Leni Riefenstahl: A Life

by Jurgen Trimborn, Edna MacCown (Translator)

Leni Riefenstahl in her long and extraordinary life (she died in 2003 aged 101) was a dancer, actress, mountaineer, photographer and world famous filmmaker. She was also a liar. Riefenstahl was a protegee and confidante of Adolf Hitler, for whom she made her internationally renowned films "Triumph of the Will" and "Olympia". During her eventful post-war career, she has been both villainized for her lionization of Hitler and championed as an adventurer and artist. Her remarkable ad innovative creative vision is beyond doubt. The controversy that still rages around her memory is based on her apparent complicity with Nazi leaders - right up to Josef Goebbels and Hitler himself - in allowing her work to be used as the most potent propaganda weapon in their arsenal. Jurgen Trimborn knew Leni personally. He uses detailed research and his own unblinking eye as an authority on the Third Reich to reveal this portrait of a stubborn, intimidating visionary who inspired countless photographers and filmmakers with her artistry but refused to accept accountability for her role in supporting the twisted agenda of the Nazi high command.

Genres: Biography, Nonfiction, History, German Literature

368 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2002

Reviews

[Louise · Rating 5 out of 5]

The title suggests this is about the life of Leni Riefenstahl, but the greater part of the text describes her relationship with Hitler and Reich and her subsequent denials.

Author Jurgen Trimborn shows how her protestations that she was innocent because she was an apolitical artist cannot stand up to the eye witness accounts, official testimony, and photographic records that link her to Hitler's inner circles. Whether or not she was a mistress of Hitler, Trimborn clearly documents her close association with him. She obviously had high up patronage to receive seemingly unlimited production funds and the life and death power over others.

In her abusive patriarchal family, Leni is given no support for the talent she undoubtedly has. She desperately strives for approval from a frightfully violent father. Her unhappy romantic life can be predicted as can her search for a strong male figure. Her beauty, exposure as an actress and a chance "fan" letter give her access to Hitler at the time she is beginning to make her own films. From her family background she is psychologically programmed to overcome and achieve and Hitler sees that she can deliver what he needs.

Germany's defeat creates for Leni one of the sharpest career drops ever, after which she managed a second career that spanned over 50 years. It was not as glamorous and well funded as her first career and the honors she received were always tainted by protest.

How do we assess achievement in the dubious art of propaganda? Is the artist responsible for evil that the creation may inspire? Can artists be absolved for denying belief in, commitment to, or lack of understanding of the content they create? Should those who have had limited access to success (i.e. women, minorities) be given greater laditude in assessing their path to success?

This book has plenty of food for thought.

[Denis · Rating 4 out of 5]

The legendary and controversial actress/director Leni Riefenstahl, who was more than 100 years old when she died as a cultural icon, despite her more than dubious past through Nazi Germany, has met her match: a biographer who doesn’t let her decades of lies and denials and mythmaking stories hide the plain truth. And what a truth it is. Possibly a director of genius talent, who created some of the most indelible and disturbing images of the last century, Riefenstahl was also quite a monster, who decided to look away when it suited her, who, not as naively as we may have thought, became one of Hitler’s closest ally, who marched over people without hesitation in the name of her career (even when it came to gypsies arrested by the Nazis), who never could admit to any wrongdoing nor say she was sorry for her mistakes. Trimborn, as the critic from The Nation says, is a formidable “deadly prosecutor”, who leaves no stone unturned. But he’s also acting as fairly as possible, recognizing his subject’s immense talent, what she brought to the art of moviemaking and photography, and acknowledging the (few) good things she’s done on a more human level. More than a detailed biography that follows all episodes of her very long life, this book settles accounts straight, in a clear, unequivocal, simple way. The Riefenstahl that was canonized by some people in her old age is now unmasked. She remains a fascinating character, and her work certainly deserves our attention. But she’s also quite a horrible human being, and there’s some satisfaction at seeing the truth reestablished at last.

[Bjorn · Rating 4 out of 5]

In 1932, after Das blaue Licht got some bad reviews, Leni Riefenstahl decried Cancel Culture: It was the Jews who gave her bad reviews, these foreigners simply didn't understand German art and wanted to silence her. Once Hitler comes to power, that'll change!

(Or at least that's what people claimed she said 40 years later when everyone very much wanted to not be her.)

I suppose this is what a character like Riefenstahl deserves: A biographer who both takes her seriously as an artist, and calls bullshit on her refusal to take responsibility for her part in making Hitler look like a rockstar, and on culture's tendency to not want to know - either make someone a scapegoat for everything, or absolve them of everything, as long as Normality is maintained.

The only thing I'm really missing is more on the otherartists who did what she did. What happened to them? Why do we only remember the name Riefenstahl?

[Litbitch · Rating 3 out of 5]

I haven't read her autobio or other bios yet, but I liked this one because the author seems to be trying so hard to be neutral and fair, and simply cannot help but condemn her for willful apathy and a lack of remorse, while leaving open the question of criminal behavior. Well written. I'm not a big bio fan, but it didn't bore me.

[Elizabeth · Rating 2 out of 5]

eh.

the book reads almost like an attack!

[Gretje · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fascinating exploration of the life and work of a controversial filmmaker.

[Carl Rollyson · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Every woman adores a fascist," Sylvia Plath cried out in her poem "Daddy." "To me, Hitler is the greatest man who ever lived. He truly is without fault, so simple and at the same time possessed of masculine strength," Leni Riefenstahl told a Detroit News reporter in February 1937.

Riefenstahl has often been called the greatest woman documentary filmmaker — although she would have bridled at the "woman." No feminist, she wanted nothing less than her due as a great artist. In her masterpiece, "Triumph of the Will," her documentary film of the 1934 Nuremberg Nazi party rally, Hitler descends out of the clouds in his plane and down to earth. Riefenstahl's cameraman films Hitler standing in his Mercedes touring car, from behind, so that we are watching Hitler from the backseat of his moving vehicle as the dictator gives the fascist salute to crowds of yearning women clamoring for his attention.

The documentary's famous low angle shots enhance Hitler's lofty presence — he is Germany's godlike savior. When he addresses the faithful, he urges them to be obedient, and they respond with joyful assent, affirming what Herman Hess, introducing Hitler to the crowd, makes explicit: Hitler is Germany, and Germany is Hitler.

Seized by the sheer visual power of Riefenstahl's work, viewers across the world surrendered to a spectacle of power, harmonization, and grace. The careful choreography of the Nazi masses, the marching soldiers, the workers lined up with their shovels resting on their shoulders like rifles, reflects the director's dance aesthetic. Never before in film had anyone made a mass political movement look and sound (the music was carefully recorded in a studio) so seductive.

Biographers are perhaps better situated than film critics to fathom the Riefenstahl paradox. New biographies by Jürgen Trimborn (Faber & Faber, 285 pages, $30) and Steven Bach (Knopf, 299 pages, $30) dismantle Riefenstahl's myth that she was an artist innocent of political motivations. Mr. Trimborn had the advantage of observing Riefenstahl close-up during an interview and in subsequent correspondence with her. He found the director to be a consummate protector of her reputation, a careerist of the first order who never wavered in her self-promoting agenda. Meanwhile, Mr. Bach's chapters on Riefenstahl's early career are also valuable since he is the first biographer to have access to a cache of more than 70 interviews with Riefenstahl's friends and co-workers.

Mr. Trimborn's chapter on her anti-Semitism is a shocker. An expert on films of the Nazi era, Mr. Trimborn shows how intricately involved Riefenstahl was not merely with Hitler as he rose to power, but also with Nazis like Jules Streicher, who formulated the party's virulent anti-Semitic program. Mr. Trimborn's book has finally settled the issue of the Goebbels diaries, in which Riefenstahl figures as an artist who understands the party better than anyone and who comes to Goebbels's parties and attends the opera with him and his wife, Magda. Riefenstahl repudiated the diaries, pointing out that that by 1934 Goebbels resented her special relationship with Hitler and tried to interfere with her work. True enough, Mr. Trimborn shows, but he also provides the circumstantial evidence that bolsters Goebbels's portrayal of her as a Nazi enthusiast.

Mr. Trimborn often writes as a film historian. He is primarily interested, for example, in exploring the "pre-fascist" elements of Arnold Fanck's 1920s "mountain films," which featured stunning shots of Riefenstahl climbing mountain peaks in her bare feet. Fanck's romantic exultation of the hero influenced Riefenstahl's portrayal of a heroic Hitler. The Führer, so often at the apex of the crowd scenes in "Triumph of the Will," towers over his followers. Mr. Bach, on the other hand, presents a more dramatic and intimate view of the Fanck/Riefenstahl relationship. His exclusive access to Fanck's own account (recorded by Peggy Wallace in 1974) shows how mesmerizing Franck found Riefenstahl. Her dancing revealed her childlike quality, her surrender to the moment, and this natural, naïve quality made her the perfect heroine for his Alpine love stories. Riefenstahl was involved in a love triangle involving Fanck and her leading man, Luis Trenker, demonstrating, in Mr. Bach's words, "Leni's skill at dominating the exclusive male society in which she found herself now and for almost all the rest of her professional life." She was naïve, in some ways, Mr. Bach implies, but rather cunning in others. Mr. Bach, who is florid compared with the trenchant Mr. Trimborn, provides more personal details and is just as good on Riefenstahl's politics.

In the 1930s Riefenstahl won international awards, although, of course, there were critics who resisted her siren song. As she continued to attract a new generation of film scholars and feminists in the 1970s, the influential Susan Sontag repudiated her earlier endorsement of Riefenstahl and emphasized the director's disturbing politics over her aesthetic: All of Riefenstahl's work celebrated power and elevated strength and the body beautiful over all other values. This "fascist aesthetic" permeated Riefenstahl's work as an actress in her popular 1920s films and, most famously, in her documentary, "Olympia," about the 1936 Olympic games, hosted by Hitler in Berlin. And yet her film work remains a potent model. Mr. Trimborn, for example, points out that the "Olympic Portraits" (1996), shot by Sontag's life partner, Annie Leibovitz, reveals evidence of Riefenstahl's influence.

Riefenstahl's own archive remains closed, and even though Mr. Trimborn believes it includes only self-serving material, that, too, may be more illuminating than Mr. Trimborn supposes. As good as these two biographies are, no one fascinated with Riefenstahl can forgo studying Ray Muller's revelatory film, "The Wonderful, Horrible Life of Leni Riefenstahl," which allows the director to make her case even as her behavior confirms her latest biographers' findings.

[Glenn R. Miller · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent, balanced, and very well researched. Author Trimborn does not sugarcoat his difficult subject, nor let her off the hook. Riefenstahl benefited greatly from both Hitler and the Nazi party, though she denied these connections for the long remainder of her life.

[Alan Braswell · Rating 5 out of 5]

When Leni Riefenstahl died, at the age of 101, in September of 2003, the
New York Times ran a full page obituary, unprecedented seeing that most obituary run as much as a quarter of a page or even half.
In his magnificent biography of Leni Riefenstahl,the distinguish professor of film, theater, and art, Jurgen Trimborn lays out the life of Riefenstahl having interviewed the eccentric director whose only purpose in her 101 years was her art form.
Riefenstahl had grew up in era where the women in Germany didn't get the right to vote until 1919, even with that previlage still didn't guarantee that women would obtain anything else but bearing children and tied to the stove.
Leni Riefenstahl went against the grain, irritating her father by going into ballet but even those in authority around who believed that this is the only way that any art form should be done. Leni proved them wrong time and time with her innovative techniques in ballet, acting, and finally as a director.
Her first directorial debut; Das blaue Licht, won her praises throughout the world. Charlie Chaplin, who later would use Riefenstahl film, The Triumph of the Will, for his portrayal of Hitler,modeled the role of his actress in the film; Modern Times after the character in Das blaue Licht
The film also attracted the attention of Adolf Hitler who would after a correspondence with Leni Riefenstahl put the female director into her inner circle
This put her into conflict, for the duration of Nazi Germany, with Joseph Goebbels. Like any man at the time, and probably today, just wanted to have sex with her. #me too.
Triumph of the Will made Leni Riefenstahl famous, especially in the United States, where she traveled in 1937 meeting with protesters, many Jewish who had boycotted German products since Hitler became Chancellor. She did meet with Walt Disney, Hal Roach, and Henry Ford.
Sciences from the film, Triumph of the Will, has been borrowed in several films ( Star Wars), music video(Michael Jackson) and has been praised by people like David Bowie, Mick Jagger, Andy Warhol and others
Her film on the 1936 Berlin Olympics has been copied several times with her innovative camera technique. Bud Greenspan, whose Olympic films of the 70's and 80's just one .
Steven Spielberg, George Lucas and several other directors praised her techniques.
Ken Burns used Riefenstahl's camera work for Olympiad, with the purely visual image without commentary.

Riefenstahl can show a total disregard for human life as the biographer pointed out several incidents throughout the book. She continued throughout her life, during the countless number of hearings which took place after the war, and later on in life that the film was the most important thing that mattered and nothing else. That was her obsession that she never good relinquish even to her dying day.

There are countless reviews that focus on Nazi Germany and that is a given.
But however. What if Leni Riefenstahl had been born in the United States?
How far would she have gotten with her ballet, as an actress, or a film director?
Female film directors in the United States totaled zero in the 1930's. Even today one can count on one hand the total of female film directors in the United States.

Albert Speer said it best about Leni Riefenstahl
"As a self-assured women who unapologetically ordered men around within this masculine world, she provoked the political of a movement that was traditionally misogynist."

[liz · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was a fascinatingly honest biography -- and I say fascinatingly honest because the author openly states at the beginning that he would never be able to get the truth from Riefenstahl herself. Leni Riefenstahl (say it: REEF-in-shtall) was totally a being of her own creation. She wanted to be a dancer and perform before crowds, so she became one. When that killed her body because she'd done it so fast with so little training, she wanted to become an actress, so she became one. And when the mountaineering genre of films that made her famous fell out of vogue, she wanted to become a famous director, so she became one. Unfortunately for Riefenstahl, this is where Hitler came into her life. She picked and chose which policies of the Nazi regime she went along with or didn't based on how they would support her career. After WWII, she in some cases tried to fiddle with the details of what she knew or did when to save herself from the backlash. The author is very straightforward about all of these occurrences; the book is quite painstakingly researched. It made me wonder how Riefenstahl would feel about our current culture, celebrity and "reality" obsessed, with everyone getting their fifteen minutes. She did love the rise, but hate the fall.

Here, too, she turned her lens solely on the beautiful objects she was interested in and closed her eyes to the cruel reality that surrounded her -- true to the motto that ruled her life: "Reality doesn't interest me."

[Christine · Rating 4 out of 5]

Jurgen Trimborn does a great job deciphering the truth from the information out there about Leni Riefenstahl. She spent her entire life after the fall of the Third Reich trying to re-write history, and for a long time, no one challenged her accounts of how things happened. This book does so, using newly opened archival material to give the truth about Riefenstahl's life, particularly her relationship to Hitler and the Nazis. She was an egotist, concerned with her own career and vanity more than anything else--to call her a fascist or a Nazi is to almost give her too much credit. If it didn't directly help her, she didn't care or think about it. Riefenstahl is not necessarily a likeable character, but she is certainly fascinating. Trimborn treats her honestly and fairly. This feels like a real portrait.

[Michael Esser]

A good book about the famed and notorious Nazi era director. The late Juergen Trimborn has done his research about her and brought Riefenstahl and the era quite well to life. If I missed something at all, it would be an overarching hypothesis about her, why did she fall for the Nazis, why did she, an undoubtedly great talent, endorse the regime with her stunning visual imagination and expressiveness. But then again, this holds true for a great many biographies of people, who lived and thrived under the Nazis, well aware of their atrocities -like for example Albert Speer- and nevertheless pursuing their careers. Nobody so far -at least to my understanding- has given a convincing answer and I have still to look forward to a book that explains how a whole people could fall under the spell of ruthless criminals and psychopaths.

[Bob Crawford · Rating 4 out of 5]

Benefit, then denial

I’ve known two women who grew up in Germany during Hitler’s rule, one my grandmother’s neighbor when I was a teen and the other a professional colleague years later.
Like Leni Riefenstahl, they (more accurately their parents) profited from Hitler’s patronage but after the war denied this and any attraction or allegiance to the dictator.
This book about Riefenstahl explores this paradox. Her talents as a filmmaker and photographer are undeniable, but given her choices, it is also undeniable that those talents became perverted by lust for fame and power that Hitler amplified for her. For the rest of her long life, she created a fantasy resume for herself that this book explores efficiently.
For those interested in the war, art or both, (or perhaps psychology of self-delusion) this is a fascinating read.

[Brandon · Rating 3 out of 5]

I've never read a bio about a more frustrating figure than Leni Riefenstahl. A great artist who is completely delusional, dishonest, anti-semitic, and oh yeah used to be a Nazi- you want to shake Riefenstahl into just admitting the truth about her past. She'd be a much easier person to admire if she did.
I wish Trimborn was more detailed about Riefenstahl's personal life. This doesn't feel like the end all be all of her biographies that a subtitle like A Life would suggest. But he is adroit at seperating the lies and truth of Riefenstahl's life. And this is a very thought-provoking book.

[Calvin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Read this and her memoir, it is a thorough, convincing argument that Leni Riefenstahl cannot be divorced as an artist from the Nazis who gave her art a pedestal.

[Dmitry Soly · Rating 5 out of 5]

An excellent biography of a true artist who lived in the most challenging times.

[Karen Hockemeyer · Rating 5 out of 5]

A balanced, yet condemning verdict for Hitler's revolutionary film director .

[ganzgrossartig]

unilektüre, super spannende, aber umstrittene persönlichkeit