triumph of will
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| Original title | triumph of will |
| Country of production | Germany |
| original language | German |
| Publishing year | 1935 |
| length | 114 minutes |
| Rod | |
| Director | Leni Riefenstahl |
| script | Leni Riefenstahl Walter Ruttmann |
| production | Leni Riefenstahl |
| music |
Herbert Windt Richard Wagner Ernst Hanfstaengl u. a. |
| camera |
Sepp Allgeier (photographic director), Karl Attenberger , Werner Bohne , Walter Frentz , Hans Karl Gottschalk , Werner Hundhausen, Herbert Kebelmann , Arthur Anwander, Franz Koch , Herbert Kutschbach, Paul Lieberenz , Richard Nickel, Walter Riml , Arthur von Schwertführer , Karl Vass , Franz Weihmayr , Siegfried Weinmann , Erich Stoll, Karl Wellert |
| cut | Leni Riefenstahl |
| occupation | |
| |
Triumph des Willens is a Nazi propaganda film about the sixth Reich Party Congress of the NSDAP in Nuremberg in 1934 and is considered one of the most influential works by the director Leni Riefenstahl . The first performance took place on March 28, 1935 in the Ufa-Palast am Zoo in Berlin. It is the second part of Riefenstahl's party congress trilogy and follows on from the predecessor The Victory of Faith . The successor and thus the third part is Freedom Day! - Our armed forces .
production
The staged documentary contains images from the 1934 party congress with its parades and parades, as well as numerous excerpts from speeches by various Nazi functionaries during the party congress, including by Adolf Hitler . Hitler himself supported the film and appeared in the credits as an unofficial executive producer . The main topic is the return of Germany as a great power with Hitler as the salvific leader. Hitler chose the title based on Friedrich Nietzsche's catchphrase of the " will to power ".
It was well calculated in the film, without a highly problematic opening credits on the history of the NSDAP and thus also inevitably Röhm with his SA, entered the film scene directly. During the so-called “ Night of Long Knives ” (June 30 / July 1, 1934), Ernst Röhm and other SA leadership officials who were summoned at Tegernsee on Hitler's orders were arrested and - in some cases murdered the same night. Even in the previous film The Victory of Faith - which in retrospect looks like the dress rehearsal for this film - Hitler was not yet staged as a personified center of power, but still shared it with the supreme leader of the Sturmabteilung; who shortly afterwards faced him. In Triumph of the Will , only Hitler should now generally be the focus.
Triumph of the Will was published in 1935 and quickly became one of the best-known examples of propaganda films . With its aesthetics, the film influenced feature films and documentaries right through to advertising after the Second World War . This was often taken as an opportunity to ask about the relationship between art , politics and ethics or to discuss them.
On the one hand, Riefenstahl himself used relatively new techniques such as moving cameras, telephoto lenses , a dynamic editing technique and novel camera perspectives. She also skilfully used tried and tested methods such as suggestive background music , quick cuts and ingenious photo montages . Triumph of the Will is considered a politically and morally dubious, historically and aesthetically important film.
Riefenstahl has won several awards in Germany, the United States , France , Sweden and other countries. In 1937 Riefenstahl was awarded a gold medal for this film during the Paris World Exhibition .
Triumph des Willens is not indicated in Germany and is not a reserve film , as it has never been checked by the FSK in this regard and is therefore "approved for ages 18+".
action
The film begins with a prologue , the only commentary in the film. The following text appears on a stone tablet: “On September 5, 1934 ... 20 years after the outbreak of the World War ... 16 years after the beginning of German suffering ... 19 months after the beginning of the German rebirth ... Adolf Hitler flew again to Nuremberg to hold a military watch over his loyal followers. "
First day
The film begins with shots of the clouds over the city. Then the camera moves through the clouds to float above the crowds , radiating beauty and dignity. The shadow of Hitler's plane can be seen as it flies over the tiny marching people, accompanied by the sounds of a symphony orchestra. It plays variations on a theme that soon becomes recognizable as the Horst Wessel song . When Hitler arrives at Nuremberg Airport , he is received by a euphoric crowd to thunderous applause. He then drives to his hotel in Nuremberg , where a nightly rally will take place later.
Second day
The second day begins with an assembly , the members of various Nazi organizations in their camps on the opening of the Reich Party prepare. Meanwhile, the leadership of the party reached the Luitpold Arena . This is followed by a cut to the opening ceremony in which Rudolf Hess announces the beginning of the party congress. The film then introduces several high-ranking NSDAP members; among others Joseph Goebbels , Alfred Rosenberg , Hans Frank , Fritz Todt , Robert Ley and Julius Streicher . Afterwards, a rally by the Reich Labor Service can be seen. Here Hitler gives his first speech about the merits of the working men and praises their achievements in the rebuilding of Germany. The day ends with an SA parade by torchlight.
third day
The third day begins with a rally by the Hitler Youth (HJ) on Paradeplatz. Again the camera shows the arrival of the Nazi dignitaries and the introduction of Hitler by Baldur von Schirach . Hitler speaks to the youth and tells them why they should be “peaceful and courageous at the same time” and why they have to “steel themselves”. This is followed by a demonstration of mounted and motorized units of the Reichswehr . During the night Hitler gives a speech to the political leaders by torchlight , in which he commemorates the first year since the National Socialists came to power and declares that party and state are a unit (see also one-party system ).
fourth day
The fourth day is the climax of the film. The most memorable images are shown here. While the brass band is playing the funeral march of the composer Ernst Hanfstaengl , Hitler, accompanied by Heinrich Himmler and Viktor Lutze , walks in the Luitpold Arena through a sea of over 150,000 SA and SS men around a memorial wreath at the memorial for the fallen of the First world war resign. Hitler and Lutze then give a speech to the troops about the clean-up operation " Night of the Long Knives " in the SA a few months earlier. Lutze once again affirmed the SA's loyalty to the party leadership, and Hitler released the SA from any crimes that were committed by Ernst Röhm . The new party flags are consecrated by touching the blood flag (flag that was carried by the National Socialists during the Hitler-Ludendorff putsch on November 9, 1923). A large parade then takes place against the backdrop of the Nuremberg Frauenkirche on the main market in Nuremberg (April 1933–1945 “Adolf-Hitler-Platz”), during which numerous associations of the party and the state march past Hitler. Then Hitler gives his closing speech in the Luitpoldhalle . In this he again affirmed the primacy of the NSDAP in Germany. He explains: “All decent Germans become National Socialists. Only the best National Socialists are party comrades! ” Hess leads the assembled crowd to a final victory salute for Hitler, which ends the party congress. The film fades out while the crowd sings the Horst Wessel song .
aftermath
The film is still relevant and still controversial in terms of its history. The opinion that it is an aesthetic documentary is contrary to the fact that the film is pure propaganda . Martin Loiperdinger emphasizes that the film does not depict the reality of National Socialism, but only shows how it staged itself . The national community depicted in the film did not correspond to reality. Sabine Hake points out that the film is not as representative of National Socialism as is often assumed. Rather, the film documents an exceptional situation that was partially deliberately staged for the filming.
An impetus for dealing with the work of Riefenstahl and its role in the Third Reich came from the USA in the 1970s. Pop culture greats like Andy Warhol , George Lucas or David Bowie dealt with Riefenstahl, from a social psychological point of view Susan Sontag prominently in her book Fascinating Fascism from 1974. In the context of the gender debate in the USA, in which one also engages dealt with the role of women in film production, one also dealt with Riefenstahl from this point of view. Since the 1980s there has been a kind of "Riefenstahl renaissance" in which the question of the responsibility of art no longer arose and only the aesthetics of its visual language counted. "For aesthetes, Riefenstahl is nothing but the pioneer whose power of images has also shaped advertising and show business," wrote Alice Schwarzer after an interview with Riefenstahl, but at the same time posed the question of the moral responsibility of art.
Reception in the cinema and pop culture
The prevailing view is that Riefenstahl used completely new and trend-setting camera work and novel means of directing, and that film had a great influence on the development of modern film - although some of the elements of her cinematic art were already through the Soviet revolutionary film (see also: Sergei Eisenstein ) were coined. To this day, Riefenstahl has set new standards for sports reporting in film and television.
Triumph of the Will has been received by many recent artists, including directors such as Peter Jackson , George Lucas and Ridley Scott . At a photo session, Mick Jagger is said to have told Riefenstahl that he had seen the film at least 15 times. The first known feature film to quote the scenery from Triumph of the Will is the Nazi parody The Great Dictator by Charlie Chaplin (released 1940). Many more recent films have imitated or quoted individual scenes from the film, the best-known are the Star Wars films. Films that feature a similar scenery or entire scenes as the film Triumph of the Will are Citizen Kane , A Clockwork Orange , Gladiator , Starship Troopers , The Lord of the Rings , The Lion King and many others. With the marching fantasy soldiers in his video clip HiStory, Michael Jackson followed up on choreographic models from the propaganda film. In the opinion of Susan Sontag and Jürgen Trimborn , elements of Triumph des Willens and other Riefenstahl films are increasingly being removed from their political context and viewed as independent aesthetic expressions.
Reception in political propaganda
The film was even given as a reference for Nelson Rockefeller's 1968 presidential campaign in the United States and thus influenced the practice of American election advertising . Recent election campaigns have also often been compared to the triumph of will .
The historian Fritz Stern compared the staging of the victory speech of the Iraq war by US President George W. Bush in 2003 on an aircraft carrier with a Leni-Riefenstahlisierung .
Copyrights, performances
After Leni Riefenstahl sued against the use of parts of the film in Erwin Leiser's documentary Mein Kampf (1960), the rights to the film Triumph des Willens became, after the judgment of the Federal Court of Justice of December 29, 1966, not her but the Federal Republic of Germany as legal successor awarded by the German Empire. From now on, these rights will be exercised by the state-owned Transit-Film GmbH , based in Munich, even though it was contractually regulated in 1974 (for a period of thirty years) that any public screening of Leni Riefenstahl must be approved and that she, however, 70% of all income received.
Jacobs & Schepp comment on this: “It can be assumed that Transit Film GmbH, against better legal knowledge, entered into the contract with Leni Riefenstahl in order to initially avoid the responsibility of the 'correct' handling of the extremely explosive film legacy of the NS- Time to draw. Any approval of use by the Federal Republic of Germany could have had critical consequences for them [...] While the Federal Archives only approved the non-commercial public demonstration if an appropriate framework was given, i. H. If the screening served to educate the population about the history of Germany, Leni Riefenstahl always refused to give her permission if she feared that a critical examination of the film would take place. ”Public screenings therefore only took place after the (very rarely given) Permission from Leni Riefenstahl.
In the 1970s, the entire film was shown sporadically on television, but only after 11 p.m. due to the lack of an FSK rating, for example on October 1, 1974 in the NDR and on September 4, 1976 in the HR . With the death of Leni Riefenstahl on September 8, 2003 and the expiry of the above-mentioned contract, the last rights now belong to the Federal Republic of Germany .
The Federal Court of Justice has also dealt with the film "Triumph des Willens" (see BGH UFITA 55 (1970), 313, 320/321). He determined that it was a production of the NSDAP, in which all usage rights were granted to the NSDAP for evaluation without restriction. Due to the law regulating the liabilities of National Socialist institutions and the legal relationships to their assets of March 17, 1965, all rights and assets of the NSDAP have been transferred to the Federal Republic of Germany and are administered in the film sector by Transit Film GmbH.
The film is only available as a video or DVD abroad, as Transit Film GmbH has enforced its copyright in Germany and has so far successfully prevented publication: After Leni Riefenstahl's death, Transit Film GmbH, which is federally owned, has sole right of use over all rights the film. The corresponding contractual agreements had previously provided for joint legal management to a certain extent.
Quotes
“It is a film that, by its very nature, excludes the possibility that the director had an aesthetic conception independent of the propaganda. The fact is [...] that she shot 'Triumph des Willens' with unlimited technical means and generous official support (there was never a fight between the director and the German Propaganda Minister). In reality, Riefenstahl, as she reports in the narrow book about the creation of 'Triumph des Willens', was already involved in the planning of the party congress - which was designed as a backdrop for a film spectacle from the beginning [...] So the historical event served as a backdrop for a film that was then to be transformed into an authentic documentary. [...] If you want to distinguish between documentary and propaganda, then anyone who defends Riefenstahl's films as documentary films is naive. In Triumph of the Will, the document (image) is not just a record of reality, but a reason why reality is established; and finally the document will take the place of reality. "
“Triumph of the Will is a documentary from a party congress, nothing more. It has nothing to do with politics. Because I recorded what really happened and exaggerated it insofar as I didn't comment on it. I tried to express the atmosphere that was there through pictures and not through spoken commentary. And to make that understandable without text, the visual language had to be very good, very clear. The pictures had to be able to say what is otherwise spoken. But that's why it's not propaganda. "
attachment
See also
- National Socialist Film Policy
- List of German documentaries from the time of National Socialism
- Victory of Faith (1933, first film in the party congress trilogy by Leni Riefenstahl)
- Day of freedom! - Our Wehrmacht (1935, third film in the party congress trilogy by Leni Riefenstahl)
literature
- Eva Waniek: Triumph of Will. On the aestheticization of the political in Leni Riefenstahl In: Krieg / War. A philosophical discussion from a feminist point of view. Fink 1997, pp. 283-296. ISBN 3-77053094-2
- Sabine Hake: German National Cinema. Reprinted edition. Routledge, London a. a. 2003, ISBN 0-415-08902-6 .
- Martin Loiperdinger : The party conference film "Triumph of the Will" by Leni Riefenstahl. Mobilization rituals. Leske + Budrich, Opladen 1987, ISBN 3-8100-0598-3 ( Research Texts Economics and Social Sciences 22).
- Rainer Rother : The cult of the leader as a film “Triumph of Will”. In: Gerd Biegel , Wulf Otte (ed.): A people thanks its (seducer) leader. The Reichserntedankfeste on the Bückeberg 1933–1937. Lectures on the exhibition. Braunschweigisches Landesmuseum, Braunschweig 2002, ISBN 3-927939-58-7 , pp. 109–116 ( publications of the Braunschweigisches Landesmuseum 102).
- Susan Sontag : Fascinating Fascism. In: Susan Sontag: In the sign of Saturn. Essays. Hanser, Munich a. a. 2003, ISBN 3-446-20424-5 , pp. 97-125.
- Jürgen Trimborn : Riefenstahl. A German career. Aufbau-Verlag, Berlin 2002, ISBN 3-351-02536-X .
- David Culbert: The New Goebbels Diary Entries (2006) and Leni Riefenstahl . In: Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television. Volume 27. 2007. Issue 4, pp. 549-559.
Web links
- Triumph of Will at filmportal.de (including contemporary magazine cover, photos)
- Triumph of the Will in theInternet Movie Database(English)
- Triumph of will at rotten tomatoes (English)
- Handwritten invitation from Leni Riefenstahl to Julius Streicher , editor of the anti-Semitic hate speech Der Stürmer, to the premiere (facsimile)
- Dirk C. Loew: Leni Riefenstahl and the film “Triumph des Willens” at www.filmzentrale.com
Individual evidence
- ↑ Hans-Dieter König: Hitler's charismatic mass productions. In: Hans-Joachim Busch (Ed.): Traces of the subject. Positions in psychoanalytic social psychology. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 2007, ISBN 978-3-525-45404-6 , pp. 278 .
- ^ Peter Zimmermann: Propaganda films of the NSDAP (PDF). German National Library. Retrieved February 7, 2019.
- ↑ z. B. by the parade march No. 1 by Julius Möllendorf .
- ↑ Julia Jacobs, Philipp Schepp: Triumph of the will. In: Thomas Hoeren, Lena Meyer: Verbotene Films. Berlin 2007, p. 177.
- ↑ Stefan Strötgen: "I compose the party congress ...". On the role of music in Leni Riefenstahl's Triumph of Will . In: Annemarie Firme, Ramona Hocker (Ed.): From battle hymns and protest songs. On the cultural history of the relationship between music and war . Transcript, Bielefeld, pp. 139–157, here: pp. 153f. See also David B. Dennis: "The most German of all operas": The Mastersingers through the Lens of the Third Reich. In: Nicholas Vazsonyi (Ed.): Wagner's Meistersinger. Performance, history, representation . The University of Rochester Press, Rochester, pp. 98-119, here: pp. 98f.
- ↑ see #Literature and the book Sabine Hake: Film in Deutschland. History and stories since 1895 . Rowohlt, Hamburg 2004, ISBN 3-499-55663-4 .
- ↑ Alice Schwarzer: Leni Riefenstahl, propagandist or artist? in: Emma , January 1, 1991, accessed February 21, 2017.
- ↑ Alice Schwarzer: Propagandist or Artist? 1991.
- ^ Wilhelm Bittorf: Photography. Blut und Hoden Spiegel.de, October 25, 1976, accessed on February 21, 2017
- ^ Christiane Kuller: The leader in foreign worlds: The Star Wars empire as a historical lesson? In: Zeithistorische Forschungen / Studies in Contemporary History. Online edition, 3 (2006), no.1.
- ↑ see also English Wikipedia
- ^ Trivia for The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (2002) , Internet Movie Database .
- ↑ a b Ingrid Strobl : Helene Riefenstahl in the "House of History in Germany": Only death does not like her , hagalil.com , January 28, 2003.
- ↑ “Riefenstahl - A German Career. A biography by Jürgen Trimborn “ ZDF aspects, Leipzig Book Fair 2003, accessed on April 20, 2019.
- ↑ Jordan Mejias: America under Bush: The Leni-Riefenstahlisierung. In: FAZ . January 20, 2005, interview with Fritz Stern.
- ↑ Julia Jacobs, Philipp Schepp: Triumph of the will. In: Thomas Hoeren, Lena Meyer: Verbotene Films. Berlin 2007, p. 179 f.
- ↑ Julia Jacobs, Philipp Schepp: Triumph of the will. In: Thomas Hoeren, Lena Meyer: Verbotene Films. Berlin 2007, p. 184 f.
- ↑ Julia Jacobs, Philipp Schepp: Triumph of the will. In: Thomas Hoeren, Lena Meyer: Verbotene Films. Berlin 2007, p. 185 f.
- ↑ Julia Jacobs, Philipp Schepp: Triumph of the will. In: Thomas Hoeren, Lena Meyer: Verbotene Films. Berlin 2007, p. 185.
- ↑ debier database accessed on February 21, 2017
- ↑ Spiegel online 2003: “I am 100 percent sorry to have met Hitler” , Der Spiegel , 2003.