In Kitzbühel, Riefenstahl was safe from air raids but she was plagued by severe abdominal pain, and her two visits to Dr. Morell in Salzburg brought no relief. She also suffered from heartache. During the filming she had met Peter Jacob, who was acting as a stand-in for Bernhard Minetti in a riding scene. Jacob was a first lieutenant with the mountain infantry, and had been awarded the Iron Cross in the French campaign. He was spending his vacation in Mittenwald when the two of them met in 1940. Jacob was seven years younger than Riefenstahl, a dashing daredevil well-versed in war and love. “Never had I known such passion, never had I been loved like this. This experience was so profound that it changed my life.”38 Jacob surprised her with his visits, humiliated her with his infidelity, and made her roller coaster between the depths of unhappiness and the heights of bliss. Riefenstahl had no peace of mind. She feared for his safety and went crazy with jealousy. She kept wondering whether he would survive the war. She was constantly tormented by the idea that he was cheating on her. When they were together, their happiness was short-lived.
On March 21, 1944, Riefenstahl married Jacob in Kitzbühel. This wartime marriage was ill-fated. Jacob was her Achilles. Her descriptions of their love sound as though she was playing the role of Penthesilea in real life, complete with the war as well as the love. Riefenstahl was a very famous woman known for her stern assertiveness. Jacob, by contrast, was one of the many officers who enjoyed passing the time between his deployments with beautiful women in fine hotels. Riefenstahl was barely recognizable in her weakness and vulnerability. Jacob defeated and wounded her. Even so, she loved him and believed that he belonged to her alone. Riefenstahl seemed to be losing her identity as she desperately clung to the idea of a future with Jacob now that a future with Hitler was no longer possible. Riefenstahl was ravaged by physical and emotional suffering, but she kept crawling back to Jacob. She proudly bore his name, and called herself Leni Riefenstahl-Jacob.
On June 6, 1944, the Allies landed in Normandy, and on August 25, Paris was retaken by the Allied troops. Even in the summer of 1944, a period that was marked by military catastrophes for the Germans, Riefenstahl was able to continue her work on Lowlands. Everyone scrambled to comply with her wishes. If it looked as though one of her demands could not be met, her crew would mention that Riefenstahl would bring up the subject with Bormann or Julius Schaub, Hitler’s chief aide, and she got what she wanted.
On August 7, Hans Hinkel received an inquiry as to whether the Riefenstahl film ought to be “combed through”—that is, examined for men and objects that would be fit for use in combat. He sent a handwritten reply: “yes (in a nice way).”39 For the fearsome Hinkel, that was a remarkably friendly directive, one that suggests he had been instructed to handle Riefenstahl with kid gloves. On August 11, Hinkel, whom Goebbels had appointed Reich Commissioner for Total Military Service, wrote a letter to Riefenstahl explaining that in his new capacity, he had to ensure that objects and people were being properly economized, and asked her to send him a list of her employees at her earliest convenience. Ten days later, she complied with his request, indicating that she could not do without most of her twenty crew members. As Minetti flippantly remarked, not even a cable carrier was deemed dispensable in this film. This self-serving gesture also saved her crew from having to join the military.
In the case of one cameraman, Willy Zielke, Riefenstahl had no interest in shielding him from military service. The relationship between these two is hard to fathom. According to one version, Zielke had fallen in love with Riefenstahl and later sought to take revenge on her by revealing her wheelings and dealings. Another version has Riefenstahl turning on the charm with Zielke to win him over as a member of her crew. This latter version is supported by the fact that she sold and published many of his photographs under her own name. There is no doubt that she had more to gain from their association than he did. In Zielke’s account of the events, she recognized his artistic potential immediately after seeing The Steel Animal and took advantage of his skills by bringing him on board and having him work for her. In May 1936, he signed a contract to work on Olympia and filmed the prologue at the Curonian Spit. After he submitted his footage and received his fee, he was taken into custody and brought to an asylum in Haar, on the outskirts of Munich, where he underwent forced sterilization.40 His wife, Ilse, stated that Zielke’s guardian claimed that Riefenstahl was granted all decision-making authority over his future. Riefenstahl insisted that she went to great lengths to get Zielke out of the institution and agreed to assume personal responsibility for him.41 She conveniently ignored the issue of his forced sterilization. Zielke claimed that after his release, Riefenstahl invited him to Haus Seebichl, when she needed a cameraman for Lowlands. Despite the food shortage, there was always plenty of good food on hand at Riefenstahl’s house. In her library, he discovered American illustrated books in which his photographs were published under her name. Riefenstahl also had a copy of The Steel Animal. He was afraid of this woman and her power. Ilse Zielke, who had followed her husband to Kitzbühel, confirmed these details in a letter to Riefenstahl’s publisher in April 1988.42 In a personal discussion between the two women, Riefenstahl insisted that Zielke was ill, and she had brought him into the project and asked him to work on her film purely out of pity because “people like that are often the ones who have a great imagination and some of that can be used.”43 At that moment, Ilse realized that Riefenstahl intended to use her husband to inspire her own artistic imagination. Because he was classified as insane, he did not have to be listed in the credits. Willy Zielke stood no chance of emerging as a threatening competitor.
One month before the end of the war—on April 8, 1945—Riefenstahl sent a telegram to the Reich Cultural Chamber in Berlin asking to be informed when Minetti, whom she had asked to come to Kitzbühel five days earlier, had left. The world was going up in flames, and all she could think of was Lowlands. Riefenstahl and many of her biographers have regarded this single-minded focus as a flight from the terrifying reality.44 That may have been true to an extent, but the major driving force behind her actions lay elsewhere: Once Hitler was no longer in power, she would have to go back to hawking her projects to the industry. She could not imagine having to watch her costs in shooting a film. Riefenstahl tried to get whatever she could, right down to the last day.
She had lost the battle for her last feature film. In spite of all her efforts and all the generous support, Lowlands was a stillbirth. Minetti matter-of-factly pointed to the reason: Riefenstahl had the audacity to act even though she was not an actress. Behind the camera she was energetic and spirited, but on film she seemed tense and uncertain.
In the final months of the war, Riefenstahl and Albert Speer closed ranks. They did not dare to think in terms of defeat and seemed intent on reassuring each other that everything would be all right. “I would be so happy to see you again; why not come here for a little relaxation,” she wrote to him. “A cute little attic room is always waiting for you.”45 Riefenstahl figured she would worry about curing her illness once peacetime had arrived. “An eerie creative urge is living inside me. No matter how many great and beautiful works of art I have yet to create—they are all dormant within me, waiting for the right time. Soon the great turning point in this war will be coming; I feel it.” She was probably imagining that the latest weaponry would bring the war to a quick end.
On July 20, 1944, the day on which Claus Schenck Graf von Stauffenberg tried to kill Hitler, Riefenstahl was at her father’s grave in Berlin. Alfred Riefenstahl had died of heart failure at the age of sixty-six. He had worked in the company he founded until his death. Since the beginning of the war, hundreds of thousands of Poles were in Germany as forced laborers. As the shortage of manpower continued to increase, the National Socialists brought Soviet prisoners of war to Germany as forced laborers. Beginning in 1942, they were subject to Ostarbeitererlasse (decrees on Eastern workers), which confined them to locked, fenced-in settlements and affirmed the racial superiorit
y of the German workers. In February 1943, Riefenstahl’s company had 115 Germans and 84 foreigners on the payroll. Thanks to the outstanding connections Leni Riefenstahl had maintained to Albert Speer, the Reich minister of armaments and war production, her father’s company had secured assignments of strategic importance for the war effort. To a lesser extent, the company worked on projects involving heating for industrial purposes. “Most of the assignments entailed heating and sanitary provisions for living areas, mostly barracks for foreigners. . . . There is no denying that this business is important for the war.” The report quoted here reflects the state of the company’s assignments as of February 1943, with sales amounting to 1.4 million reichsmarks.46 This report, dated February 22, 1943, was issued at the request of the military registration office in Wilmersdorf. Heinz Riefenstahl, chief engineer and technical director of the company, would be drafted unless there were compelling economic grounds to exempt him from military service. As a plant manager, he was classified as uk (unabkömmlich, indispensable) until February 1943. However, anonymous complaints about him had been trickling in for years. In early 1943 they grew more frequent, and once his explanations began to contradict one another, his uk status was rescinded.
Heinz was a good-looking man, and his sister loved him. In contrast to her, he had not been able to stand up to his father; he had become an engineer and taken over his father’s business. Together with the architect Eckart Muthesius, he had spent time in India and installed an air conditioner in a maharaja’s palace, and from then on he proudly called himself an air-conditioning specialist. That might sound intriguing and modern, but Heinz lived in the shadow of his sister. He enjoyed lavish living, charming women, and showing off with Leni. Of course he socialized with party members, and the Riefenstahl name opened every door to him. Heinz was a golden boy of National Socialist society. This father of two children was divorced in 1942, and was now enjoying his freedom to the hilt. It did not occur to him to act any differently in times of war, and he had no intention of cutting back on his glamorous lifestyle, which aroused envy. Espionage and intrigue were pervasive in National Socialist society, and brought about his denunciation. Complaints were filed about Heinz’s lax work day: he did not go to work in the morning until ten o’clock, then went home for lunch at two, took a nap, and did not come back to the office until four in the afternoon. One hour later, he called it a day. He liked to go to concerts conducted by Herbert von Karajan. He used his car for personal travel, which was explicitly prohibited. Even after the defeat in the Battle of Stalingrad, he threw loud parties. The language of his denunciators is studded with malice and hatred. In June 1943, Heinz was recruited for basic training. During the following months, his father made several attempts to get home leave for his son. The grounds cited were bomb damage; Heinz’s key position as the chief engineer at the company, which was imperative for the war effort; and Alfred Riefenstahl’s cardiac ailments. On May 12, 1944, Leni wrote to Speer on this matter. “Dear Mr. Speer, I am asking for your advice and assistance as to how I can help my brother, who has been serving as a soldier on the Eastern Front for a year, and now finds himself in an unbearable situation as a result of anonymous defamations.” As a soldier, he was “treated disgracefully, through no fault of his own, apparently for the sole reason that he is my brother and bears my name.”47 She believed, both before and after 1945, that she and Heinz had been treated badly on purpose. Heinz was sent to the front even though he was already thirty-eight years old. Leni was convinced that her brother was suffering from a “curse.”
The Riefenstahl siblings were well-known throughout Berlin. Leni considered her brother one of her closest friends. She had always tried to smooth his way for him so he would not have to worry. Heinz was a profiteer of the war. His war contracts and the many forced laborers made it possible for him to live in high style. He seemed to think that he was entitled to this life. In the end, neither his sister’s influence nor his father’s letters were enough to save him. Heinz was killed in Russia. The news of his death reached his sister in Kitzbühel after her return from her father’s funeral. With the death of her brother, the war had closed in on Leni Riefenstahl after all.
THE
SOLDIER
When the German troops invaded Poland, Marlene Dietrich was preparing to play an American in the Californian desert. In September 1939, shooting began for the Western Destry Rides Again. Dietrich finished out the 1930s as she had begun the decade: as a cheap nightclub singer, but this time in an American town rather than a German one. Because she desperately needed money and work, she had accepted Pasternak’s offer. She no longer had much to lose, and this role was essentially no different from the ones she had always played: a wanton woman with a heart of gold. Her old friend from Berlin, Friedrich Hollaender, wrote her songs together with Frank Loesser, and Pasternak chose Jimmy Stewart to play opposite her. Stewart, who was several years younger than Dietrich, was considered the epitome of the boring, stodgy American. Next to her, he came across as naïve and conventional. In a reversal of the Western cliché, Pasternak wanted to give the male lead feminine attributes, and the female lead masculine attributes. Dietrich plays Frenchy, a saloon singer who helps Kent, the owner of the saloon, rig poker games. When the sheriff wants to put a stop to the con games, he is shot by Kent and his cronies. The town drunk is appointed the new sheriff, but to everyone’s surprise, he takes his job seriously and brings in the son of a friend to help him out. That friend is Tom Destry, played by Stewart. Destry does not carry a weapon, and he earns scorn and ridicule. In the end, he does have to shoot in order to defend himself against Kent. Frenchy, who has come to warn Destry, is killed in the crossfire. This was an American-style love story of a girl sacrificing herself for the hero, with Frenchy as the indisputable focal point of the saloon and Dietrich the star of the film. She keeps the boys on their toes with her sayings and songs, belting out “The Boys in the Back Room” while gamboling along the counter, as the whole saloon roars with pleasure.
In none of her films does Dietrich put her body to more aggressive use than in this Western. In one famous scene, she gets into a fight with a jealous wife. Dietrich is said to have insisted on playing this scene herself. The two actresses scratch, bite, shriek, and scuffle on the floor until Destry pours a bucket of water over them. The American press raved about this scene. Dietrich had shed her European grandeur at long last. Frenchy’s clothing is quite simple: she wears low-cut, figure-hugging dresses with spaghetti straps. Underneath her skirts are several layers of delicate, pleated chiffon petticoats, which accentuate her every move. Dietrich rarely showed so much skin, and her upper arms are muscular. Her short, curly hair gives her face a sassy look. She is heavily made up and sways past the men with a coquettish smile on her lips. Although these men can confide in Frenchy, who is strong, self-confident, big-hearted, and willing to lend a sympathetic ear to all, she will never belong to any one of them; Frenchy belongs only to herself. A woman of this sort cannot survive, so she has to die at the end. The genre of the Western dictates that women are good, and only men can be evil. The saloon is the alluring alternative to the puritanical home front. The men are glad to escape the morally complex world of their wives. In saloons, everything is easy and carefree. Here they enjoy their drinking, gambling, singing, and fistfighting, and have fun with women like Frenchy. With Destry Rides Again, Dietrich had left the European setting.
She now had a passport and a movie to show that she was an American. Pasternak’s plan worked: Americans liked Destry Rides Again. The film is considered a classic Western. “Boys in the Backroom” became one of Dietrich’s most popular songs. In her old age, she recalled that it had been fun to make this movie, and her pleasure shows. She enjoyed working with Pasternak, who spread cheer to everyone.
Dietrich was in demand once again, although she could not help noticing that she had yet to achieve a major success. It was 1939, the year in which Gone With the Wind trumped every other movie. Perhaps it was some
consolation for Dietrich that her great rival, Greta Garbo, also lost out to Gone With the Wind. Garbo’s career suffered as well, and just as Dietrich had to fight her way back into the headlines, Garbo had to laugh to draw attention to herself.
In Dietrich’s next film, Seven Sinners, her acting seems wooden and lifeless, which might be attributable to the fact that she once again had to play a nightclub singer who falls in love with the wrong man. Echoes of von Sternberg films blend with scenes from the previous Western. The idea was to produce a box-office hit. Dietrich plays the singer Bijou Blanche, who is on tour in the South Pacific. Wherever she turns up, the men go crazy for her. She falls in love with Dan Brent, a handsome naval officer who is supposed to marry the governor’s daughter. Brent, played by John Wayne, prefers the less respectable woman, which lands him in trouble. When Bijou and Brent meet for the first time, Dietrich is slowly descending a staircase, dressed in her white naval uniform and singing a song (this scene recalls von Sternberg’s Blue Angel). When she is brought to the harbor in a rickshaw, Shanghai Lily comes to mind. In both movies, the events play out in a scintillating alien world, but the most exotic creature of all is Dietrich in her various guises. Brent visits her in her dressing room on a sultry night, the way Tom Brown visited Amy Jolly in Morocco. Bijou assures her officer that she will never desert him, but in the end she steps aside and leaves him to the respectable governor’s daughter. One of the sailors beats Bijou because he does not approve of her romantic entanglement with his boss. There was no surer sign that Dietrich was no longer the unapproachable woman who ruled her own destiny. The former femme fatale had hit bottom. She had to get beaten up by stupid sailors, and her only potential lovers were the ship’s tipsy doctors. Von Sternberg’s diva had become a floozy. The songs in this film are better than the film itself. The critics were hardly effusive, but a reasonable amount of praise was forthcoming.
Dietrich & Riefenstahl: Hollywood, Berlin, and a Century in Two Lives Page 35