Rock crystal (Renker)
Bergkristall is a diary novel by Gustav Renker published in 1930 . It formed the basis for Leni Riefenstahl's film Das Blaue Licht .
action
The painter Kurt Lüthi, from whose diary entries the novel consists, lives in the big city and temporarily rents a hut in the Alps in order to find inspiration for his art and to flee from an unhappy love story. A mountain that emits blue light at midnight impresses him. He believes that the light comes from a crystal cave that reflects the moonlight and goes in search of this cave in order to recover the rock crystal and sell it to the highest bidder. This should enable him to marry his lover Liane von Wildt. In the village, however, it is said that the spirit of a Spanish adventurer who attempted this earlier and was killed in the process, is guarding the cave. You also have to climb a steep rock face to get closer to the cave. Lüthi therefore gives up the plan for the time being, but the blue light attracts him irresistibly.
After several failed attempts, Lüthi, together with two mountain guides and Liane, succeeds in reaching the source of blue light. But it is not a crystal cave, but an underground glacial lake that is connected to the summit by a chimney. When the moonlight shines on it, the light effect is created. Everyone agrees that this sight is much more valuable than money, and they make their way back. Liana is hit by a rockfall , but can be saved and becomes healthy again. The lovers decide to move to Lüthi's mountain hut together and live there.
expenditure
Bergkristall was first published in 1930 by the Friedrich Reinhardt publishing house in Basel. In 1941 a “people's edition” was published by Bertelsmann in Gütersloh. A French translation appeared in Geneva in 1942 under the title La lueur bleue ("The blue glow"); the novel has also been translated into Dutch ( Bergkristall ) and Spanish ( Luz azul ).
Template for Riefenstahl's film
The plot of the film The Blue Light by Leni Riefenstahl , made two years after the book was published, has obvious similarities with rock crystal : the painter, the blue glow, the rock crystal cave and a number of plot motifs. Riefenstahl claimed at the time that she heard a legend on a hiking tour in the Dolomites in a mountain village that inspired her to make the film. The film does not contain any reference to the literary source, but only names Riefenstahl and Béla Balázs as scriptwriters . Arnold Fanck , who had already made the film Der Heilige Berg with Riefenstahl in 1926 , also based on a novel by Renker ( Heilige Berge , 1921), later referred to rock crystal as the model for blue light .
literature
- Lee Wallace Holt: Bergkristall (1930) . In: Lee Wallace Holt: Mountains, Mountaineering and Modernity: A Cultural History of German and Austrian Mountaineering, 1900-1945. Dissertation at the University of Texas. Austin 2008, pp. 198-210. On-line
Individual evidence
- ↑ Hanno Loewy: The image of man of the fanatic fatalist. Or: Leni Riefenstahl, Béla Balázs and Das Blaue Licht. Institutional repertory of the University of Konstanz, 1999. Online .
- ↑ Lee Wallace Holt: Mountains, Mountaineering and Modernity: A Cultural History of German and Austrian Mountaineering, 1900-1945. Dissertation at the University of Texas. Austin 2008, pp. 198-200. Online ( Memento of the original from April 22, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ^ David B. Hinton: The Films of Leni Riefenstahl. Scarecrow Press, Lanham 2000, p. 11.
