"no other films for Hitler"
2 autograph letters signed.
4to. 3 pp. With autograph envelopes.
€ 1,800.00
To the German film critic Dr. Hans Schuhmacher (1910-93), former editor of the "Film-Kurier": two letters written in the wake of an incident on German televion, when Riefenstahl and the anti-Nazi unionist Elfriede Kretschmer had exchanged heated words in the talkshow "Je später der Abend". Schuhmacher subsequently wrote to Riefenstahl in a sympathetic tone ("as artists are, after all, usually quite apolitical anyway"), also mentioning his late friend and colleague Ernst Jäger (1896-1975), who in 1936 had been responsible for public relations regarding Riefenstahl's Olympia film, but also discussing his own journalistic work of the period.
In her responses, Riefenstahl states that "Triumph of the Will" had been an "artistic document" which she had never considered a "piece of propaganda". "The Olympia film", on the other hand, she calls her "private initiative, made without commission or support"; after 1934 she claims to have made "no other films for Hitler or the government". In spite of this, she complains, she keeps being made "responsible for the horrors of the Hitler regime", anticipating that "the persecution and defilement of my person will continue until after my death". She would be interested in meeting Schuhmacher and would also like to read his correspondence with Jäger, as there was "unfinished business" between them. At the time, Riefenstahl lived in Africa ("I spend much time abroad because I am so vilified in Germany"). For her photo reports on the Nuba people she had been granted Sudanese citizenship in 1973.
Includes two carbon copies of Schuhmacher's typed letters to Riefenstahl.
