Column.Hitler and Pedro Sánchez, by plane
Obituary: The Aestheticization of Nazism
There is
a text of
Susan Sontag
, published in 1975 in
The New York Review of Books
, entitled
Fascinating Fascism
(
Fascinating Fascism
).
In it, the Jewish writer spoke of the filmmaker Leni Riefenstahl on the occasion of the publication of her photo book
The Last of the Nuba
.
And what he was saying opened a rift around the usual account of
Riefenstahl
, who until then had presented herself as an innocent artist dragged by the machinery of Nazism.
His two most important films,
The Triumph of the Will
(1935) and
Olympia
(1938), were two propaganda vehicles of the Third Reich about the congress of the National Socialist party in Nuremberg in 1934 and the Berlin Olympic Games in 1936.
Hitler's personal friend,
Riefenstahl always defended that she was a mere "traveling companion" of the Nazis and that she did not participate, directly or indirectly, in the atrocities committed by them.
His denazification process was hardly a walk and until the end of his 101 years of life he continued working and shooting movies.
The book reviewed by Sontag, on the Nuba peoples of Sudan, was one of the arguments used by Riefenstahl to show that he was not racist.
However, an investigation by fellow director
Nina Gladitz
questions this argument.
Influenced by Catalan nationalism
In 1938 Riefenstahl began filming
Tiefland
, an adaptation of Eugen d'Albert's opera based on the play
Tierra Baja
, by the writer
Ángel Guimerá, one of the key figures in the nationalist Renaixença or "renaissance" of Catalan literature
.
Anticipating the use of non-professional actors that Pasolini would later perfect, the director used gypsies held in the Maxglan camp in Austria as extras, which had just been annexed by the 'Anschluss'.
Riefenstahl always defended that he had treated them humanely and that participating in the film had meant their salvation, since "after the war I had seen them all again".
Gladitz found the survivors of the shoot, who denied what the
Olympia
director claimed
.
With her testimonies she made a documentary in 1982. Riefenstahl sued her for it, although the court's opinion agreed with Gladitz in 75% of the points of the lawsuit.
This attitude was quite common in post-WWII Riefenstahl.
In 2000, three years before his death, Riefenstahl presented his book
Fünf Leben
(Five Lives) at the Frankfurt Book Fair.
They asked him again if he collaborated in the murder of the
Tiefland
gypsies
.
The 98-year-old filmmaker was firm again:
"I could kill the people who spread these lies."
But new data sheds light on the matter.
First, through a documentary by the German Michael Kloft, based on Gladitz's research.
And, above all, through a book by her,
Leni Riefenstahl.
Karriere einer Täterin
(Career of a perpetrator), published in Zurich by the Orell Füssli publishing house.
According to this investigation,
40 of the 53 Gypsies from the Maxglan camp who participated in
Tiefland
were killed in the gas chambers of Auschwitz.
In addition, he used several of the gypsy extras in his personal entourage during the making of the film, which was financed by the Reich.
Hitler himself came to contribute some six million marks.
It is not the only revelation hidden under that "fascination", according to Sontag's expression, which was always awakened by Riefenstahl, a woman with a captivating physique who began as a dancer and actress naked in productions of cabaret and liberal Germany of the Weimar Republic.
Kloft and Gladitz also rescue the story of
Willy Zielke
, filmmaker and cameraman of
The Triumph of the Will
and
Olympia,
whom Riefenstahl dragged into a spiral of madness.
Against his will, he was admitted to a sanatorium, a circumstance allegedly encouraged by the director, who then took advantage of the opportunity to take several snapshots that Zielke took as
Olympia's
still photo manager
.
Furthermore, according to Nazi eugenics laws, the cameraman was subjected to
forced sterilization
, after which Riefenstahl disposed of him at will for
Tiefland
, complains Gladitz.
According to the criteria of The Trust Project
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