Dietrich & Riefenstahl: Hollywood, Berlin, and a Century in Two Lives

by Wieland, Karin

  When she turned one hundred, she completed her first film in forty-eight years. Impressions of the Deep is a colorful, psychedelic film in which fish dance to synthesizer music composed by Luis Trenker’s nephew, Giorgio Moroder. With this film she wanted to show the beauty that mankind stood to lose if nothing was done to stop the pollution of the oceans, and to make a political declaration: “I was never in the Nazi party, and do not feel an attachment to Nazi ideology. The only organization I belong to is Greenpeace.”15 When a judicial inquiry was initiated against her once more on charges of sedition and denigrating the memory of the dead, she was too tired to go to court again. For the first time, she was acknowledging that she had become more placid and forbearing in her old age. She submitted a declaration of intent to cease and desist, pledging to stop claiming that she had later seen all the people from the camp she had used as extras alive again. The fight had gone out of her. More and more frequently, she spoke of her longing for death. On the occasion of her hundredth birthday in August 2002, she gathered up all her strength and, surrounded by her friends, she held court in a shimmering dress with high slits up the sides and a plunging neckline.

  In March 2003, Riefenstahl went diving with Kettner in the Maldives and Kenya. After another difficult operation in May, she retired to Lake Starnberg. She spent most of her days in bed, but when it came time for interviews, she primped for the occasion. On August 22, she turned 101. Fourteen days later, she died in her house in Pöcking. Kettner was with Riefenstahl on September 8, 2003, when her heart simply stopped beating.

  Death had released her from art.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Without Jan Philipp Reemtsma, this book would not have been written. Over the course of five years, he supported my work through his Hamburg Foundation to Promote Scholarship and the Arts and spurred me on as the first reader of this text. I am so grateful to him.

  Thank you to Tobias Heyl, my editor at Carl Hanser Verlag, for pruning a manuscript that contained at least three additional books. I would also like to give special thanks to Friederike Barakat for establishing the transatlantic contact.

  John Borneman, of Princeton University, is my “American friend” whose hermeneutic distance sheds fresh perspectives on my own country time and again and makes me admire the dauntless nature of Americans.

  I am grateful to Bob Weil, editor in chief and publishing director at Liveright, for so quickly recognizing that the dissonance between the two women in this book goes to the heart of twentieth-century history, and to my Liveright editor, Katie Adams, whose enthusiasm and professional dedication have encouraged and supported me. Thanks to Cordelia Calvert for her meticulous attention to detail.

  My greatest thanks go to my translator, Shelley Frisch, for providing a fresh reading of my book. It was a fascinating experience to watch her transform the book into a new one. Working with Shelley was a great intellectual and personal pleasure, and I have come to realize that translation is far more than transferring a text from one language to another; it is a process of creation.

  NOTES

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  List of Abbreviations

  AdK

  Akademie der Künste, Berlin

  BA

  Bundesarchiv Berlin

  BDC

  Berlin Document Center

  BFAB

  Bundesarchiv—Filmarchiv Berlin

  DTK

  Deutsches Tanzarchiv Köln

  DLA

  Deutsches Literaturarchiv Marbach

  MDCB

  Filmmuseum Berlin—Marlene Dietrich Collection

  SAdK

  StiftungArchiv Akademie der Künste, Berlin

  SdK

  Stiftung Deutsche Kinemathek Berlin

  SdK NLA

  Stiftung Deutsche Kinemathek Nachlassarchiv

  SdK SGA

  Stiftung Deutsche Kinemathek Schriftgutarchiv

  I Youth (1901–1923)

  The Streets of Berlin

  1 Hildegard Knef, The Gift Horse, trans. David Anthony Palastanga (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1971), p. 1.

  2 The gray composition books in which Elisabeth Will kept her notes are housed in the MDCB.

  3 Peter Bahl, “Marlene Dietrich—Herkunft und Verwandtschaft, Teil 1,” in Herold-Jahrbuch, new series, vol. 6 (2001): 9–94.

  4 Marlene Dietrich, quoted in Maria Riva, Marlene Dietrich (New York: Knopf, 1992), p. 785.

  5 Leni Riefenstahl, Memoiren (Munich: Albrecht Knaus, 1987), p. 21.

  6 Ibid., p. 15.

  Body, Art, and War

  1 Joseph Roth, “Literarischer Wedding” in Freie Deutsche Buehne, March 3, 1921; reprinted in Reinhardt Tgahrt, Dichter lesen, vol. 3 (Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta, 1995), p. 248ff.

  2 Leni Riefenstahl, Memoiren (Munich: Albrecht Knaus, 1987), p. 23.

  3 Ibid., p. 27.

  4 In the Cologne dance archives, there are playbills for performances by the Helen-Grimm-Reiter-Schule. For promotional purposes, the names of well-known pupils were also listed here. Leni Riefenstahl’s name is not on any of the playbills.

  5 Theodor Fontane portrayed a Berlin society lady seeking rest and relaxation in the Harz Mountains in his novel Cécile, which was published in 1884.

  6 Peter von Matt, Verkommene Söhne, missratene Töchter. Familiendesaster in der Literatur (Munich: dtv, 1995), p. 69.

  7 Prominent Wandervogel members included Martin Heidegger, Walter Benjamin, Ernst Jünger, Hermann Hesse, Gottfried Benn, and Martin Buber.

  8 Robert Musil, The Man Without Qualities. Vol. 1: A Sort of Introduction the Like of It Now Happens, trans. Eithne Wilkins and Ernst Kaiser (New York: Capricorn Books, 1965), p. 60.

  9 “In Berlin, an outdated tradition succumbed to the necessary process of destruction in order to open up the possibility of the birth of a new age. This was a new feeling, one that I had not known before.” Maria Ley Piscator, Der Tanz im Spiegel. Mein Leben mit Erwin Piscator (Reinbek: Rowohlt, 1989), p. 77f.

  10 Isadora Duncan was born in San Francisco in 1878. In the 1910s, she became world famous, danced in Paris, and choreographed in Bayreuth. This barefoot dancer from the New World soon grew too old and too heavy. By the 1920s, her art was passé. In September 1927, she died in Nice during a joyride with one of her gigolos when her scarf got caught in the open-spoked wheels of the Bugatti and broke her neck.

  11 Mary Wigman, “The Dance and the Modern Woman,” n.d., SAdK, Berlin, estate of Mary Wigman.

  12 Heinz-Gerhard Haupt, Die radikale Mitte. Lebensweise und Politik von Handwerkern und Kleinhändlern in Deutschland seit 1848 (Munich: dtv, 1985), p. 110.

  13 Riefenstahl, Memoiren, p. 43.

  14 “The French author of one article, entitled ‘Berlin Amuses Itself,’ noted with disbelief that even the invitation to a memorial service for the murdered Sparticist leader Karl Liebknecht stated that there would be dancing [‘On dansera’].” Wolfgang Schivelbusch, The Culture of Defeat: On National Trauma, Mourning, and Recovery, trans. Jefferson Chase (New York: Metropolitan Books, 2003), p. 167.

  15 Thomas Nipperdey, Wie das Bürgertum die Moderne erfand (Berlin: Siedler Verlag, 1988), p. 84.

  16 Mary Wigman, Rudolf von Labans Lehre vom Tanz. Manuscript written in the summer of 1920. SAdK, Berlin, Estate of Mary Wigman.

  17 When the school first opened on September 1, 1920, there were seven girls enrolled; seven years later, the number had swelled to three hundred sixty.

  18 Mary Wigman was the lover of the psychiatrist Hans Prinzhorn, who amassed the famous Prinzhorn collection in Heidelberg, and of the psychiatrist Herbert Binswanger, whose uncle, the psychiatrist Otto Binswanger, had treated Friedrich Nietzsche in Jena.

  19 Vicki Baum, Es war alles ganz anders. Erinnerungen (Stuttgart: Deutscher Bücherbund, 1987), p. 320.

  20 Riefenstahl, Memoiren, p. 59.

  21 Ibid., p. 60.

  22 Fred Hildebrandt, Die Tänzerin Valeska Gert (Stuttgart: Hädecke, 1928), p. 99.

  23 Se
bastian Haffner, Defying Hitler: A Memoir, trans. Oliver Pretzel (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2002), pp. 52, 56.

  24 Robert Musil called Froitzheim “a genius of boredom” in his essay, “Randglossen zu Tennisplätzen,” in Robert Musil, Tagebücher, Aphorismen, Essays und Reden (Hamburg: Rowohlt, 1955), pp. 828–30; this passage appears on p. 828.

  25 Riefenstahl, Memoiren, p. 50.

  26 Harry R. Sokal “Lebt wohl, Leidenschaften! Erinnerungen eines Filmproduzenten.” Unpublished manuscript, p. 43. SdK NLA, Berlin.

  27 Ibid, p. 52.

  28 Marlene Dietrich, Ich bin, Gott sei Dank, Berlinerin (Frankfurt: Ullstein, 1987), p. 31.

  29 Ibid., p. 26.

  30 Ibid., p. 34.

  31 Ibid., p. 15.

  32 See Klaus Saul, “Jugend im Schatten des Krieges,” in Militärgeschichtliche Mitteilungen 34, no. 2 (1983): 91–184, esp. 112.

  33 Dietrich, Ich bin, Gott sei Dank, Berlinerin, p. 20.

  34 Detlev Peukert, The Weimar Republic: The Crisis of Classical Modernity, trans. Richard Deveson (New York: New York: Hill & Wang, 1992), pp. 14–18.

  35 Haffner, Defying Hitler, p. 12.

  36 Dietrich, Ich bin, Gott sei Dank, Berlinerin, p. 25.

  37 Ibid., p. 38.

  38 Ibid., p. 31.

  39 Ibid., p. 28.

  40 Ibid., p. 40.

  41 Ibid., p. 35.

  42 Ibid., p. 29.

  43 Ibid., p. 27.

  44 Ibid., p. 20.

  45 Ibid., p. 41.

  46 Maria Riva, Marlene Dietrich (New York: Knopf, 1992), p. 33.

  47 Dietrich, Ich bin, Gott sei Dank, Berlinerin, p. 40.

  48 “Surprising as it may seem, I took my father’s place—against my mother’s will.” Ibid., p. 59.

  49 Riva, Marlene Dietrich, p. 36.

  50 Robert Musil, Precision and Soul: Essays and Addresses, trans. Burton Pike and David S. Luft (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1995), p. 213.

  51 Dietrich, Ich bin, Gott sei Dank, Berlinerin, p. 53.

  52 Ibid., p. 53.

  53 Ibid., p. 56.

  54 Julius Levin’s papers are housed in the DLA Marbach.

  II Carving Out a Career (1923–1932)

  Early Sorrow

  1 Sebastian Haffner, Defying Hitler: A Memoir, trans. Oliver Pretzel (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2002), p. 61.

  2 Elias Canetti, Crowds and Power, trans. Carol Stewart (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1984), p. 187.

  3 Thomas Mann, “Disorder and Early Sorrow,” in Stories of Three Decades, trans. H. T. Lowe-Porter (New York, Alfred A. Knopf, 1936), p. 502.

  4 Stefan Zweig, The World of Yesterday, trans. Anthea Bell (Lincoln: Univ. of Nebraska, 2013), p. 313.

  5 Marlene Dietrich, Ich bin, Gott sei Dank, Berlinerin (Frankfurt: Ullstein, 1987), p. 59.

  6 The following remarks owe a great debt to the work of Professor Dr. Gerhard Ebert, who wrote up a chronicle of the acting school (now known as the Schauspielschule Ernst Busch) on the occasion of its hundredth anniversary: www.Berliner-schauspielschule.de.

  7 Dietrich, Ich bin, Gott sei Dank, Berlinerin, p. 66.

  8 Ibid., p. 61

  9 Ibid., p. 62.

  10 Ibid., p. 66.

  11 Bernhard Minetti, in Klaus Völker, Bernhard Minetti. “Meine Existenz ist mein Theaterleben” (Berlin: Propyläen Verlag, 2004), p. 34.

  12 Gusti Adler, . . . aber vergessen Sie nicht die chinesischen Nachtigallen. Erinnerungen an Max Reinhardt (Munich: Langen Müller Verlag, 1980), p. 87.

  13 Kurt Pinthus, quoted in Otto Schneidereit, Fritzi Massary. Versuch eines Porträts (Berlin: VEB Lied der Zeit, 1970), p. 82.

  14 Herbert Ihering, “Publikum und Bühnenwirkung” in Der Kampf ums Theater und andere Streitschriften 1918 bis 1933 (Berlin: Henschelverlag Kunst und Gesellschaft, 1974), pp. 220–24.

  15 Dietrich, p. 67.

  16 Ibid.

  17 Ibid., p. 68.

  18 See Guido Thielscher, Erinnerungen eines alten Komödianten (Berlin: Landsmann Verlag, 1938).

  19 Joseph Roth, “Die ‘Girls,’ ” in Frankfurter Zeitung, April 28, 1925; reprinted in Joseph Roth, Werke 2, Das journalistische Werk 1924–1928, ed. Klaus Westermann (Frankfurt: Kiepenheuer & Witsch, 1989), pp. 393–94; this passage is on p. 393.

  20 Hubert von Meyerinck, Meine berühmten Freundinnen. Erinnerungen (Düsseldorf: Econ-Verlag, 1967), p. 218f.

  21 Dietrich, Ich bin, Gott sei Dank, Berlinerin, p. 62.

  22 Rudolf Sieber in a letter to the regional authorities in Prague dated November 30, 1933, MDCB.

  23 I am grateful to Silke Ronneburg at the MDCB for this information.

  24 Dietrich, Ich bin, Gott sei Dank, Berlinerin, p. 69.

  25 Emil Orlik (1870–1932), a painter and graphic artist, was a professor at the Staatliche Lehranstalt des Kunstgewerbemuseums in Berlin.

  26 Bodo Niemann, “Orlik als Fotograf” in Emil Orlik and Eugen Otto, Emil Orlik. Leben und Werk 1870–1932. Prag. Wien. Berlin (Vienna: Brandstätter, 1997), pp. 59–64.

  27 Peter Panter (aka Kurt Tucholsky), “Tragödie der Liebe,” Weltbühne, no. 43, Oct. 25, 1923.

  28 “The flood of historical films that swamped the German cinema from 1919 to 1923–24—usually designated, rather significantly, by the term Kostümfilme—was an expression of the escapism of a poverty-stricken, disappointed nation which, moreover, had always been fond of the glitter of parades.” Lotte H. Eisner, The Haunted Screen, trans. Roger Greaves (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1973), p. 75.

  29 Newspaper clipping, no publication details, MDCB.

  30 The second Korda movie in which Dietrich acted was A Modern Dubarry; she played a cocotte alongside Maria Corda and Hans Albers.

  31 Lichtbild-Bühne, Dec. 15, 1926, SdK SGA, Berlin.

  32 Louise Brooks, Lulu in Hollywood (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2000), p. 96.

  33 Maria Riva, Marlene Dietrich (New York: Knopf, 1992), p. 54.

  34 Felix Salten in Neue Freie Presse Wien, November 26, 1927, MDCB.

  35 The letters from Willi Forst to Marlene Dietrich are housed at the MDCB.

  36 Margo Lion, born in 1899 in Constantinople to French parents, enjoyed success as a cabarettist in Berlin in the 1920s. In 1933 she went to Paris and made a name for herself as a Brecht performer. She died in Paris in 1989.

  37 For a good overview of the world of Schiffer and his fellow artists, see Viktor Rotthaler, ed., Marcellus Schiffer: Heute nacht oder nie. Tagebücher, Erzählungen, Gedichte, Zeichnungen (Bonn: Weidle Verlag, 2003).

  38 “In the German-speaking world the imago of the twenties is probably not so strongly marked by the intellectual movements of the period. Expressionism and the new music at the time probably found far less resonance than do the radical aesthetic tendencies of today. It was rather an imagistic world of erotic fantasy, and was nourished by theatrical works that at the time stood for the spirit of the age and that today still easily pass for the same, even though their composition does not have anything especially avant-garde about it. The Songspiele that Brecht and Weill composed together, The Threepenny Opera and Mahagonny, and Ernst Krenek’s Jonny are representative of this sphere. The subsequent discontent with civilization’s progressive desexualizing of the world, which at the same time paradoxically keeps pace with the lifting of taboos, transfers onto the twenties romantic desires for sexual anarchy, the red light district and the wide open city. There is something immeasurably mendacious in all this.” Theodor W. Adorno, “Those Twenties,” in Critical Models: Interventions and Catchwords, trans. Henry W. Pickford (New York: Columbia University Press, 2005), pp. 41–48; this passage is on p. 42.

  39 Film-Kurier, May 19, 1928, Berlin, SAdK, Berlin, Nachlass Marcellus Schiffer.

  40 Oscar Bie, “Es liegt in der Luft,” in Berliner Börsen-Courier, May 16, 1928.

  41 Hubert von Meyerinck, Meine berühmten Freundinnen. Erinnerungen (Düsseldorf: Econ-Verlag, 1967), p. 109.

  42 Erich Kästner, “Das
Rendezvous der Künstler,” in Neue Leipziger Zeitung, April 26, 1928.

  43 Tamara Matul was born in Moscow on September 30, 1905. She evidently came to Berlin with her parents and brother while she was still a child, and worked as a dancer and stage extra.

  44 Roth explained: “There is something fragmentary about its history. Its frequently interrupted, still more frequently diverted or averted development has been checked and advanced, and by unconscious mistakes as well as by bad intentions; the many obstacles in its path have, it would seem, helped it to grow. The wickedness, sheer cluelessness, and avarice of its rulers, builders, and protectors draw up the plans, muddle them up again, and confusedly put them into practice.” Joseph Roth, “Stone Berlin,” in What I Saw: Reports from Berlin 1920–1933, trans. Michael Hofmann (New York: W. W. Norton, 2003), entry dated July 5, pp. 125–28; this passage is on p. 125.

  45 Riva, Marlene Dietrich, p. 56.

  46 See, for example, Illustrierte Film-Zeitung, February 28, 1929, MDCB.

  47 Leni Riefenstahl, Kampf in Schnee und Eis (Leipzig: Hesse & Becker, 1933), p. 9.

  48 Information from Hans Rübesame, archivist at the Deutsches Theater, Berlin.

  49 “What the public, and particularly the revivalist vogue, nowadays thinks belonged to the nineteen-twenties was in fact already fading at that time, by 1924 at the latest. The heroic age of the new art was actually around 1910: synthetic cubism, early German expressionism, the free atonalism of Schönberg and his school. . . . It was not, as is usually assumed, the pressure exerted by the National Socialist terror that brought regression, neutralization, and a funereal silence to the arts, for these phenomena had already taken shape in the Weimar Republic, and in liberal continental European society generally.” Adorno, “Those Twenties,” in Critical Models, p. 41.