Dietrich & Riefenstahl: Hollywood, Berlin, and a Century in Two Lives

by Wieland, Karin

  In the throes of a deep depression and out of money, Riefenstahl bided her time in Berlin until she got a call from the chancellery and learned that Hitler wished to meet with her the following day. Trembling from head to toe, she “didn’t have the courage to say no.”5 When she headed to the chancellery on a warm and cloudness summer’s day to pay Hitler a visit, she had on a simple white dress and light makeup, in deference to his taste. Hitler offered her artistic oversight of German filmmaking, but she turned him down, claiming that she lacked the ability to assume this task. Then he offered her the opportunity to make films for him. Again she demurred, this time on the grounds that she was an actress and wanted to achieve success in that arena.

  Joseph Goebbels’s diary reveals that Riefenstahl went to see him one week after the May 10 book burning. He noted in his diary: “Afternoon Leni Riefenstahl. She tells me about her plans. I suggest a Hitler film. She is keen on the idea.” They got along so well that Leni Riefenstahl accompanied Goebbels and his wife to the opera that evening.6

  A photograph of an opera evening five months later shows Riefenstahl next to Magda Goebbels in a box seat. The Italian ambassador to Germany, Vittorio Cerrutti, was keeping them company; Joseph Goebbels and his adjutant can be seen in the background. Riefenstahl looks relaxed and does not give the impression that she is unhappy in this group. To the end of her life, she vehemently denied having had any close collaboration with Goebbels, which she got away with in large part because the diaries cited here were not tracked down until 1992 in Moscow.7

  Riefenstahl claimed that Goebbels never stopped besieging her during the spring of 1933. He called her up when she was on vacation, appeared at her door at night, and summoned her to his official residence on Pariser Platz in Berlin for private talks. Their meetings invariably ended with Goebbels trying to kiss her or fondle her breasts. When he realized that she would not be intimidated or yield to his advances, his desire flipped into hatred. Even before she shot her first film for the National Socialists, we are told, he was already her enemy.

  Riefenstahl was determined to focus squarely on Hitler. From this point on, she believed that only the admiration and support of the omnipotent dictator would be suitable for her genius. But Goebbels evidently gave her quite a bit of help. She could heap blame on him and count on his inability to defend himself. She would later deny doing everything in her power to get into the social circles of Goebbels and Hitler so she could advance her career.

  Goebbels got to know Riefenstahl on November 2, 1932, before his speech in the Sports Palace: “I meet Riefenstahl . . . very enjoyable, smart, and pleasant. . . . We chat for a long time. She is a very enthusiastic supporter of ours.”8 Two days later, she visited Goebbels and his wife at their home. “Late in the evening Leni Riefenst. at our house. She entertains us until four in the morning. A clever and amusing person. She is very pleasant. Magda likes her as well.” From then on, Riefenstahl seems to have been a welcome guest at the Goebbels home. Two days later, she shared a sofa with Hohenzollern prince August Wilhelm and Hitler supporter Viktoria von Dirksen. In late November 1932, Riefenstahl displayed her talents. Together with Adolf Hitler, she was a guest at the Goebbels residence. “Evening Hitler at our house. Leni Riefenstahl too. It is very nice. Leni R. dances. Good and effective. A lithe gazelle.”9 Goebbels was well informed about Riefenstahl’s love affairs. In her mountain films, which Hitler also found quite appealing, she played the sexually active woman who challenged the men.

  On December 3, there was another big party at the Goebbels’. “Riefenstahl flirts with Göring. And Slezak entices her away from Hitler. A great show. Goes on until 4 in the morning.”10 Over the course of the next few days, she turned on the charm for Italo Balbo, a leading Italian fascist, and invited Ernst Hanfstaengl, Magda and Joseph Goebbels, photographer Heinrich Hoffmann, and Hitler to her home. Presumably this was the attempt to pair off Hitler and Riefenstahl that Hanfstaengl described. Her later claim that she had only minimal contact with Hitler is highly implausible in light of these casual get-togethers.11 Riefenstahl actively sought out contact with Hitler by way of Goebbels and played up her feminine charms to capture the interest of both men.

  Although the cinemas, theaters, and cafés were packed and everything appeared to be the same as ever, the world was beginning to fall apart. Sebastian Haffner wrote, “It was as if the ground on which one stood was continually trickling away from under one’s feet.”12 But Riefenstahl herself was on firm ground. She does not appear to have noticed that there was only one political party left, that the red notices posted on advertising pillars announcing the latest executions were updated on a near-daily basis, and that many of her colleagues in the film industry were no longer around. She was caught up in the whirl of her new circles and no longer needed to beg Arnold Fanck for roles or cultivate contacts in the odious film business. At first she seems to have consulted with Goebbels on matters pertaining to film. Although she claimed otherwise, she was discussing a film project with him in November 1932. This film, Madam Doctor, would depict the life of a World War I female spy.13

  On March 13 the Reich Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda was established, and Goebbels was appointed to head it. This ministry oversaw film as well as many branches of art and the media. Goebbels had been attempting for several years to exploit the film medium for the party. In the “Gau Berlin,” of which he was in charge, the first party film division had been established in the fall of 1930. But short films, such as With the Berlin SA to Nuremberg, did not accomplish much. Now that he was finally in power he was eager for change. On March 28, 1933, at Hotel Kaiserhof, the film people were told what Goebbels expected of them and what they could expect from him. They were dumbfounded to learn that he did not want to support any “so-called National Socialist” films, and were equally surprised when he revealed the type of films he favored. No one would have imagined the titles he named. At the top of his list was Eisenstein’s Battleship Potemkin, followed by a diverse group of movies that included 1928’s Love (Edmund Goulding) with Greta Garbo, 1932’s The Rebel (Kurt Bernhardt) with Luis Trenker, and Fritz Lang’s 1924 The Nibelungs. The propaganda minister appreciated both Hollywood and the avant-garde.

  He knew of Riefenstahl as a supporter of the party and as an actress. On December 1, 1929, after seeing The White Hell of Piz Palü, he wrote in his diary: “The beautiful Leni Riefenstahl is in it. A splendid child! Full of grace and elegance.”14 The two of them seem to have gotten along splendidly at first. They had a picnic with Hitler at the seaside resort of Heiligendamm and watched the latest Hans Albers movie together, and Goebbels was positively tickled by her sympathetic understanding of the Nazi soul. “She is the only one of all the stars who understands us,” he wrote in his diary.15 Riefenstahl was now a regular guest at the Goebbels’ home and chatted with SA section commanders and film colleagues until all hours of the night. There were unforeseen difficulties with the subject matter of the film. “Evening Corell, Köhn, and Riefenstahl: Film Madam Doctor. I’m helping as much as I can. Now there are objections regarding foreign policy & R. W. [Reichswehr].”16

  Riefenstahl claimed that Ufa wrote her a brief letter stating that her film project could not be completed because the Ministry of Defense had prohibited the production of spy films. The descriptions of Riefenstahl’s meetings with Goebbels refute her claim that she had no social ties with him and provide insights into the events leading up to her first Reich party rally film. Her claim that Hitler forced her to make this film had no basis in fact; once her feature-film project had fallen apart, she was “thrilled” to be offered this opportunity, as Goebbels noted in his diary.17

  In late August, Riefenstahl finally had it in black and white, and readers of the Film-Kurier learned what a coup she had scored:

  At the directive of the Reich Administration for Reich Propaganda, Department IV (Film), a film will be made of the party congress. Fräulein Leni Riefenstahl will be the artistic director, at the special
request of the Führer, and supervision of this movie will be in the hands of the director of Central Department IV (Film) Party Member Arnold Raether. Party Member Eberhard Fangauf is the technical manager. Next week, Fräulein Riefenstahl will go to Nuremberg after a detailed consultation with Party Member Raether to lay the groundwork for this film.18

  Victory of Faith was the first film Riefenstahl made for the National Socialists. The fact that many artists had left Germany, fearing for their lives, worked to the advantage of those who, like Riefenstahl, chose to offer their artistic services to the new rulers. There were now unprecedented opportunities for advancement, and Riefenstahl did not hesitate to take full advantage of the situation. Hitler needed no more than a couple of months to establish his dictatorship and get his adversaries out of the way. At the same time, Riefenstahl had become a favorite of the dictator’s. She could finally heave a sigh of relief: Hitler had freed her from the constraints of the film industry and she could give free rein to her genius. However, she had not taken the party members’ views into account. Up to this point, she had been dealing only with high-ranking National Socialist dignitaries and their adjutants. She often spent whole nights with them, feeling like a great artist. When she got together with Hitler for tea at the chancellery, she was always alone with him and she savored her proximity to power. But now she had to deal with a larger group of small-minded, overly ambitious party members as well. For these men, Riefenstahl was an outsider and a troublemaker. A set of correspondence provides insight into the kinds of attacks she faced. A mere three days after the official announcement of Riefenstahl’s appointment, a confidential note called for a background check of her Aryan ancestry. “Herr Podehl, the dramatic adviser at Ufa, met with the film author Katscher, a Jew. Herr Katscher is married to an Aryan. Frau Katscher explained that Leni Riefenstahl was her cousin, and that Leni Riefenstahl was the only Jew among her blood relations. Leni Riefenstahl, she went on to say, has a Jewish mother, who is thought to be the only Jew in her extended family.”19 The next day, Riefenstahl received a letter requesting documentation about her mother and grandparents on both sides of her family “in order to verify your Aryan lineage.” These investigations confirmed Riefenstahl’s Aryan ancestry. Arnold Raether, the head of the film division, was immediately informed of this status, and on September 8, he sent a handwritten letter to a fellow party member, Hinkel.

  Dear Party Member Hinkel,

  Your letter in the matter of Riefenstahl was forwarded to me while I was on vacation. In Nuremberg, I had called Herr Hess’s attention to things known to me as well, since he wanted to have the case investigated. I have received notification from Berlin that with regard to her ancestry nothing detrimental has turned up. Not that I can imagine that even a Jew would make up something of this sort. One thing is certain: until a year ago, Fräulein Riefenstahl knew nothing about National Socialism. Her landscape films—or rather, the films made by good cameramen—were also put together for the sole purpose of business.

  Heil Hitler and yours sincerely, A. Raether20

  Raether was one of the few people in the propaganda ministry who knew anything about film. He had studied business, then worked as a manager at Ufa. He joined the Nazi party in 1930. Raether was a former member of the Free Corps and a staunch National Socialist. He was responsible for Hitler over Germany (1932), Hitler Youth in the Mountains (1932), and other films in that vein. Goebbels was not particularly fond of this overblown party glorification, but he knew that Raether was a loyal party member and competent worker, and he assigned him many key functions, entrusting him with a seat on the Film Credit Bank’s board of directors and putting him in charge of allocating loans for film projects. The recipient of this letter appears to be Hans Hinkel, who had been decorated with the prestigious Blood Order for participating in the 1923 putsch. In July 1933, he became a state commissioner in the Prussian Ministry of Culture and the Prussian regional director of the Combat League for German Culture. Riefenstahl worked directly with Raether and Eberhard Fangauf. Fangauf, who was born in 1895, volunteered for military service and was honorably discharged when he was severely injured in 1918. In April 1933, he joined the Goebbels ministry as a film consultant and was put in charge of organization and production management of government and party-run film propaganda. He would remain in this post until 1945.

  Fangauf, Raether, and Hinkel, all confirmed National Socialists, were profiteers of the new system and disgruntled to learn that Riefenstahl had been commissioned to film the party congress. They did not want to yield any of their privilege and status, especially not to a woman. Riefenstahl, in turn, was buoyed by her own sense of importance as the artist who had been chosen by the Führer. Now that she had finally succeeded in finding a powerful patron and admirer, she had no intention of backing away. Raether, Fangauf, and Hinkel had not counted on a woman like Riefenstahl. She had already tackled more difficult situations. With Fanck, she had learned how to assert herself as the only woman among men.

  A chilly reception awaited her when she went to see Fangauf in Nuremberg to discuss the film work. Fangau was disturbed by her presence in the place that was rightly his and refused to make film stock and cameramen available to her. Once again, Riefenstahl was able to turn a seemingly hopeless situation to good advantage. She signed cameramen on her own and sought to maintain her independence from the cumbersome party machine, which was hostile to art. Her former lover, Sepp Allgeier, joined her crew. As was so often the case, her erotic connection to this man enhanced their artistic collaboration. However, she had not enlisted his services for sentimental reasons. In 1932, Allgeier had worked as the cameraman in Trenker’s feature film The Rebel, and Goebbels and Hitler loved this film. Allgeier joined the NSDAP in 1935. Riefenstahl’s other cameramen were Franz Weihmayr and Walter Frentz. Frentz had been recommended by Albert Speer, whom Riefenstahl had met in Nuremberg. Because he was able to infuse Hitler’s May Celebrations at Tempelhofer Feld with some degree of theatrical atmosphere, he had been sent to Nuremberg to reenact this feat there. Speer later recorded his impressions of Riefenstahl in his memoirs.

  During the preparations for the Party Rallies I met a woman who had impressed me even in my student days: Leni Riefenstahl, who had starred in or had directed well-known mountain and skiing movies. Hitler appointed her to make films of the rallies. As the only woman officially involved in the proceedings, she had frequent conflicts with the party organization, which was soon up in arms against her. The Nazis were by tradition antifeminist and could hardly brook this self-assured woman, the more so since she knew how to bend this men’s world to her purposes. Intrigues were launched and slanderous stories carried to Hess, in order to have her ousted.21

  Riefenstahl thought of Speer as her friend. The tie that bound them was their utter devotion to Hitler.

  Frentz was similarly pleased to find a point of affinity with Riefenstahl: “We had very much the same attitude toward film: I hated wastefulness and so did she.”22 With Allgeier, Weihmayr, and Frentz on Riefenstahl’s side, she dared to defy small-minded and spiteful party members. However, shooting on location turned out to be more difficult than the crew had anticipated. No matter where they set up their equipment, they were thrown out by SA or SS men. Eventually Riefenstahl was summoned to Hitler’s deputy, Rudolf Hess, who confronted her with an SA man’s claim that she had made disrespectful statements about Hitler. As we know from Raether’s letter to Hinkel, he had advised Hess that Riefenstahl was a shady person. Hess was a man known for his modesty in everything except his love of Hitler. In all probability he was jealous of this young woman and daunted by her beauty and talent. But Riefenstahl did not get distracted. She went back to her filming, confident in her mandate and her skill.

  The Volk that Hitler was addressing as chancellor had yet to evolve into the Volk he envisioned. Once the democratic structures had been done away with, he was planning for an inner reeducation of the German people. Hitler wanted to reorient the Germans to become a Vo
lk that would go off to war for him and attain supremacy in the world, and he envisioned the film of the party congress serving to propagate this vision. As a lover of movies and an aficionado of Riefenstahl’s films, he knew that she was predestined for this kind of work. Her art had never been based in reality.

  Movies had been made of the Nuremberg party rallies in 1927 and 1929. The focus of the 1927 film was the party itself, specifically the men from the SA, whose merry camp life was shown in great detail right down to their odd rituals. In the movie that was made two years later, Hitler was still far from his later role as savior. Such a depiction was no longer considered appropriate. In September 1933, he wanted to be portrayed on film as the Führer of the Germans.23 Riefenstahl admired Hitler. She knew nothing of all the scheming that had plagued the party—or at least she had no desire to know. She focused squarely on Adolf Hitler. He could rest assured that she would make him the centerpiece of the film.

  Beyond her burning ambition, her boundless admiration of Hitler, and her talent, Riefenstahl was able to develop a plan with military precision. Her orders had to be obeyed; everyone and everything had to submit to her will. Three days before the rally began, she arrived in Nuremberg. A film journal reported on her preparations for the shooting:

  The city was already festively decorated. With the aid of a city map that highlighted the scheduled events and in particular the parades and processions, the filming strategy was plotted out. The car with Leni Riefenstahl and her crew raced from one place to another, again and again; the camera placements were selected, the possible time schedules planned and altered. And then came the four big days themselves: an enormous amount of work from early in the morning until late at night, with new arrangements and split-second decisions necessitated again and again, which required an overview of the whole situation and great powers of concentration.24