Reappraising Riefenstahl‘s Triumph of the Will

Film Studies ◽  
2004 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 75-86 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alan Marcus
Keyword(s):  
Film History ◽  
Third Reich ◽  
The Third ◽  
The Will ◽  
The Third Reich ◽  
Leni Riefenstahl ◽  
The Way ◽  
Illustrated Book

Leni Riefenstahl was one of filmmakings most contentious directors. The power of her epic documentaries, Triumph of the Will (1935) and Olympia (1938), have cemented her place in film history. More criticism has been written about Riefenstahl than any other director, except perhaps Hitchcock and Welles. Publicity surrounding the publication of an illustrated book marking her centenary reawakened debates about Riefenstahl‘s career in film and her involvement with the Third Reich. In this article, I focus on one of the key films which emerged from that relationship, Triumph of the Will (Triumph des Willens), which I discussed at length in my interview with Riefenstahl. Her recollections were sharp and I was intrigued by some of her answers, not for what new insight they offered, but for how they reaffirmed how she wished others to interpret her films and motivations. In particular, I was interested in the way she considered Triumph of the Will to be a realistic portrayal of the Nazi‘s 1934 Nuremberg Rally and the events surrounding it, and her role as a filmmaker in shaping that representation.

Memory and the Cityscape: The German Architectural Debate about Postmodernism

1999 ◽  
Vol 17 (3) ◽  
pp. 71-84 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kathleen James-Chakraborty
Keyword(s):  
Personal Experience ◽  
Third Reich ◽  
Nazi Regime ◽  
National Community ◽  
The Third ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Future ◽  
The Third Reich ◽  
The Way ◽  
At Home

Few tools of Nazi propaganda were as potent or as permanent asarchitecture. At the instigation of Hitler, who had once aspired to bean architect, the Nazi regime placed unusual importance on thedesign of environments—whether cities, buildings, parade grounds, orhighways—that would glorify the Third Reich and express its dynamicrelationship to both the past and the future. Architecture and urbandesign were integral to the way the regime presented itself at homeand abroad. Newsreels supplemented direct personal experience ofmonumental buildings. Designed to last a thousand years, these edificesappeared to offer concrete testimony of the regime’s enduringcharacter. A more subtle integration of modern functions and vernacularforms, especially in suburban housing, suggested that technologicalprogress could coexist with an “organic” national communityrooted in a quasi-sacred understanding of the landscape.

The Public Secret

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert Eaglestone
Keyword(s):  
Subjective Experience ◽  
Third Reich ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Third ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
The Third Reich ◽  
The Way

The knowledge of the murder of the European Jews was a public secret in the Third Reich. What is a ‘public secret’? How does it shape or reshape a society? The answers to these questions are key to understanding the Holocaust and other genocides. However, the public secret is elusive because of its nature: when it is at its most powerful, it cannot be explicitly discussed; when it no longer holds such power, people deny their knowledge of it and complicity in its concealment. Both the ‘subjective experience’ of the public secret and its wider meaning are beyond the limits of the discipline of history and are better elucidated obliquely through a work of fiction: in this case Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go, a novel which reflects on the past in the way historians cannot. Significantly, the public secret and the consequences of complicity are important concepts for understanding the post-Holocaust world.

A Zookeeper’s Ecology

2020 ◽  
pp. 22-47
Author(s):  
Thomas M. Lekan
Keyword(s):  
Indigenous Peoples ◽  
Animal Behavior ◽  
Third Reich ◽  
Early Career ◽  
Public Image ◽  
The Third ◽  
In Captivity ◽  
The Third Reich ◽  
To Come ◽  
The Way

This chapter examines the early career of Bernhard Grzimek, who became the director of the Frankfurt Zoo in 1945 after serving as a veterinarian and agricultural minister for the Third Reich. Grzimek became famous for transforming the zoo from a bombed-out shell into one of Europe’s most successful zoological gardens by combining insights from ethology and ecology to help the animals thrive in captivity. Behind his carefully crafted public image as savior of animals, however, Grzimek revealed in memoirs and writings about animal behavior a much darker self, haunted by fears of extinction, eugenic decline, and wartime displacement that signaled an inability to come to terms with his and his country’s Nazi experience. Grzimek’s concern about the spread of Western “degeneracy” to Africa explains the urgency of his quest to save animals and their habitats there—and the indifference he often displayed toward local and indigenous peoples who stood in the way of his pursuit.

Destructive Villain or Gigantic Hero?

2019 ◽  
pp. 190-202
Author(s):  
Stefan Danter
Keyword(s):  
Third Reich ◽  
German Film ◽  
The Third ◽  
Mad Scientist ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Third Reich ◽  
The Way

In “Caligari,” reprinted from Siegfried Kracauer’s hugely influential monograph From Caligari to Hitler: A Psychological History of German Film, Kracauer details the history of The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, the German Expressionist masterpiece that established the cinematic template for the “mad scientist” character trope. In particular, Kracauer outlines the process by which “a revolutionary film was thus turned into a conformist one,” both presaging and helping to pave the way, in his estimation, for rise of the Third Reich.

scholarly journals ILLUSION AND REALITY OF STATEHOOD: THE SEARCH FOR PARALLELS BETWEEN THE LITHUANIAN ACTIVIST FRONT AND THE ORGANISATION OF UKRAINIAN NATIONALISTST

2017 ◽  
pp. 72-82
Author(s):  
S. Jazavita
Keyword(s):  
Present Article ◽  
Political Power ◽  
Third Reich ◽  
Important Lesson ◽  
The Third ◽  
Communist Ideology ◽  
The Will ◽  
The Third Reich ◽  
The Military ◽  
The Relationship

he present article analyses the relationship between the Lithuanian Activist Front and the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) and their activity parallels in order to reach the Lithuanian and the Ukrainian independence in 1941. The research focuses on the attempts of the OUN and the LAF leaders to project the future Lithuanian and Ukrainian states in the 'New Europe' headed by Germany. Reaching for counterbalance against the USSR and the Communist ideology, the LAF and the OUN organizations aimed at taking into consideration the military and political power of Germany, while Škirpa, the leader of the LAF, coordinated his activities with the OUN leaders, Stetsko, Yaryi, and Bandera. Fanatical chiefs of the Third Reich manipulated with the Lithuanians and Ukrainians' feelings of revenge against the Bolsheviks and the will to feel Europeans; however, they involved a part of Lithuanians and Ukrainians to the massacre of Jews rather than allowed to contribute to Wehrmacht fight against the USSR. Important lesson here that Lithuania and Ukraine did not obtain any independence but just became a part of the Third Reich, which controlled the so called 'New Europe' at the time.

Slovakia' Internal Policy and the Third Reich, August 1940–February 1941

1971 ◽  
Vol 4 (3) ◽  
pp. 242-270
Author(s):  
Yeshayahu Jelínek
Keyword(s):  
Third Reich ◽  
Southeastern Europe ◽  
German Occupation ◽  
The Third ◽  
General Line ◽  
Internal Policy ◽  
The Third Reich ◽  
The Way

The Slovak State was the first satellite of the Third Reich. It came into existence on March 14, 1939, preceding by one day the German occupation of Bohemia and Moravia. Berlin regarded independent Slovakia as die Visitenkarte Deutschlands almost from the beginning. Therefore the way the Nazis treated this tiny state could indicate their general line toward other clients in southeastern Europe, and perhaps also on the rest of the Continent.

Seeing Hitler's Germany: Tourism in the Third Reich. By Kristin Semmens. Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave Macmillan. 2005. Pp. xiv+263. $74.95. ISBN 1-4039-3914-4.

2006 ◽  
Vol 39 (2) ◽  
pp. 325-327
Author(s):  
Peter Fritzsche
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Great Depression ◽  
Third Reich ◽  
The Third ◽  
The Great Depression ◽  
Overnight Stay ◽  
Labor Service ◽  
The Third Reich ◽  
The Way ◽  
Hitler Youth

Between the two world wars, Germany was on the move. The slowdown of the Great Depression notwithstanding, more and more Germans took vacations and enjoyed weekend adventures, and when they traveled, they did so to destinations farther and farther away from home. Along the way, they filled up trains, hotels, and youth hostels. And it was very much Germany that Germans wanted to explore, following as they did quite explicit itineraries of the idealized nation. “Seeing Germany,” as Kristin Semmens puts it, was a way of possessing and occupying Germany. This was quite deliberately the case for the hundreds of thousands of visitors who took special trains to Stahlhelm marches, Reichsbanner demonstrations, and, later in the 1930s, the Nuremberg party rallies, for which more than 700 special trains were pressed into service in 1938. “Seeing Germany” was also at the heart of the new tourist practices the Nazis created: the camp experiences of the Hitler Youth and the rural outposts of the Reich Labor Service. Patriotism required an overnight stay.

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