Leni Riefenstahl, Interviewed by Die Welt
Jan. 7, 2002
Part 1 of 3

(Translated by Otto Hinckelmann)

Her work, her relationship to Hitler, her diving project: Leni Riefenstahl speaks with Hilmar Hoffmann

When her new film is premiered in August, Leni Riefenstahl will have had the longest directing career in the history of film- and also the most controversial. In a conversation with the President of the Goethe Institute she takes stock.

As Leni Riefenstahl read Hilmar Hoffmann's lines about her and her films she must have recognized an adversary. In his book on National Socialist propaganda in films, And the Flag Leads to Eternity published in 1986, the former Frankfurt cultural commentator characterized her as the, "Fuehrer's standard-bearer in fascist films." In 1989, in his essay in the Fischer paperback, 111 Film Masterpieces, Hoffmann wrote: The formal aspects of her Triumph of the Will are a sufficient index of her National Socialist esthetic because "the geometrical forms in military drill presented as optical choreography mirror nothing less than the unity of the National Socialist state itself." Nevertheless, in the intervening years, the confrontation has been respectfully ended and now the President of the Goethe Institute and the 99 year old film-maker met for a relaxed conversation.
Die Welt

Hilmar Hoffmann: "Much admired and much maligned." Your long and productive life as an artist locates itself between these two extremes. Your educational and, at the same time, momentously controversial aesthetic has, to this day, split the art world into two camps. You took your first steps into the world of art in Mary Wigman's dance school. How long would you have remained true to this "most transitory of all the arts" (Wigman) had you not been forced to change your profession by an injury when you were 21?

Leni Riefenstahl: My answer is simple. With body and soul I would have preferred to remain a dancer. Of all the things I have done in my life as an artist, dance made me the happiest and fascinated me the most.

Hoffmann: From the depths of your dreams of dance you immediately stormed the heights of a permanent film career with your role in Arnold Fanck's mountain film, Der Heilige Berg (1926) [The Holy Mountain]. You were soon driven even further: You wanted to create the content and the aesthetic structure yourself. You achieved this quite brilliantly, even from today's perspective, with your directorial debut in Das Blaue Licht (1932) [The Blue Light]. May we presume here a belated analogy to Thomas Mann's homage to the high altitude world of the Alps with which he conjured up "the experience of eternity as a metaphysical dream," "elementary in the sense of non-human magnificence?"

Riefenstahl: I have to say, no, I haven't read those lines yet.

Hoffmann: Even before Hitler became Chancellor, you were able to fulfill your dream of getting to know the man personally. During a walk along the North Sea you were both immersed in a conversation with far-reaching consequences. What was it about this man that fascinated you, even before he made his bid for power.

Riefenstahl: I experienced Hitler for the first time in 1932 in the Berlin Sports Palace. It was also the first political meeting that I ever went to. I was amazed to see the tremendous hypnotic power Hitler exercised over his audience, like a hypnotist who charmed everyone and held them spellbound. It was uncanny and the spark jumped over to me too. It was this strange exciting radiance that came not only from him, but also from the speaker-audience connection. I was all churned up inside, in fact very churned up, without giving much thought to the content. I asked myself, what kind of man is it that can achieve such an effect, what is he really like? He made me curious to find out more about him, and I got the idea to get to know him personally. With great naiveté I sent a letter to the Brown House [Nazi Party headquarters] in Munich requesting a talk with him. I wanted to draw my own conclusions about how much is show, how much is play-acting, and how much is reality. But I never expected that they would even deign to reply and yet the answer came quickly.

Hoffmann: Why did the answer come faster than expected?

Riefenstahl: I owe that to a coincidence. As his Adjutant, Brueckner, handed him the mail, Hitler was taken completely by surprise by my letter because just two days previously he had mentioned to his Adjutant, in this North Sea village, that the most beautiful thing that he had ever seen was the dancing of Leni Riefenstahl in the film, Der Heilige Berg.

Hoffmann: Would you consider it as fateful that in this dialog with Hitler on the North Sea coast that Hitler would admire you as a self-confident woman and praise your Dance on the Ocean in Der Heilige Berg as "the most beautiful" that he ever saw?

Riefenstahl: That's the way it was. Das Blaue Licht must have impressed him, also because it had been made by a woman. He said that to me personally.

Hoffmann: Still, his compliment culminated in the promise that, as soon as he became Chancellor, you would make his films.

Riefenstahl: Yes, in that conversation, to my great surprise, he said that. Whereupon, completely taken aback, I said, "No, my Fuehrer, I can't do that, I can only do what I am innerly motivated to do, what I long for. I can't make films on assignment." That was my answer. Because I reacted somewhat negatively, he said that after I was maturer and older I would perhaps understand his ideas better.