 2002 biography (Riefenstahl: Eine deutsche Karriere) was a similar effort to lift the veils of fiction that Riefenstahl used to constantly reinvent herself. Recently published in English (2007), Leni Riefenstahl: A Life, Trimborn’s book is a critical view of “a German career.”

Riefenstahl’s story begins in the Wedding district of Berlin, near the start of the twentieth century. Her father, Alfred Riefenstahl, was a prosperous businessman dealing in heating and ventilation. Her mother, Bertha Sherlach, had been a part-time seamstress before she married. Their first child, Helene (Leni) Bertha Amalie Riefenstahl, was born on August 22, 1902 in the family’s apartment on Prinz-Eugen-Straße in Berlin. Leni’s younger brother, Heinz, was born three and a half years later. He would later die in Hitler’s war at age 38 on the Russian front.

“Mountain of Destiny”

Young Leni grew up in Berlin and lived at home until she was 21. Against the wishes of her father, she studied dance and was soon performing in Munich, Berlin, and Prague. But according to her memoirs, the course of her life was changed dramatically one day as she was waiting for a subway train at the Nollendorfplatz U-Bahn station in Berlin. In a daze, thinking about the whirlwind of her dance appearances over the last six months, Riefenstahl could feel the pain in her injured knee that was threatening to end her dancing career in its early stages. She was on her way to yet another doctor, trying to find one who could finally put her back on her dancing feet. Her gaze happened to fall upon an advertising poster on the wall opposite the platform. Suddenly the image of a man climbing a jagged mountain came into focus. The colorful poster was promoting a movie with prophetic name Berg des Schicksals (“Mountain of Destiny”). Its letters further spelled out the words: “Ein Film aus den Dolomiten von Dr. Arnold Fanck” (“A film from the Dolomites by Dr. Arnold Fanck”). The picture was currently playing at a nearby cinema.

Riefenstahl stood in a trance, staring ahead blankly as her train came into the station and departed without her. Instead of going to the doctor, she left the station and soon found herself in a completely different world watching vivid, lifelike images of majestic mountains. Dr. Fanck's "Mountain of Destiny" held her so much in its spell that the young woman returned for repeat viewings every night for a week. It was the beginning of her own mountain film destiny and a new career as both film actress and director.

Amazingly, Riefenstahl appeared in her first film, Der heilige Berg (“written for the dancer Leni Riefenstahl”), directed by Dr. Arnold Fanck, only some 18 months after that fateful day at the Nollendorfplatz U-Bahn station. Within weeks of seeing Fanck's Mountain of Destiny she had happened to meet the director himself in Berlin. Following a successful operation on her knee, Riefenstahl met with Fanck at his home in Freiburg near the Black Forest. Soon she would be appearing in movies directed by Fanck and co-starring Luis Trenker. Her dream was coming true, but the day would come when she regretted having ever met either of these two men.

Leni Riefenstahl set new standards for filming sporting events
when she directed the filming of the 1936 Berlin Olympics.

POSTER > Olympia 1936 Poster from Art.com

After appearing in several films, Riefenstahl turned to directing—remarkable for a field so dominated by men, then as now. An admirer by the name of Adolf Hitler asked her to film a documentary of his Nazi party’s rally in Nuremberg, and the rest is indeed history.

In 1936 Riefenstahl was put in charge of filming the Berlin Olympics, a project that was no minor undertaking. For Olympia she had to manage a total crew of 60 cinematographers, who used three different types of black-and-white film stock—Agfa (architectural shots), Kodak (portraits), and Perutz (fields, grass)—to shoot over 1.3 million feet of film (400,000 meters, over 248 miles). In the process, Riefenstahl invented or enhanced many of the sports photography techniques we now take for granted: slow motion, underwater diving shots, extremely high (from towers) and low shooting angles (from pits), panoramic aerial shots, and tracking systems for following fast action. The result is considered a classic cinematic masterpiece. Olympia premiered at Berlin’s UFA Palast am Zoo cinema on Hitler’s birthday, April 20, 1938.

Next: Riefenstahl visits the United States...

Leni Riefenstahl Posters Olympia 1936 Poster

N E X T > Riefenstahl in America

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