Abstract
HISTORIAN CLAUDIA KOONTZ paints a striking portrait of women and female leadership in Nazi Germany in her seminal Mothers in the Fatherland: Women, the Family, and Nazi Politics (1987): “No one woman conformed to either the passive-docile or the heartless-brutish model. Few vapid Eva Brauns or cruel Irma Grieses. Instead, troops of Leni Riefenstahls—ambitious, determined, opportunistic—marched along, caught up in the Nazi tide.” With these words Koontz has bestowed no small honor on Leni Riefenstahl; for Koontz, Riefenstahl embodies the prototype of the leadership role women came to play in Nazi Germany. “Marching along” to the dictates of male Nazi leaders, women were relegated to leadership roles subordinate to the regime's patriarchal hierarchy (Mothers, 6). In Riefenstahl's case, this created a tension between following the leader and being a leader in her own right; specifically, her brand of female leadership on the set, behind the camera, and in the editing room entailed dutiful subordination to male power. Subject to Hitler's and Goebbel's demands, yet leading her crew to realize her desired cinematic aesthetic, Riefenstahl made Triumph des Willens (Triumph of the Will, 1935), a film that remains to this day the pinnacle of her cinematic achievements. As Riefenstahl biographer Jürgen Trimborn so emphatically states:Triumph des Willens ist wahrscheinlich das meistzitierte Werk der Filmgeschichte. Keine Dokumentation über den Nationalsozialismus kommt heute ohne Bilder aus diesem Film aus, kein anderer Film hat unsere visuelle Vorstellung, was Nationalsozialismus war, so tief geprägt wie er. Der Film wurde zum Dreh-und Angelpunkt in Riefenstahls Biographie, festigte ihre Position im Dritten Reich und verlieh ihr, solange das NS-Regime existierte, einen nahezu unantastbaren Status. Daß es gerade eine Frau war, die die faschistische Männerwelt auf Zelluloid bannte, sorgte, damals vielleicht noch stärker als heute, für Aufsehen, das die ehrgeizige Regisseurin sichtlich genoß. [Triumph des Willens is probably the most cited work of film history. No documentation on National Socialism today neglects to include images from Triumph des Willens, and no other film created a more profound visual impression of the movement. Triumph des Willens became the pivotal point of Riefenstahl's biography, establishing her position in the Third Reich and conferring upon her a near invincibility that would last for as long as the Nazi regime existed.