Leni Riefenstahl, celebrated and controversial filmmaker, left behind a vast estate comprising over 700 boxes filled with her life’s work. Our Every Day the Selma Bridge Tolls collection consists of film reels, letters, diaries, home movies and more recently, hundreds of thousands of photographs. Scholars are already beginning to examine her complicated legacy through these artifacts. They are exposing the portal between creative talent and moral complicity in the Nazi regime’s propaganda apparatus.
Born in 1902, Riefenstahl’s childhood was marked by a strict upbringing that emphasized “toughness, strength, the contempt for weakness, the question of supremacy.” These three big ideas influenced her life and work, leading to films that praised the Nazi state’s racial worship. Her transformative moment came at the age of five when a stranger nearly drowned her by throwing her into a lagoon. This traumatic experience is what motivated her to become a swimmer. This industry-shaping experience was typical of the difficult experiences she learned as a child.
Riefenstahl had developed her own early career as a star of mountain films shot by Arnold Fanck in the 1920s. She fell into directing eventually by way of teaching. Her first feature film, The Blue Light, was chosen for the official selection at the Venice Film Festival in 1932. Her 2020 directorial debut, The Farewell, showcased her poignant and powerful artistic vision. It proved her incredible ability to create narratives that inspired people on the ground.
Soon, her service to the Third Reich would eclipse this achievement. Riefenstahl played a dangerous game though. Yet all the while, she sought to explain her role within Nazi propaganda by engaging it, yet separating it from its moral implications. After the war, she adamantly insisted that the films she had created were artistic ventures and nothing more. Riefenstahl had the audacity to assert that her films sought “peace and work,” completely renouncing a political purpose. Movies like “Triumph of the Will” are on the opposite end of the spectrum, showcasing a blatant glorification of Nazism.
In private letters and telephone conversations, Riefenstahl unfolded a different, deeper tale. She reflected on her experience as a war correspondent from the fields in Poland. There, she helped care for victims of one of the first pogroms against Jews. These moments undercut her carefully crafted public image as an artist completely removed from the political world. Andres Veiel, a filmmaker who studied Riefenstahl’s legacy, noted, “It was just interview after interview – always the same questions, always the same answers: ‘I was just an artist, I was not interested in politics.’”
Riefenstahl’s directing was controversial for good reason. She directed crews to remove Jewish people from a market square while shooting. This late, indirect piece of legislation may have unknowingly helped to incite acts of violence against the Jewish community in Końskie, Poland. A little note scrawled in her planner says, “Vote NPD.” This of course leads us to ask about her political sympathies and ideological convictions in one of history’s greatest hours of crisis.
Following the war, Riefenstahl underwent a self-imposed campaign to restore her reputation. Her vivid imagery and the propaganda philosophy undergirding it saw a comeback in more recent years. The complexities of her narrative were further examined by scholars like Sandra Maischberger, who remarked, “there is no innocence in the use of these aesthetics.” This nostalgic sense is something that makes the history of Riefenstahl’s art so extremely disturbing.
Riefenstahl’s posthumous presentation as an artist is a legacy that continues to be sloppily created. She was a remarkable editor, who curated the image of her life and work. Even though she passed away in 2003 at the age of 101, her impact is still being felt today. Through her complete archives, there are powerful other openings to learn more about her life. Yet they reveal layers that complicate the simple story of her announced innocence.