Leni Riefenstahl's Film Début

by Ron Koster

Based on an original article by Dr. Luc Deneulin¹ 

with acknowledgement & gratitude
for his endorsement & invaluable assistance

Back to Main Page for Wege zu Kraft und Schönheit

On This Page:

• Introduction
• Leni's Account
• Early Interest in Film Roles
• "My Real Film Début"?
• Wege zu Kraft und Schönheit
• Mysterious Silence
• Conclusion
• Notes

Leni Riefenstahl's anecdote of her transformation from acclaimed dancer on the European stage to leading actress on the world's silver screens is one that has been faithfully recounted by various authors (such as David Hinton,²  Charles Ford,³  Renata Berg-Pan,⁴  and Audrey Salkeld ⁵ ), by filmmakers (notably Ray Müller ⁶ ), and many other chroniclers of her life. As most often related, it seems almost a fable of coincidence and serendipity, of the opportunity for happy new beginnings coming a-knocking at the door just as misfortune has brought an end to another part of one's life. The tale is certainly not an entirely inaccurate one, and it is indeed rather inspiring as it is told, but it is also an incomplete, somewhat romanticized version of how this transition in Riefenstahl's life actually came about, and also gives us a false impression of when — and with which film — her career in the movies began.

Leni's Account

As the story usually unfolds, as told by Riefenstahl herself as well as others, we picture young Leni living in the roaring Berlin of the early 1920s, at a time in her life when she was enjoying rising success all over Europe with her solo, self-choreographed dance performances. Tragically, though, just then she suffers an unfortunate knee injury which is severe enough to put an abrupt halt to that career; however, during her long recovery, a simple train trip to the doctor brings a turn of events that would change everything for her:

Arnold Fanck's Der Berg des Schicksals

It was incredible. This station here at Nollendorfplatz totally changed my life. I was standing here waiting for a train — I had to go to the doctor, I had hurt my knee badly and couldn't dance. I was impatient because the train was late, but, as it drew in, I suddenly saw a poster for a film, Der Berg des Schicksals. It showed a mountaineer stepping across a chasm. I was so fascinated that I missed the train — I stood rooted to the spot. I read: "Der Berg des Schicksals, Mozartsaal Cinema, Nollendorfplatz." [...] I forgot the doctor and everything else and went to the cinema.⁷ 

To say that Fanck's film left a deep impression on Riefenstahl would be a great understatement. As she describes this experience herself:

It was a totally new kind of film, the first mountaineering film, the first with sequences so filled with movement, the clouds were alive with movement. We'd never seen that before. Fanck was breaking new ground, his use of slow motion, lighting, the composition of his shots, it was all artistic and way ahead of its time. I didn't know much about film, but realized that I was looking at a very special art form on the screen for the first time.⁸ 

The viewing of this film, it is suggested, is what quite singularly inspires Riefenstahl to seek out the film's director, Arnold Fanck, and their subsequent meeting would leave him so impressed with her as well that he, in turn, would find the inspiration to write an original screenplay just for Leni, who he would then direct as the leading star of what would come to be looked upon by most later biographers as her "first" film, Der heilige Berg.

There is no reason for us to doubt that these events actually occurred — and, indeed, they are corroborated through various other sources ⁹  — however, they do not tell the complete story, for in actuality such a distinct line cannot be drawn between Riefenstahl's two careers. It is quite obvious that dance continued to be of great importance in Riefenstahl's life and that her knee injury was not so severe that she was no longer able to perform, for the character that she plays in Der heilige Berg is a dancer, and Riefenstahl gives a wide variety of rather exuberant performances in that role throughout the film. She also danced live on stage at the film's 1926 premiere (to Franz Schubert's 8th "Unfinished" Symphony), and even at that time Riefenstahl was still in a position to choose between a career as an actress or a dancer, as she confirms in her 1933 book, Kampf in Schnee und Eis:

I wanted to combine both [film and dance] and therefore started training again with my pianist. But I learned very quickly that film is too great a pursuit to be done at the same time with dance, and dance too great to be done at the same time as film. In those days I was very unhappy because I didn't want to give up either one. I knew that I can only do one of these things really well. ¹⁰ 

As we can see, Riefenstahl's dance career extended well into her film career (she also performed dances many years later for her role in Tiefland). However, it can similarly be shown that her interest in undertaking film roles did not suddenly arise around the time of her knee injury (and her subsequent introduction to Fanck), but actually began many years before.

Early Interest in Film Roles

It can be reliably stated that not only had Leni Riefenstahl attempted to acquire parts in films years before her knee injury and the inadvertent viewing of Fanck's Der Berg des Schicksals, but that she was intrigued with the idea (at the very least) of taking on film roles even when she was still a student, before she began working as a dancer professionally. She states this herself in her Memoiren,¹¹  that she had tried out for a part in two films, namely, Robert Reinert's Opium (1919) and Arthur Robison's Pietro der Korsar (1925).

About her very first audition for a role on the silver screen, Riefenstahl writes:

I was sixteen when I noticed that young girls were being auditioned for the film Opium and I decided to attend. At the first audition the names and addresses of the girls were recorded and some days later I recieved a letter asking me to dance in front of a film jury. The dance chosen was a waltz. Following this second audition I was offered a part in the film, which I declined, much to the disappointment of the director. ¹³ 

Despite her own interest and the apparent enthusiasm of directors to cast her, there does seem to be some initial hesitation on Riefenstahl's part to actually accept the roles offered to her in those early years. As she writes further of these experiences:

I received more offers to play in films, but each time I declined. One choice was very difficult, I was asked to play the main part (a dancer) in the UFA film Pietro der Korsar. The director who chose me was Arthur Robison, and Paul Richter would have been my partner. I agreed to participate in a few shots, and I was immediately offered a very lucrative contract by Erich Pommer, the chief of UFA. I didn't refuse immediately, but asked for some time to think about it. Finally, I said no. ¹⁴ 

This latter anecdote is substantiated by Wolfgang Jacobsen in his biography of Erich Pommer, although he differs from Riefenstahl in that he states that it was actually Leni who insisted on having the part, but Pommer felt that she wasn't good enough.¹⁵  This discrepancy is not entirely irrelevant, of course, but what is most significant for this current study is that Jacobsen effectively confirms Riefenstahl's statements about her early interest in film. In the end, however, both of the above films were ultimately made without Leni Riefenstahl (Reinert's Opium premiered in 1919 starring Sybell Morel, Hanna Ralph and Conrad Veidt; and Robison's Pietro der Korsar appeared in 1925 with Aud Egede Nissen and Rudolf Klein-Rogge in the lead roles), but it is still shown that Riefenstahl actively pursued film roles not in 1924 or later, but rather as early as 1919 (or even 1918, depending on when the auditions for Opium took place).

"My Real Film Début"?

Even more relevant than the aforementioned two films — but at the same time much more of a mystery — is a third one which Riefenstahl mentions, almost in passing, in her Memoiren:

Once a director and his wife were after me for a long time and in the end I accepted their proposal. Without my father knowing, but with the help of my mother, I filmed in a small studio on the Belle-Alliance Strasse for a few days and played the role of a young girl working in a coal merchant's shop. The director told me I would have a great future, but it didn't give me much joy, because I was very afraid that my father would find out about it. That's why my face was transformed with make-up and I also got a new hair style. When I went to see the film, I almost didn't recognize myself; it was in fact my real film début. ¹⁶ 

Despite these intriguing clues, unfortunately Riefenstahl provides neither the title nor the director of this film, and it is impossible for us to deduce from her writings even the exact year in which this would have taken place. However, she was obviously quite young since this was at a time when she was still avoiding her father's discovery of her interest in pursuing a career in the performing arts, and a fair estimate might be that this was probably sometime around 1919 or 1920. What Riefenstahl's "real film début" was we may never know — but clearly, from her very own words, it was not Arnold Fanck's Der heilige Berg.

Wege zu Kraft und Schönheit

While Riefenstahl's pursuit of roles in the above films is largely based on her own reminiscences, the most concrete evidence that she appeared on-screen prior to her part in Fanck's Der heilige Berg can be found through other sources, in relation to Nicholas Kaufmann and Wilhelm Prager's 1925 film, Wege zu Kraft und Schönheit.

This UFA production belonged to a genre of films known as Kulturfilme ("culture films") — in fact, Fanck's Der Berg des Schicksals, which Riefenstahl admired so much, also belongs in this same category. The purpose of these films was to educate the audience about exotic places and cultures, exceptional acts and lifestyles, etc.   In the case of Wege zu Kraft und Schönheit, it is a film about "body culture" (Körperkultur) and the message of the film might be summarized as "a healthy body, a healthy mind." Featuring sporting/gymnastic themes, impressionist dance, as well as reenactments of various Greco-Roman scenes, in addition it was also the first major feature film to show nudity. In this latter regard, the film promoted a more idealistic, perhaps even moral and innocent approach to health and beauty in harmony with nature, and — whether by design or by coincidence — this was clearly in stark contrast with the decadent "city life" that was prevalent in Germany and other major urban centers of Europe during that decade.

Wege zu Kraft und Schönheit was a huge success not only in Germany (where its popularity continued until the mid-1930s) but also abroad, even breaking box office records in the USSR when it premiered there in 1928. Contrary to many writers' descriptions, it cannot be said that this film was inspired by National Socialist (Nazi) ideas, since it was not only Germany but the entire western world that had been greatly influenced by the renewal of the Olympic Games (after 1500 years) in 1896, and everywhere there was enthusiastic attention being given to athletics as a means to health and well-being. However, the themes of the film did fit in quite well with similar ideals held by the Nazis, and thus they only naturally promoted the film because it was a perfect illustration of, for example, how nudity could be shown without any erotic (decadent) connotations, or how youth could become "beautiful" through gymnastics, dance, sport, etc.   The stature that this film would attain as the most important Kulturfilme of the era is also clearly reflected in the literature of the period, such as Oskar Kalbus' two-volume retrospective of German film, Vom werden Deutscher Filmkunst, in which this film is referred to as "a revelation, a work of art with a very innovative film style." Indeed, the film not only receives more attention by itself than all of the mountain films (Bergfilme) put together, but while the bulk of the book is essentially divided into various genres (with different films discussed under each genre's heading), this film apparently merited a heading and section devoted solely to it alone.¹⁷ 

As for Riefenstahl's appearance in Wege zu Kraft und Schönheit, although she was given no overt credit for her part in it and never spoke of the film herself — neither in her Memoiren nor anywhere else — the assertion that she was indeed in it would now seem to be reasonably justifiable, based on three pieces of evidence: a still from the film which was featured in a contemporary magazine, Der Querschnitt; the appearance of the students from Mary Wigman's dance school in the film; and the existence of a contract between Riefenstahl and UFA for her part in the film.

The Photo in Der Querschnitt

"Rechts Leni Riefenstahl"

The clearest — and perhaps the only — reference to Riefenstahl having appeared in Wege zu Kraft und Schönheit which comes from the same period that the film was made can be found in the magazine Der Querschnitt ("The Cross-Section"), an arts and literary periodical that featured such writers as Gertrude Stein, Virginia Woolf, Thomas Mann and Arnold Schönberg. Each issue also included a number of pictures, and in the April issue of 1925 — within a month after the premiere of Kaufmann and Prager's film — we find a production still depicting a Roman bath scene from the film, with a caption that reads:

Aus Wilhelm Pragers Filmwerk
»Wege zur Kraft und Schönheit«.
Rechts Leni Riefenstahl

From Wilhelm Prager's film
"Wege zur Kraft und Schönheit".
Right, Leni Riefenstahl

(Note that the somewhat erroneous use of "zur" instead of "zu" in the film title is from the original caption as it is written in Der Querschnitt, and as the film was occasionally referred to.)

The picture (and its caption) are featured on a two-page photo spread under the title Bewegte Menschen ("Moving People"),¹⁸  but no author for this piece is provided, the other images featured are all unrelated to the film (and to each other), with no other mention about the film nor about Riefenstahl given anywhere else in the magazine. Despite this lack of additional information, however, the mere existence of this photo, with its caption specifically mentioning Riefenstahl, is still quite significant. On the one hand, when more modern writers mention Riefenstahl's appearance in Wege zu Kraft und Schönheit (and, as virtually always seems to be the case, without providing any evidence to support that statement), such claims might be easily dismissed as being little more than mere postulation, or even just wishful thinking. The same could not really be said for this example from Der Querschnitt, however, since it would make no sense for there to have been such a motivation (or assumption). Riefenstahl had yet to appear even in her first starring role in Fanck's Der heilige Berg, and so any reason for pointing her out because she was already a "movie star" or noted film director — let alone because of the inevitable infamy that she would ultimately acquire — simply didn't exist (yet), the only motivation could have been for whatever acclaim she had acquired up to that point as a dancer. There simply was no cause for "wishful thinking" or any other reason for Der Querschnitt to make a false claim about her appearance in the film. Stated as it is and in the context that it is, it is not a "revelation" about the (in)famous Leni Riefenstahl's early film career, but, on the contrary, it would have been — and could only have been — stated merely incidentally, simply pointing out rather matter-of-factly that on the right-hand side of that picture the reader of the magazine will note the popular dancer from Berlin (which is all that she was known as in 1925), Leni Riefenstahl. For these reasons, if any presumption is to be made at all, then it would only be fairest and most reasonable for us to assume that the assertion in the caption was made in good faith, is genuine and, indeed, in all likelihood accurate.

The Mary Wigman Dancers

The Mary Wigman dancers in Wege zu Kraft und Schönheit — including (possibly) Leni Riefenstahl in the foreground — performing the finale to a dance called Der Wanderung ("The Wandering")

If we can fairly presume that the evidence from Der Querschnitt is authentic, then does this fit in with what we know about Riefenstahl's life, and what she was doing during the period that the film was made?

What is clear about Wege zu Kraft und Schönheit is that Wilhelm Prager used hundreds of extras, and naturally it would have been impractical (if not unwarranted) to include the names of every minor player in the credits. However, Mary Wigman and the students of her dance school are credited (collectively), and this provides us with an additional indication that Riefenstahl could have participated as an extra in this film.

Mary Wigman — who was the most influential proponent of German expressionist dance (Ausdruckstanz) in her day — opened her school in Dresden in 1920, where virtually all of the most important dancers and choreographers of Germany would study under her tutelage. Along with several other students (including, notably, Yvonne Georgi, Gret Palucca, and Vera Skoronell), Riefenstahl began attending Wigman's master class in 1923, and it was some time after this that shooting for Wege zu Kraft und Schönheit took place. While we do not know the exact dates that the scenes featuring the Wigman dancers were shot, from the Illustrierter Filmkurier ¹⁹  for this film we understand that shooting took almost a year and a half — effectively overlapping the same period that Riefenstahl attended Wigman's school. This makes it not only possible but, indeed, highly likely that Riefenstahl would have been one of the dancers who appeared in the movie, and a number of production stills used in promotional materials for the film (in addition to the one in Der Querschnitt) also feature certain dancers who look, at least, like they might indeed be Riefenstahl.

The UFA Contract

Our final piece of evidence is the apparent existence of a contract between Leni Riefenstahl and UFA (the German film company which produced Wege zu Kraft und Schönheit) concerning her participation in the film.

The year 1992 marked the 75th anniversary of UFA, which prompted a number of publications about this very important production company, including Klaus Kreimeier's Die UFA-Story.²⁰  Although there is actually very little history shared between Leni Riefenstahl and UFA, in her Memoiren she had suggested that UFA had been involved in the production of her 1935 film, Triumph des Willens.²¹  Kreimeier endeavoured to correct what he perceived as an error on Riefenstahl's part, and through his research he discovered — and subsequently asserted in his book — that there had only ever been three contracts between Riefenstahl and UFA, all of which were from the 1920s:   two contracts related to the Arnold Fanck films Der heilige Berg and Der grosse Sprung, plus a third, earlier contract for her appearance in Wege zu Kraft und Schönheit.²² 

Mysterious Silence

With the existence of all of the above evidence, it would certainly seem virtually undeniable that Leni Riefenstahl did indeed appear in Nicholas Kaufmann and Wilhelm Prager's Wege zu Kraft und Schönheit. Yet, nowhere does Riefenstahl ever speak of the film (even simply as an influential film of the time) — not in any version of her own autobiography, nor in any interview done with other biographers or filmmakers. In fact, when directly queried about this film, the response was that she was not even aware that a film with such a title had ever been made.²³ 

It would seem quite extraordinary if Riefenstahl had never heard of a movie that was so popular in its time — and even more extraordinary, of course, if she had appeared in the film but simply "forgotten" that she had done so. After all, she clearly recalled the details of merely auditioning for (but not even appearing in) both Opium and Pietro der Korsar, not to mention the unnamed film which she referred to as "my real film début."

What reasons could Riefenstahl have had to wish to deny her participation in Wege zu Kraft und Schönheit? There are, in fact, three possible motivations which may well have been the reason for her to have adopted a stance of denial: firstly, the association that the film had with the Nazis (however unjustified); secondly, the connection with the Mary Wigman dance school; and, lastly, certain similarities between Wege zu Kraft und Schönheit and Riefenstahl's own later film, Olympia.

Association with the Nazis

Riefenstahl's participation in Arnold Fanck's mountain films has been linked to National Socialist ideas by authors such as Siegfried Kracauer in his book From Caligari to Hitler,²⁴  Susan Sontag in her rather notorious article Fascinating Fascism,²⁵  and others — a criticism (if not, in fact, accusation and veritable condemnation) which Riefenstahl has struggled to resurrect herself from ever since the war. This alleged connection can be fairly disputed, however, in the case of Wege zu Kraft und Schönheit, there is no question that the Nazis did indeed genuinely value the film since it promoted (however inadvertently) some of the same ideals which they also held. As a result, after the war it was viewed upon as a virtually definitive example of Nazi ideology expressed on film (propaganda) and, in this regard, it would be perfectly understandable if Riefenstahl would have preferred to distance herself from the film. Her doing so could have meant much more than just simply an effort to salvage her reputation, for distancing herself from the Nazis was in fact a matter of freedom, perhaps even survival.

Association with the Mary Wigman Dance School

Despite the acclaim and prestige held by Mary Wigman as both a dancer in her own right and a teacher of the art, Riefenstahl's experiences at the school were not entirely satisfying for her. As she recollects:

I had a very hard time integrating into the group dancing of the Wigman School. I found the style too abstract, too rigorous, and too ascetic, where my own urge was to surrender completely to the rhythms of the music. ²⁶ 

As Riefenstahl's dance career progressed, she became known and praised for her solo performances, however, in Wege zu Kraft und Schönheit her role is very limited, she is virtually in the shadow of Mary Wigman and essentially anonymous within the group dancing shown in the film. Having strived to achieve recognition as a solo artist with her own unique style — and not only her having strived to do so at the time, but having spoken and written retrospectively of her earlier career in that way during her later years — the film does very little to promote this view of her. Quite the contrary, it might only minimize her stature as a dancer, and would also give a false impression of her own style because she would have been following Wigman's choreography and not dancing in her own personal one. Whatever positive influences she might have gained during her time at Wigman's school, overall it would seem that, however noteworthy in a biographical perspective (because of Wigman's stature), it was ultimately merely incidental in Riefenstahl's life and not reflective of who she herself was or became as a dancer in her own right — and naturally, of course, any part she might have played in Wege zu Kraft und Schönheit while a student at the school would also be something that she might prefer be ignored and forgotten.

Association with Olympia

There is a distinct similarity between certain film styles which we see in Wege zu Kraft und Schönheit and Riefenstahl's own 1938 masterpiece, Olympia, and concern over being accused that her film was not quite as original as generally thought may also have played a role in Riefenstahl's decision to not mention any connection with the former film. While Wege zu Kraft und Schönheit is unfortunately still not readily available (on VHS or DVD) in order to facilitate any thorough analysis and comparison of these two films, even from the various production stills for both these similarities can be observed — for example, in how some of the athletic scenes were shot or, even more strikingly, with regard to the opening dance scenes in Olympia.

Conclusion

Although Der heilige Berg is more often than not referred to as Leni Riefenstahl's first film role, and most sources further state that her career move from dancer to actress was directly — if not entirely — inspired by Fanck's Der Berg des Schicksals, it should be clear from the evidence presented here that there is actually much more to the story. Even if we put aside the probability of her appearance in Wege zu Kraft und Schönheit, from Riefenstahl's very own words we know that she had already auditioned for a role at least as early as 1919 (for Robert Reinert's Opium), her account of a subsequent audition for Arthur Robison's Pietro der Korsar is corroborated in Wolfgang Jacobsen's book, Erich Pommer — ein Produzent macht Filmgeschichte, and Riefenstahl asserts as well that there was some other, unknown film which was, in fact, actually her "real film début" prior to Arnold Fanck's Der heilige Berg.

As for the question of Wege zu Kraft und Schönheit, previous mention of this film in other biographies and filmographies of Leni Riefenstahl has usually amounted to little more than conjecturing the possibility that she might have appeared in it, without providing any substantial evidence to support that declaration. However, once we acknowledge that Riefenstahl's inspiration to become an actress did not occur virtually overnight with a single viewing of Der Berg des Schicksals, that it was a medium that she had "tested the waters" in for several years prior — and in light of the evidence that we have from Der Querschnitt, the matter of Riefenstahl's attendance at Mary Wigman's school during the period that Wege zu Kraft und Schönheit was made, and the evidence from Klaus Kreimeier's Die UFA-Story of a contract between Riefenstahl and the UFA production company for her role in the film — Riefenstahl's participation in Kaufmann and Prager's film goes from mere conjecture to well beyond simply a distinct possibility, but can be stated with a reasonably high level of certainty.

Naturally there is still the possibility that, indeed, Riefenstahl really never had anything to do with Kaufmann and Prager's film, but if that were the case then it would certainly seem to fly in the face of all the available evidence. If we allow ourselves to accept this evidence in the direction that it leads us, though, then what of Riefenstahl's mysterious silence (or denial) about this matter until the end of her life?

Obviously we may never really know what Riefenstahl's reasons were for rejecting any suggestion that she played a part in Wege zu Kraft und Schönheit, however, as outlined above, we can certainly speculate on why she might have chosen to do so. We don't know if any one of those reasons is truly what motivated her to disavow herself from the film, but each of those reasons would certainly be understandable — and they're understandable regardless of whether or not one agrees with her decision to have adopted the stance she did, for any particular reason. In relation to Olympia, aside from the enormous effort and pressures of making the film in the first place, she would have had to struggle to justify herself as a woman director after its release (not only against her male peers, but even moreso against Goebbels and the entire Ministry of Propaganda of the Nazis), and it certainly wouldn't have helped in this regard to admit to having borrowed ideas from Kaufmann and Prager's film (let alone, indeed, from Arnold Fanck's or anyone else's films).

If this last was the beginnings of a disassociation on Riefenstahl's part — and in 1938 purely for the establishment of respect for herself as a director and the furtherance of her career — after the war her motivation to continue the deception would certainly have become far more serious, because by then her association with anything seen as even remotely indicating any overt National-Socialist beliefs on her part could well have been literally a matter of genuine freedom or survival.

We might wonder, though, why she continued with that deception until the end of her life. After all, every artist is influenced in some way by other artists, and there would really be nothing wrong for Riefenstahl to admit that she'd been influenced by other directors (which, in the case of Arnold Fanck and others, she has), and as for any perception of Wege zu Kraft und Schönheit as being a "Nazi" film, just as has been outlined here in this article, this can easily be shown to not be be the case (despite the Nazis' appreciation for the film).

So why hang on, for so long, until the very end, to something that wasn't really true, to something that ultimately was really not detrimental to oneself at all? Naturally we cannot really know the reasons for that, but similarly not one of us can imagine what struggles Riefenstahl endured in her career before the war, and even less can we imagine the persecution and condemnation after the war. What may have begun as little more than a "fib" for the purpose of self-promotion eventually snowballed into a life-saving (or, at least, freedom-saving) deception that she may well have felt she just couldn't retract, and as the decades went by with very little let-up in the persecution she experienced, it was probably easier for her to simply maintain that deception than ever admit the really rather innocuous truth.

We may never know. Like so much about Leni Riefenstahl's life, though, even as we discover additional details and are able to arrive at further conclusions, the mystery never seems to finally close, it only seems to broaden and become deeper. If we do know anything about her, however, it's that she was a remarkable artist and film maker, who's genius and influence continue to be felt to this day, but who not always had the best judgement when it came to making certain decisions in life — and, perhaps, in effectively provoking this mystery (however passively, as opposed to addressing the issue and helping to clear it up) and carrying on the deception for her whole life, it was just one more decision that she made when she was young which would create a mystery that would only become bigger and bigger, that would continue to raise questions for the rest of her life.

Notes

1. Deneulin, Luc. "Leni Riefenstahl filmdebute(s)." Unpublished article (Belgium, 1999). Contact: luc.deneulin@skynet.be.
2. Hinton, David. The Films of Leni Riefenstahl . Metuchen, NJ: Scarecrow Press, 1978.
3. Ford, Charles. Leni Riefenstahl. Paris: la Table Ronde, 1978.
4. Berg-Pan, Renata. Leni Riefenstahl. Boston: Twayne, 1980.
5. Salkeld, Audrey. A Portrait of Leni Riefenstahl. London: Jonathan Cape, 1996.
6. Müller, Ray. The Wonderful, Horrible Life of Leni Riefenstahl. Produced and directed by Ray Müller. 188 minutes. OmegaFilm, 1993. DVD (Kino, 1998).
7. Riefenstahl, Leni. First-person account of Riefenstahl's experiences, from the chapter "Discovering the Movies," in Ray Müller's The Wonderful, Horrible Life of Leni Riefenstahl.
8. ibid.
9. For example, see the account of Riefenstahl's co-star, Luis Trenker, from the chapter "Discovering the Movies," in Ray Müller's The Wonderful, Horrible Life of Leni Riefenstahl.
10. Riefenstahl, Leni. Kampf in Schnee und Eis. Leipzig: Hesse & Becker Verlag, 1933; pages 24-25.
11. Riefenstahl, Leni. Memoiren. München/Hamburg: Albrecht Knaus Verlag, 1987.
12. Page-by-page comparisons by Luc Deneulin, in 1992 and subsequently, between Riefenstahl's German-language Memoiren and the English translation have shown that more than 20% percent of the original information was omitted in the latter version. This discrepancy has led to many inaccurate conclusions by various scholars, as outlined in Deneulin's 1998 PhD thesis, Leni Riefenstahl, van Arnold Fanck tot Adolf Hitler (Belgium: VUB, 1998; pp. 5-7)
13. Riefenstahl, Leni. Memoiren. pages 26-27.
14. Riefenstahl, Leni. Memoiren. page 65.
15. Jacobsen, Wolfgang. Erich Pommer — ein Produzent macht Filmgeschichte. Berlin: Argon, 1989; page 176.
16. Riefenstahl, Leni. Memoiren. page 29.
17. Kalbus, Oskar. Vom werden Deutscher Filmkunst — 1. Teil: Der stumme film. Altona-Bahrenfeld: Cigaretten-Bilderdienst, 1935; pages 92-93.
18. [Anonymous]. "Bewegte Menschen." Der Querschnitt — Das Magazin der aktuellen Ewigkeitswerte. Berlin: Propylaën Verlag, vol. 2, no. 4, April 1925; pages 24-25. This two-page photo spread was reproduced faithfully in Christian Ferber's retrospective Der Querschnitt — Das Magazin der aktuellen Ewigkeitswerte, 1924-1933 (Berlin: Ullstein, 1981; pages 30-31).
19. Riehmann, A. "Wege zu Kraft und Schönheit — Ein Film über moderne Körperkultur." Illustrierter Filmkurier (no. 159). Berlin: Alfred Weiner Verlag, 1925.
20. Kreimeier, Klaus. Die UFA-Story — Geschichte eines Filmkonzerns. München-Wien: Carl Hanser Verlag, 1992. An English version of this book is also available under the title The Ufa Story — A History of Germany's Greatest Film Company, 1918-1945 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999).
21. Riefenstahl, Leni. Memoiren. page 239.
22. Kreimeier. Die UFA-Story. page 296.
23. Brandler, Inge (on behalf of Leni Riefenstahl). Personal communication to Luc Deneulin. July 17, 1996.
24. Kracauer, Siegfried. From Caligari to Hitler — A Psychological History of the German Film. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1966; pages 112, 257-259.
25. Sontag, Susan. "Fascinating Fascism." New York Review of Books, vol. 22, no. 1, February 6, 1975. Reprinted in Under the Sign of Saturn. New York: Farrar Straus Giroux, 1980 (1975); pages 73-105.
26. Riefenstahl, Leni. Leni Riefenstahl — A Memoir. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1992; pages 33-34.

Copyright © Ron Koster/Leni's Rising Star, 2004
Original article copyright © Luc Deneulin, 1999
All Rights Reserved.

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