Kelley, J. L. (submitted). “Impressionen unter Druck”: A Psychobiography of Leni Riefenstahl. Prereview draft of book chapter in: C.-H. Mayer, R. van Niekerk, P. J. Fouché, & J. G. Ponterotto (Eds.), Beyond WEIRD: Transcultural and transdisciplinary psychobiographies. (original) (raw)
The chapter uses the methods of psychobiography and object relations theory to conduct a single-case study of the life and loves of German filmmaker Leni Riefenstahl (1902-2003). Leni's childhood home was dominated by her father, who had to be cajoled, and sometimes outright deceived, into supporting his daughter's desire to enter a career in the performing arts. Unfortunately, Leni's success was often her worst enemy: Just as she evaded her father Albert's censorious glance, so did she avoid the barbs of German film critics by gaining Adolf Hitler as her patron until the fall of the Nazi regime in 1945. At this time, Leni lost not only her marriage and her film career, but even her sanity, if only for a short time. The chapter shows, through a Fairbairnian analysis, how Leni adapted to the disaster that was her early career by reinventing herself as a photographer of African tribes. Also, in her romantic life, she changed tacks. Compared with her late-in-life companion Horst Kettner, Leni's early romances were relatively shallow either because her counterpart was too involved in promoting her career (Harry Sokal) or too far removed from her working life (Peter Jacob).
Sign up for access to the world's latest research.
checkGet notified about relevant papers
checkSave papers to use in your research
checkJoin the discussion with peers
checkTrack your impact
Related papers
Women's Studies, 2008
In “Sontag’s Captions: Writing the Body from Riefenstahl to S & M,” Bonita Rhoads considers how Susan Sontag altered her aesthetic convictions in response to her evolving writer’s conscience and produced some of the most indelible commentaries of her generation. Her scathing critique of Leni Riefenstahl continues to set the standard of criticism of the Nazi-friendly director despite Sontag’s own little-acknowledged mitigation of her excoriating essay “Fascinating Fascism” several years later. Rhoads’s essay establishes Sontag’s condemnation of Riefenstahl’s “fascist aesthetics” as a turning point in her growth as a woman of letters, elucidating how that oft-cited critique reveals not only Sontag’s ideological transformation, but also her response to the sexual revolution just as it was shifting from the heady idealism of the 60s to the garish affectations and irreverent fads of the 70s.
Review: "Because of its inspiring move to bring together the theoretical projects of phenomenological, aesthetic, and poststructuralist philosophy with the urgency of sociocultural and historical reality, Conscientious Viscerality should be widely read. It will be of interest not only to German and film studies scholars but for all of those who work on identity, subjectivity, and the body across the humanities and social sciences. In a time when racist polemics like German politician Thilo Sarrazin’s recent publication “Germany does away with itself”—where the strength of the German nation is portrayed to be undermined by immigration—seem to do and sell so well, we need more books like this." Quarterly Review of Film and Video Review: "What Curtis points out in her study using an impressive and versatile corpus of films and videos is the role of the recipient for filmic autobiography as a genre that tells the story of a life in images. For their truth claim and effect these images are dependent on the viewer who is asked to "take a particularly empathetic and corporeal stance to the particular kind of intersubjective experience filmic autobiography offers" (41). Thus, the study is not only a contribution to research on filmic autobiography in Germany but moreover a book on reception theory that offers a new and promising view on autobiography in general. Writing as well as filming or telling life stories become both the experience of a different subjectivity and a culturally contingent, narratively transported and changeable construct that must first and foremost be produced in an interchange between producer and recipient." Scope
Wonderful, Horrible Lies: Riefenstahl Memory and Riefenstahl History in Germany
Riefenstahl Screened: An Anthology of New Criticism , 2008
It was an obvious case. The murdered journalist had stockpiled evidence against Hamburg's most prominent business tycoon, Alexander Radu. The material proved how corrupt and criminal Hamburg's business elite really was. But Detective Casstorff and his team still faced a big problem. Their superiors in the justice department were in cahoots with Radu and obstructed the police investigation at every turn. On June 11, 2007, almost six million viewers tuned their TV sets to the public television station ARD to watch the latest installment of Germany's longest running and most prestigious murder mystery series Tatort (crime scene). 2 In one of the key scenes of the show, Radu tries to convince a stalwart and beautiful public prosecutor that he is a victim of negative publicity. He launches into the following monologue: In 1999 my father organized a Riefenstahl exhibit here in Hamburg showcasing the fabulous photos of the African tribe of the Nuba. Ms. Riefenstahl had lived with the Nuba in Sudan for several years. But guess what topics were raised by the first three questions during the press conference at the opening of the exhibit: Hitler, Hitler, Goebbels. Do you understand what I am trying to tell you? For years I have been investing in culture, education, and social services. But the only thing that the public remembers is the fact that twenty years ago my father worked as a bouncer in Hamburg's redlight district.. .. It's a damned witch hunt. 3
Loading Preview
Sorry, preview is currently unavailable. You can download the paper by clicking the button above.