LENI RIEFENSTAHL
Photography

Leni Riefenstahl was born in Berlin in 1902. She studied painting and started her artistic career as a dancer. An injury of the knee put an end to her sensational career. After that, she became famous as an actress, a film director, a film producer and a film reporter.

Her greatest success was made with the documentary film 'Triumph des Willens' named after the Reich Party Congress 1934 in Nuremberg which got the highest awards: The gold medal in Venice in 1935 and the gold medal at the World Exhibition in Paris in 1937. However, at the end of the war this film destroyed Leni Riefenstahl's career, for now it had no longer been recognized as a piece of art but been condemned as a National Socialist propaganda film. Her world-famous film about the Olympic games made the same experience. That film included two parts, part I 'Fest der Völker' and part II 'Fest der Schönheit' , and also got the highest awards: the gold medal in Paris in 1937, the first price in Venice as the world's best film in 1938, the Olympic Award by the IOC in 1939, and in 1956 it had been classified as one of the world's best ten films.

Leni Riefenstahl died on Monday 8 September 2003, in Poecking, Germany. She died a few weeks after her 101st birthday. - www.leni-riefenstahl.de