Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television

ISSN: 0143-9685 (Print) 1465-3451 (Online) Journal homepage: https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/chjf20

Leni Riefenstahl's Gypsy Question Revisited: The

Gypsy Extras In Tiefland

Susan Tegel

To cite this article: Susan Tegel (2006) Leni Riefenstahl's Gypsy Question Revisited: The
Gypsy Extras In Tiefland , Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television, 26:1, 21-43, DOI:
10.1080/01439680500533375

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/01439680500533375

Published online: 10 Aug 2006.

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Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television
Vol. 26, No. 1 March 2006, pp. 21–43

LENI RIEFENSTAHL’S GYPSY QUESTION

REVISITED: THE GYPSY EXTRAS IN TIEFLAND

Susan Tegel

Leni Riefenstahl (1902–2003) made very few films: four documentaries during the
Third Reich—three on the annual Nazi party rallies, commissioned by Hitler, and the
fourth on the 1936 Olympic games, secretly funded by the state.1 She also made two
feature films, which she not only directed and co-scripted, but also starred in. Das
blaue Licht (The Blue Light, 1932) appeared 10 months before Hitler came to power,
shortly after which she contacted him, possibly spurred on by negative reviews from
some Jewish critics, but more likely because she was jumping on the Nazi
bandwagon.2
The second feature film was Tiefland (The Lowlands), made during the Second
World War over several years but not released until 1954. In that film she used more
than 100 Gypsy extras taken from two Gypsy internment or collection camps
(Sammellager): Maxglan was outside Salzburg and Marzahn on the outskirts of Berlin.
Berlin-Marzahn had been set up in 1936 on wasteland near a sewage dump to ‘cleanse’
Berlin at the time of the Olympic games;3 Salzburg-Maxglan was set up shortly after
the outbreak of war, in response to a Reinhard Heydrich decree, later rescinded,
ordering the deportation of Gypsies to Poland.4 That deportation came three years
later. These collection camps or assembly centres were run by the police rather than
by the SS for which reason they have never been legally classified as concentration
camps.
Tiefland was Riefenstahl’s pet project, a vehicle in which she could display her
talent—or lack of—in acting and dancing. It belonged to the same genre as Das blaue
Licht. Based on an opera by the Glasgow-born German, Eugen d’Albert (1864–1932),
it has been characterised as the only example of a German opera in verismo, a realist
aesthetic associated with Puccini. The opera, in its turn, based on an 1896 play by
a Catalan writer, Angel Guimerá, had its first performance in 1903. Hitler heard it as
a young man in Vienna and selected it over Wagner for the gala performance in Vienna

Correspondence: Susan Tegel, 26 Crescent Road, London N8 8AX, UK. E-mail:susan@

tegel.demon.co.uk

ISSN 0143-9685 (print)/ISSN 1465-3451 (online)/06/010021–23 ß 2006 Taylor & Francis

DOI: 10.1080/01439680500533375
22 HISTORICAL JOURNAL OF FILM, RADIO AND TELEVISION

after Anschluss.5 Herbert Windt, composer for three of her documentaries and many
other films, did the music using motifs from the opera.
Riefenstahl not only directed and scripted the film but also took the lead of
Martha, described in the titles as a ‘Spanish beggar dancer’. She plays her as though a
Gypsy, which in the opera the character had not been. Several things indicate that
Martha is now a Gypsy even if the script does not explicitly state this: she lives in a
caravan—in the opera she had lived in a mill; she wears large gold-ring earrings; she is
dressed in Gypsy costume; she also dances with castanets in a pastiche Flamenco,
a dance closely associated with Spanish Gypsies.
Martha is the waif-like mistress of Don Sebastian, though waif-like hardly
describes Riefenstahl. Don Sebastian lives in the Lowland; and Lowland in mountain
films is bad, a genre to which this film belongs, despite the Spanish setting. In financial
difficulties, he plans to marry the daughter of the wealthy mayor, while simultaneously
marrying off Martha to a shepherd, while retaining her services. In the end,
the shepherd kills a wolf, then Don Sebastian, after which Martha and he go off to
the mountains to live happily ever after.
According to her notoriously inaccurate memoirs, Riefenstahl had first wanted
to film Tiefland in 1934 on location in Spain, but fell ill after which she was called on

FIGURE 1 Riefenstahl in her dual role as director and star of the film. Erika Groth-Schmachtenberger,
Bildarchiv Preussischer Kulturbesitz, Berlin.
 LENI RIEFENSTAHL’S GYPSY QUESTION REVISITED 23

to make Triumph of the Will—against her will.6 Jürgen Trimborn, however, argues that
she was angling for a second crack at a party rally film and had to persuade Hitler
of the need.7 He also suggests that she was in Poland in September 1939 to do another
film about the triumph of Hitler, but, shocked at what she witnessed, quickly made
her escape to Berlin and to feature film. Having lost her taste for battle, she
abandoned her project to make a film about the Amazon queen, Pentheselea, and
returned to an earlier project, Tiefland, in which she would also star.8 Her interest in a
Spanish theme may have been renewed by a feature film, which appeared in 1938,
Andalusische Nächte (Nights in Andalusia), a Spanish–German co-production based on
Carmen and starring Argentine-born Spanish actress, Imperio Argentina, who sings
and dances.9 In Das blaue Licht, Riefenstahl was able to demonstrate her rock-climbing
skills; in Tiefland her dancing (though this, her first career, had ended in injury).
On the evidence of these two feature films, there is little doubt that her talents lay
with the former.
In her memoirs, Riefenstahl mentions that though she had wanted this role in
1934, she had not in 1940, and only took it on because she failed to find a suitable
actress.10 In March 1940 she wrote a ‘Dear Julius’ letter (presumably to Julius
Streicher as no last name is given) with whom she used the intimate ‘Du’ form, was
much photographed and on close terms. In her memoirs she hardly mentions the
editor of the virulently antisemitic weekly, Der Stürmer, who was also Gauleiter of
Franconia, the region in which Nuremberg was situated.11 Disingenuously she
adds that taking the role will be ‘subject to a screen test’.12 Given that she was
the director, and hence the judge of the screen test, we can safely assume that the
result was a foregone conclusion and she was merely ingratiating herself with
Streicher.
Preliminary work on the film began in early 1940. Props were purchased in Spain
(guitars, household goods and village fountains), which were then transported back to
Germany.13 Riefenstahl had hoped to film on location in Spain, employing Spaniards
to play the Spanish villagers.14 On 4 April 1940, Goebbels recorded in his diary that
given the ‘uncertainty’ in the Mediterranean she could not go to Spain: ‘The Führer
thinks that Italy will soon enter the war. God willing!’15 She had also hoped to do
some filming on location in the Italian Tyrol, where she had filmed Das blaue Licht,
as well as use some of the same extras.16 That was still possible, since the Tyrol
belonged to a friendly ally, Italy. But the invasion of western Europe now ruled out
Spain. A mock Spanish village was built in the Bavarian Alps (Karwendel mountains) at
Krün near Mittenwald.
For her Spanish villagers Riefenstahl had to look elsewhere. She found them,
as previously mentioned, in Gypsy collection camps: from Salzburg-Maxglan for the
outdoor filming—many were children—and from Berlin-Marzahn for the indoor
filming at the Berlin-Babelsberg studios. Filming with the Maxglan extras began
in September 1940, the same month that Veit Harlan’s antisemitic film, Jud Süss,
opened, in which Jews from Prague had been recruited as extras. The difference here
is that they played Jews, even if they found it difficult as western assimilated Jews to
perform the Hasidic rites as specified by Harlan.17
Tiefland, however, is altogether different in that the Gypsy extras are not playing
Gypsies but Spanish peasants, while the non-Gypsy director, Riefenstahl, plays the
lead as a Gypsy. ‘Carefree life of a Gypsy’ is a phrase, which suggests something
24 HISTORICAL JOURNAL OF FILM, RADIO AND TELEVISION

positive, but the lives of Gypsies during the Third Reich were hardly carefree.
The female Gypsy, as depicted in romantic 19th century literature or opera, is a social
outcast, beautiful, passionate, sexually desirable. Doubtless Riefenstahl felt she
embodied these qualities. Missing from her performance is passion—possibly a legacy
from the opera, since Martha was a victim of child abuse—and Riefenstahl, pushing
40, could be a serious piece of miscasting, but the more likely explanation is that she
could not act: her face lacks expression, and her performance hardly differs from that
in Das blaue Licht and has rightly been described as narcissistic.18 In contrast to the
female, the male Gypsy always appears in a negative light: lazy, vain, hot-tempered,
potentially criminal, his only saving grace a talent for music. Riefenstahl’s benign and
intentionally sympathetic portrayal of the Gypsy, Marta, derives from a 19th-century
Romantic tradition clearly at odds with the negative image dominant during the Third
Reich. Yet she made no connection. Always proclaiming a lack of interest in
politics, despite making successful documentaries about party rallies, she feigned
innocence. Thus Tiefland provides the curious spectacle of Riefenstahl playing the lead
as a Gypsy, while apparently oblivious of the plight of the Gypsies under Nazi rule.
This was Riefenstahl’s ‘Gypsy Question’. It is now being revisited, having been
previously discussed in this journal with reference to the attempted legal intervention
in 2002.19
Riefenstahl was a very privileged film director, her position unlike that of any
other. She had her own company, and would have had her own gigantic studio near to
her Berlin-Dahlem home on land donated by the state, but for the outbreak of war,
and was negotiating with Albert Speer, as Rainer Rother has discovered.20 There is
also good reason to believe, according to Trimborn, that her company was funded
from Hitler’s cultural fund, itself the recipient of royalties from Mein Kampf.21 When
things went wrong with Tiefland, and much did, she could always call on Hitler to
intervene—during the war indirectly through Martin Bormann, Hitler’s so-called
deputy.
Riefenstahl wanted to film on location outside Germany. For that she needed
foreign currency, which required government authorisation. Her success in obtaining
this is evidence of her privileged status. She made her first request in April 1940,
at the time she was forbidden to go to Spain. This was for approximately one million
lire to film in the Italian Dolomites not far from where she had filmed Das blaue Licht,
according to a letter from the Reich Minister for Economics, Walther Funk to
Goebbels, detailing a history of her requests. According to Funk, he had rejected her
request but had forwarded it to Hitler who had ‘decided that if the transfer of foreign
currency could not be justified, alternatives must be found to enable outdoor
filming’.22 Riefenstahl then reduced the sum with ‘the assurance that she would not make
additional requests’ (Funk’s italics).23 In March 1941, she renewed her initial application
(for 450,000 lire), which was approved, since the foreign currency situation with Italy
had improved in Germany’s favour. Her request for 470,000 pesetas was also
approved, an indication that it was also now thought safe to film in Spain.24 However,
by early 1942 Funk refused to renew the lire authorisation because the foreign
currency situation vis-à-vis Italy had worsened. Foreign currency could only be used
for the purchase of militarily essential raw materials, he explained, ‘Otherwise this
would signify a weakening of the military potential for which I, in the present
circumstances, cannot be responsible’.25
 LENI RIEFENSTAHL’S GYPSY QUESTION REVISITED 25

Once Funk’s refusal became known, a Riefenstahl employee contacted Martin

Bormann, Hitler’s deputy, claiming to have done this without her knowledge because
he did not want to disturb her in the difficult final stages of filming, given her
‘precarious state of health’.26 (Riefenstahl’s state of health was often ‘precarious’
between 1933 and 1945, in contrast to 1945–2002.) Indoor filming was ending the
following week, he wrote, which left 14 days of outdoor filming for Italy and 20 for
Spain, both of which had to take place that summer, to enable editing and the addition
of sound.27 From Hitler’s Headquarters, Bormann immediately sent by courier a
letter marked urgent, for the minister’s attention, to Dr Hans Heinrich Lammers,
Chief of the Reich Chancellery. Claiming to have presented the papers to Hitler, who
had decided that foreign currency should be made available to Riefenstahl, Bormann
reminded Lammers of the status of Riefenstahl’s company:

As you know, Riefenstahl-Film-GmbH, was founded with the active support of

the Führer; the costs of the Tiefland-Film which has been in production for over
two years is, on the Führer’s instructions, to be borne by funds administered by
me . . . I am requesting that you urgently and most speedily (underlined) transmit
this Führer decision to . . . Funk.28

Lammers then instructed Funk (copying his letter to Bormann) to approve

Riefenstahl’s request, emphasising that the cost of the film would be borne by the
Führer.29
Funk defended himself to Lammers, (also copying his letter to Bormann): ‘Since
the beginning of the project (approximately three years)! Riefenstahl’s company had
made numerous requests for foreign currency.’ His Ministry had given approval in
March 1941 when ‘Riefenstahl had given assurances in advance [his italics] that she
would not make further requests.’ Later he had refused her request because ‘Every
transfer for purposes not of direct importance to the war has a detrimental effect on
the conduct of the war.’ Since the foreign exchange position with Italy had now
worsened it was ‘With strong misgivings and solely because of the Führer’s decision’
that he was ‘now making the 350,000 lire available’. He managed, however, to end on
a humorous note at Riefenstahl’s expense: participants had informed him that they had
noticed that the young actor playing Pedro (the handsome shepherd), had ‘in the
meantime so aged, that for this reason alone filming must be accelerated’.
This, he now hoped, would occur.30
Funk also rejected Riefenstahl’s next request (September 1942) for an additional
240,000 pesetas because Spanish prices had risen by 75%.31 However, she did not
pursue the matter immediately since filming in Spain had been postponed because
actor Bernhard Minetti (Don Sebastian) could not be released for a year from the
Prussian State Theatre.32 Instead, she decided on a politic visit to Goebbels, her
arch-enemy, if we believe her post-war comments. Doubtless this was to keep him
sweet. Grateful not to be directly involved, though this was also true of her other
projects, aside from Olympia,33 Goebbels recorded in his diary in December 1942:

Leni Riefenstahl has told me about her Tiefland film. It has become involved in
a whole series of complications. A total of over five million has already been
frittered away on this film, and it will still take another year before it is ready.
26 HISTORICAL JOURNAL OF FILM, RADIO AND TELEVISION

Frau Riefenstahl has become quite ill due to work and the burden of responsibility
and I urged her first to go on vacation before taking on additional work. I am glad
that I have nothing to do with this unpleasant affair, and thus also carry
no responsibility for it.34

Just over two months later, on 27 February 1943, Riefenstahl put in her next request.
This was nine days after Goebbels’ total war speech, which followed Stalingrad.
Bad timing, one might think, since there should have been little doubt that all available
foreign currency was to be for military purposes.35 Funk’s hand was strengthened;
he refused the request. Yet another appeal went out to Bormann, who sent another
urgent letter to Lammers: if the credits were not approved, he wrote, the film could
not be completed and the money invested would be lost:

This situation has been presented to the Führer; this film is made with the
approval and corresponding support of the Führer, and he has today emphasised
that after completion the film should gross considerable foreign currency abroad.
For these reasons the Führer wishes that the 240,000 pesetas be paid to Frau
Riefenstahl.36

Bormann did add that he would make Frau Riefenstahl aware that in no case would her
further requests for foreign currency be approved.37 This correspondence concerning
foreign currency should make clear just how privileged Riefenstahl’s position was.
No other film director was able to bypass the Minister for Propaganda as well as
the Minister for Economics. Her problems, however, were by no means over.
Location shooting was finally completed in the summer of 1943 when Riefenstahl
was able to go to Spain, despite having given previous assurances to the contrary—she
still required additional indoor shooting for some linking shots.38 With scant
resources being fought over, she fired off letters to Max Winkler, responsible for the
film industry at Reich level, who intervened with the newly appointed
Reichsfilmintendant, SS Gruppenführer, Hans Hinkel, who had been appointed to get
the film industry ‘back on track’ (Winkler’s words).39 As a consequence, she was able
to use the Barrandov Studios in Prague for September 1944, but had difficulty in
obtaining technicians, now in short supply because of either serving at the front or
being needed for work on other films.40 When her request for a former cameraman
was refused, she was not adverse to making a veiled threat of going to Bormann again,
playing on her direct link to Hitler. She also made extravagant claims for her film—
the photographic technique is not to be compared to any other German film.41
She got her cameraman but was told that this was at considerable cost to the Terra
Film Company who were now likely to make one less colour film.42 Altogether only
nine colour films were ever made during the Third Reich. Riefenstahl also complained
that Harlan was getting too great a share of resources for the high-priority propaganda
extravaganza, Kolberg, with its large cast of Wehrmacht extras which opened on 30
January 1945. She also approached Harlan directly to request his sound recordist.43
As late as April 1945, ensconced in her Tyrolean retreat to escape the Berlin
bombing, she was beseeching the Propaganda Ministry to locate some actors for
synchronisation.44 Rather late in the day she had also informed the Propaganda
Ministry that some members of her crew were now free either for other work or for
 LENI RIEFENSTAHL’S GYPSY QUESTION REVISITED 27

the Volkssturm, the home front militia for those under or over military age.45
So obsessed was Riefenstahl with completing her film that she seemed oblivious of the
pending German defeat. A desperate cable dated 8 April 1945 (just under one month
before German capitulation) but date-stamped Berlin 19 April 1945 (eleven days
before Hitler’s suicide) implores the Propaganda Ministry to intervene and locate
three actors, including Minetti (Don Sebastian), who have now disappeared.
Riefenstahl needed them for synchronisation in Kitzbühel in the Austrian Alps, where
she had moved her company: ‘Know no exact address. Could not reach them. Need
them urgently. Many thanks for your trouble Leni Riefenstahl.’46
Tiefland, in black and white, became the Third Reich’s third most expensive
film—the two most expensive were in colour, Münchausen and Kolberg—thus it cost
more than the other seven colour films. Its soaring costs can be attributed to the
record length of time it took to make, though Riefenstahl herself also blamed it on her
ill health and on delays in finding a tame wolf for a crucial scene.47 It could not be
construed as a propaganda film (either overt or covert), nor was it essential to the
war effort though it might have taken the minds of audiences off the war. It was, to
put it simply, payback from Hitler for splendid work. Nor can Tiefland be understood
as an act of resistance on Riefenstahl’s part because the tyrannical lord, Don Sebastian,
is killed. That view was first argued by the film-director Helma Sanders-Brahms,
and later taken up by Robert von Dassanowsky.48 That the script added a scene
about a peasant uprising was for dramatic rather than political reasons.49 Ultimately,
Tiefland was not dissimilar to Das blaue Licht, allowing her to work again within
the same genre.50 Just as it is difficult to believe that Riefenstahl was unpolitical when
making Triumph of the Will, similarly it is difficult to accept that she was political
when making Tiefland. Indeed, her memoirs indicate the opposite: Tiefland’s
advantage, she claimed, was that it had ‘nothing to do with politics or war’.51
Riefenstahl’s backers should be credited with some insight into what should and
should not be promoted. Riefenstahl was always persona grata with Hitler: her last
visit to him was as late as 30 April 1944,52 when the film was almost—but not
quite—complete.
Gypsies have lived in German lands since the late 15th century. In German they
are no longer referred to as Gypsies (Zigeuner), since that name is so closely associated
with the Third Reich’s Gypsy Question (Zigeunerfrage). Instead, they are referred to as
Sinti and Roma, the names of two different Gypsy groups living in Germany—the
Sinti having lived there longer. In English too, on occasion, Romany or Roma replaces
Gypsy. Gypsies originate from India—we know this because of their language and
some of their customs, probably they were a lower caste who left because of
persecution, reaching Europe in several waves from the 14th century onwards.
Itinerant, some were forced to settle as in eastern Austria in the 18th century.
It is useful to compare the plight of the Gypsies with the plight of the Jews about
which there is a greater awareness. The Jewish ‘Question’ or problem had first been
posed in the 19th century by German antisemites, which Hitler and his followers took
over and to which they also developed a solution. They took little interest in the
Gypsies: Hitler did not mention them in Mein Kampf.53 The authors of the Nuremberg
Laws (Stuckart and Globke) did comment in 1935: ‘as a rule only the Jews and the
Gypsies are of foreign blood in Europe’.54 That, however, was the only link with the
Jews. The latter posed the greater threat—an influential minority bent on destroying
28 HISTORICAL JOURNAL OF FILM, RADIO AND TELEVISION

the German ‘race’ and culture and, if you believe the Protocols of Zion, out to rule
the world.
The Gypsies were perceived differently since they lacked cultural influence and
lived on the social margins, believed to be work-shy, prone to criminality, a threat to
health and sanitary conditions—though such characteristics were also attributed to
Jews in the antisemitic documentary, Der ewige Jude (1940). In 1937 Robert Kramer,
a so-called Gypsy expert, described the Gypsies as ‘more of a pest than a danger,
given their lack of moral and social constraints’.55 Their primitiveness, in contrast to
the ‘sophistication’ of the Jews, did not pose the same danger to German society or
culture. Jews were thus perceived as powerful, while Gypsies, given their low social
status, were not.
That Gypsies were a menace did not originate with the Nazis. Until the late 1930s
German Gypsies were treated no differently than Gypsies in other countries or indeed
during the Weimar Republic.56 A German group of travellers, the Jenische, or ‘white
Gypsies’, were considered a greater problem in Bavaria during the Third Reich.57
Only on the eve of the Second World War did the Nazis turn their attention to the
Gypsies.
Concentration camps were first set up in 1933 to house political opponents,
especially Communists, some of whom were Jews. Later they housed asocial
elements, which included Gypsies. In late 1937, ‘A Decree on the Fight to Prevent
Crime’ led to the arrest of many Gypsies who became some of the early inmates of
Buchenwald, established in 1937, and of Ravensbrück (for women), established
slightly later. In late 1938, the persecution of Gypsies began to change qualitatively.
They came under the control of the Criminal Police (because of their alleged links to
crime) while the Jews were under the control of the Gestapo. In concentration camps,
both were under the control of the SS.
Another significant difference with the Jews was that Gypsy Mischlinge constituted
the real danger with criminality also being linked to miscegenation. It was eventually
decided that pure Gypsies constituted only 10% of the Gypsy population. In contrast,
it was the pure Jew, not the Jewish Mischling, who posed the serious threat. Nazi
diehards would have targeted the Jewish Mischlinge too, but it was decided politically
inadvisable since it would antagonise their ‘Aryan’ relatives.58 Antagonising the
Gypsies’ non-Gypsy relatives did not pose a problem. They were already suspect for
consorting with Gypsies.
Amazingly, Himmler had a soft spot for the Gypsies. For ‘Aryan’ aficionados the
swastika was a Sanskrit symbol, and since the Gypsies too came from India—their
different languages or dialects are Sanskrit-based (or Indo-European)—they could, in
theory, occupy a special position, unlike the non-Aryan Jews, allegedly speaking
Hebrew, a Semitic language, which is non-Indo-European. To Himmler, deep into
arcane ‘Aryan’ theories, the pure Gypsy was special.59 Thus the itinerant pure-
blooded Gypsy was protected, or if that is too generous a term, did not come in for
quite the same degree of persecution. Some were, it seems, saved from
extermination, and their saviour was Himmler.60
In 1936, on the eve of the Olympics, a ‘Decree for the Fight against the Gypsy
Plague’ was issued. This called on local authorities to force Gypsies to settle in a
specific place but did not differ significantly from Weimar policy. For Nazis and race
‘scientists’, however, Gypsies also constituted a threat to the purity of German blood.
 LENI RIEFENSTAHL’S GYPSY QUESTION REVISITED 29

In late 1938, a Himmler ‘Decree for the Fight against the Gypsy Plague’, used racial
criteria for the first time. It called for the ‘regulation of the Gypsy Question according
to racial characteristics’ and ordered the registration and racial examination of all
Gypsies.
At the outbreak of war, the Gypsies’ right to roam was halted; they became
subjected to compulsory labour; some were put in camps; 2500 were sent to Poland
in May 1940, and 5000 from Austria to the Lódz ghetto in November 1941. Not all
Gypsies were put into collection camps where they could remain with their families.
But even in Auschwitz they were allowed to remain in family camps, which hardly
constitutes privileged treatment.
Policies towards Gypsies were less consistent than towards Jews. Initially, the
Gypsies were not earmarked for destruction. In December 1942, Himmler issued
another decree, deporting allegedly asocial Gypsy Mischlinge to a special Gypsy camp
in Auschwitz, but exempting good Mischlinge and racially pure Gypsies; 13,000 were
deported from the Reich, including Roma and Mischlinge, and also from the Balkans.
Some were used for medical experiments. In the summer of 1944, to make way for
newcomers, some were sent from Auschwitz to other concentration camps, while
children, the elderly and the sick were gassed. There is also a debate about numbers
since no precise figures exist for the pre-war Gypsies and Gypsy Mischlinge, nor for
those later killed. The total number of those killed could be as high as 196,000 from a
pre-war European Gypsy population of possibly 831,000.61
What then did Riefenstahl know? Certainly more than she ever maintained. She
had to obtain permission to use the Maxglan extras. A contract was drawn up with the
Criminal Police stipulating that the extras must be kept isolated, especially from
prisoners of war. Her company paid all costs, not only for room, board and transport
but also for two reserve Criminal Policemen (from the rural Gendarmerie); each
adult extra was given the daily rate of seven Reichsmarks (just under three dollars a
day), which went direct to the Salzburg Mayor for the Gypsy Gemeinschaftskasse
(communal fund). She had to report illness or any attempts at escape.62 It should have
been clear to her that Gypsies were not free persons and were in this camp for no
other reason than for being Gypsy.
The Maxglan extras were used in the autumn of 1940 and again in the summer of
1941 and sent to Krün in the Bavarian Alps for at most a few weeks on each occasion.
Riefenstahl could not have failed to notice their armed guards. She always strenuously
denied having been in Maxglan in August 1940 to select them. (Her presence is not
actually mentioned in any documents but, given her need for total control and interest
in physiognomy, is likely.) Filming was suspended in November 1940 due to bad
weather, and resumed in August 1941 with another request for extras.63 According to
the extant lists, the total number of Maxglan extras for both years was 51.64
The agreed wages for this, as for other work, went into a communal fund to
support those unable to work. As the extras never saw this money, it is not surprising
that some survivors believed that they had never been paid.65 Some were given
clothing, shoes and pocket-money.66 Work on a film was of course less arduous than,
for example, work on the road, but many children were used and it is unlikely that
they were given special consideration. Furthermore, there are allegations that some
sequences were shot by the perfectionist Riefenstahl 25–30 times.67 Some survivors,
however, who were then child extras, refer to ‘Tante Leni’, which suggests an
30 HISTORICAL JOURNAL OF FILM, RADIO AND TELEVISION

FIGURE 2 Bavarian Alps (near Krün), summer, 1941. Gypsy extras being transported under guard. In the
foreground, a reserve policeman from the rural Gendarmerie. Erika Groth-Schmachtenberger, Bildarchiv
Preussischer Kulturbesitz, Berlin.

amicable relationship; they also mention rewards of chocolate.68 Doubtless the

conditions for filming for this short period were better than in the camp; moreover
filming also took place in summer and autumn. As the farmers in the district
had refused to take them in, the extras—with the exception of one family, the
Winters—were housed in a large barn, which was kept locked at night.69 According
to a Salzburg Criminal Police report, Riefenstahl who had ‘personally directed the
filming’ was so pleased with the good work of two Gypsy families (the Winters and
the Reinhardts), that she requested that they be given exceptional support. The police
suggested that she pay for the purchase of clothing.70
Two survivors, who were not children at the time, later provided harsh accounts.
Rosa Winter published her story in 1987. Fearing that her family was to be deported,
she had run away from the film set, was arrested and kept in a Salzburg prison, where
Riefenstahl visited her to persuade her to go back to the set. She refused, was then
sent to Ravensbrück, which she survived. Riefenstahl never challenged this story.71
 LENI RIEFENSTAHL’S GYPSY QUESTION REVISITED 31

In 2002, another story came to light about an extra named Anna who wished to
remain anonymous. Riefenstahl had been injured and Anna, then 20, doubled for her
in a riding scene. Riefenstahl wanted to reward her. The girl consulted her
mother who suggested that she ask for the release of her siblings from concentration
camps—two brothers from Dachau and Buchenwald and sisters from Ravensbrück.
Riefenstahl drove a hard bargain; she could only arrange for the release of one. The
mother decided on the son with the heart condition who two weeks later appeared in
Salzburg. He and his sister were later deported to Auschwitz; she survived.72 When
this story broke in 2002, Riefenstahl did not respond but by then was in a legally weak
position.
Fifty photographs, including some of Riefenstahl directing, were taken in Krün in
September 1941 by Erika Schmachtenberger (1906–1992; later Groth-
Schmachtenberger).73 A nature and ethnographic photographer active from 1932 to
1982, she also worked as a press photographer and produced stills for the film
industry. Between 1941 and 1944, she worked for Tobis. It is not clear how
she came to take these photographs—they are not stills. It is likely that
Groth-Schmachtenberger found work at Tobis after working in Krün. Her story
was that she came across the film-set while out walking in the Alps in September 1941
and stayed to take pictures.74 Her specialty was architecture (churches, palaces) and
rural people in folk costume, Germans, Tyroleans etc. who were rapidly becoming an
extinct species. Why she chose people in folk costume is not known—possibly

FIGURE 3 Bavarian Alps (near Krün), summer, 1941. The Tiefland set (a Spanish village). Riefenstahl,
seated right. To her right stands a soldier who observes filming. Bildarchiv Preussischer Kulturbesitz, Berlin,
Erika Groth-Schmachtenberger, Krün 1941.
32 HISTORICAL JOURNAL OF FILM, RADIO AND TELEVISION

because it had become vogue in the Third Reich. But between 1935 and 1939 she had
also photographed Gypsies in Yugoslavia, Hungary, Romania and Southern France.
She was a fine photographer, and her photographs can now be found in a number
of German archives.75
These Tiefland photographs are mainly of Gypsies dressed as Spanish peasants.
They also show Riefenstahl directing. One shows her seated in her director’s chair.
Standing next to her is a soldier. His crumpled uniform, missing belt and trousers not
tucked into his boots suggest working dress. What was he doing there? Had he been
assigned to work on the set in the summer of 1941 as the Soviet Union was being
invaded?
A story later circulated that the actor selected to play the handsome shepherd had
been selected by Riefenstahl from two thousand mountain troops who had paraded
before her.76 In her memoirs she claims to have found him at a ski race, a 23-year-old
army orderly whom the Wehrmacht had posted to the Arlberg area as a skiing
instructor. She needed an innocent for the role, she insisted. An amateur, he required

FIGURE 4 Bavarian Alps (near Krün), summer, 1941. The shepherd, a non-professional actor selected
by Riefenstahl, surrounded by mountain troopers (Gebirgsjäger), possibly his friends. Erika
Groth-Schmachtenberger, Bildarchiv Preussischer Kulturbesitz, Berlin.
 LENI RIEFENSTAHL’S GYPSY QUESTION REVISITED 33

elocution lessons.77 A photograph shows him smiling, surrounded by mountain

troopers (Gebirgsjäger).78 Were they his friends who had come to the set and are having
a laugh at seeing him in a film?
Groth-Schmachtenberger was a talented woman like Riefenstahl, four years
her junior, also trying to establish herself in a male-dominated profession. Given
her choice of subject matter—she came from the Catholic Würzburg area—was she
also drawn to the Nazi vision of the German past or was this because she knew what
would sell? After the war, she continued to photograph rural people in costume. She
also made her Tiefland photographs available to a Munich publisher of a mass
circulation journal, Revue, as well as her notes taken on the set. They were offered as
evidence of Riefenstahl’s abuse of the extras and resulted in Riefenstahl taking the
publisher to court—her first court case on the issue. Unfortunately, we have
no information for Groth-Schmachtenberger’s motives. They may have been personal,
or financial or political—personal in not having liked Riefenstahl, financial because
Revue paid her and in the immediate post-war era she certainly would have needed the
money, or political, in not wanting to see Riefenstahl rehabilitated.
Eight months after filming ended in Krün, in the spring and summer of 1942,
the interior sequences were shot in the Berlin-Babelsberg studios. The eminent
director G. W. Pabst, having returned to Germany in 1939, directed some of the
actors, including Riefenstahl, though an ungrateful Riefenstahl claims to have had to
redo some of the sequences and he was not credited.79 Extras were mainly needed for
the tavern sequence where Riefenstahl with castanets does her flamenco
pastiche.80Recruited from Berlin-Marzahn, they form the male audience who,
stony-faced, observe her dancing. Riefenstahl’s company had to apply to the Criminal
Police to obtain travel permits since during the war Gypsies were forbidden to
use public transport.81 It seems that, unlike the Maxglan extras, they got
themselves to the Babelsberg studios, at the opposite end of Berlin, under their
own steam—Babelsberg was in the southwest near to Potsdam while Marzahn was in
the northeast. Filming lasted into the summer, some extras being used for as many as
57 days. Everyone was paid at a rate which was more than double that of the Maxglan
extras, though probably because the company did not bear costs for food and
lodging.82 Some were paid more than others and one, who worked a similar number
of days, double the rate, doubtless because he had a small speaking part. This,
technically speaking, makes him not an extra.83 On the evidence of the extant
photographs as well as the film, he will have been used both in Krün for outdoor
filming and in Babelsberg for indoor filming.
A month before the Berlin filming began, the Reich Minister of Finance
introduced a special tax (Sozialausgleichsabgabe) for Gypsies. Like the Jews and the
Poles previously, the Gypsies now had to pay a 15% surtax on their income because
they did not pay dues to the German Labour Front. Riefenstahl’s company provided a
list of the 66 Marzahn extras for whom the tax had been paid, six months after the end
of the Babelsberg filming and five weeks after the liquidation of Marzahn. Almost all
the inmates by this time had been sent to Auschwitz. Altogether we have names for
117 extras used for Tiefland: 66 for Marzahn and 51 for Maxglan. Forty-eight names
have been traced against the published Auschwitz death lists.84 Doubtless many more
could be found, but the process is time consuming.
34 HISTORICAL JOURNAL OF FILM, RADIO AND TELEVISION

FIGURE 5 Riefenstahl dances, Marzahn extras in the background. On the guitar is the extra with the small
speaking part. Tiefland still, Library of Congress.

FIGURE 6 Bavarian Alps (near Krün), summer, 1941. The ‘Spanish beggar dancer’, Riefenstahl, dressed as
a Gypsy, leads her caravan into the village. Seated behind her is her Gypsy keeper, played by the Gypsy extra
with the small speaking part. Erika Groth-Schmachtenberger, Bildarchiv Preussischer Kulturbesitz, Berlin.
 LENI RIEFENSTAHL’S GYPSY QUESTION REVISITED 35

When finally released, Tiefland was 97 minutes long. The Gypsy extras appeared
in several sequences. Two outdoor sequences involve the Maxglan extras (90 seconds
and 2 minutes respectively). A number of children are used and those who, in an early
sequence, come to gaze at Riefenstahl in her caravan are filmed with some charm.
Two indoor sequences (3 minutes and 15 seconds respectively) involve the Marzahn
extras: in one, the men observe Riefenstahl’s flamenco; in the other some women sit
in a gallery above the wedding party. Another sequence involves the Gypsy extra with
a small speaking part (just under 4 minutes). It is he who delivers Riefenstahl to Don
Sebastian, says a few words, has a drink, plays cards and is later thrown out. (He also
appears earlier when the caravan arrives in the village but does not speak. Altogether
these sequences with the extras occupy just over 10 minutes of film time. Not all
extras were Gypsies: South Tyrolean villagers, whom Riefenstahl had used in Das blaue
Licht, also appear as ‘Spanish’ peasants as do some professional actors while Spanish
horsemen are used in the Spanish location sequence.
In the post-war period, the Tiefland extras proved a thorn in Riefenstahl’s side,
perhaps the greatest thorn. Twice she went to court to clear her name, and shortly
before her death was almost taken to court for denying their fate.85At her
denazification in 1948 she was completely cleared—like many other film directors,
she had not been a party member. Her clearance caused the French occupation
authorities to insist on two more re-hearings until at the final one, two years later, she
was placed in Category IV (fellow traveller). This category allowed her to work in her
former profession, which she never did, though not for want of trying.86 Riefenstahl
had been no jobbing director but one with unlimited time, funding and a direct link to
the head of state. This now made her something of a financial risk in a greatly reduced
and decontrolled film industry. Both the clearance of Riefenstahl and of Harlan
caused surprise. A media outcry led to the latter’s trial for crimes against humanity of
which he was twice acquitted after which he was able to resume film-making.
One week after Harlan’s first acquittal on 1 May 1949, Revue, the Munich
illustrated mass circulation weekly, published a one-page spread entitled ‘The
‘‘Unfinished’’ of Riefenstahl: What is happening with Tiefland?’ and included five
photographs by Erika Groth-Schmachtenberger—three of the extras—and a short
account of Tiefland and the Gypsy extras. It mentioned that the French had confiscated
Tiefland, and rejected Riefenstahl’s request to be allowed to complete the film. The 60
(sic) extras were described as ‘film slaves’ taken from ‘concentration camps in Berlin
and Salzburg’, who were ‘initially excited at the prospect of exchanging work in
munitions factories with film work. Yet Leni did not let them off easily’ and was
accused of lacking ‘feminine tenderness’: ‘Scenes, which other directors would shoot
six or seven times, were repeated twenty-five to thirty times’. The situation of the
extras was made clear: ‘In the evening the Gypsies were escorted by gendarmes back
to their camp’ and the article concluded by posing the question: ‘How many will have
survived the concentration camps?’87
Riefenstahl sued the publisher with legal aid and won, insisting that the extras had
been well cared for. Testifying on her behalf was the former head of the Salzburg
Police, also a member of the SS,88 while one Gypsy survivor was almost laughed out
of court when contradicting herself and was accused of providing false information.89
Nevertheless, it is significant that already in 1949 Riefenstahl’s use of Gypsy extras
proved an Achilles heel.
36 HISTORICAL JOURNAL OF FILM, RADIO AND TELEVISION

FIGURE 7 Bavarian Alps (near Krün), summer, 1941. Gypsy children. The boy in the centre appears in brief
close-up in an early sequence. Erika Groth-Schmachtenberger, Bildarchiv Preussischer Kulturbesitz, Berlin.

The judge found Revue wrong on a number of points: Maxglan, despite

‘the barbed wire’, lacked the character of a concentration camp while Gypsies, in
some areas, could still roam freely. According to some witnesses, collection camps to
1943 contained only asocial and criminal elements and the barn, which housed the
extras, had been kept locked at night to prevent stealing.90 We now know that Revue
was closer to the truth. The judge criticised the publisher, Helmut Kindler, for not
checking Groth-Schmachtenberger’s notes though agreed that he had accepted them
in ‘good faith’. Fined (DM600 plus costs), he was required to publish
a retraction.91Tiefland finally opened five years later in 1954 to mixed reviews,
Jean Cocteau having failed to persuade the German government to allow its screening
in Cannes.92
The second libel trial came after the film-maker, Nina Gladitz, produced a
documentary in collaboration with Josef Reinhardt, a surviving extra, aged 13 at the
time of filming in 1940, and who since 1945 had been active in pursuing
compensation and justice. Entitled Zeit des Schweigens und der Dunkelheit (Time of Silence,
Time of Darkness), Gladitz gave her reason:
 LENI RIEFENSTAHL’S GYPSY QUESTION REVISITED 37

Riefenstahl has been portrayed as a misguided, myopic artist. When I began to

pursue this, everyone said, ‘Let’s forget all this.’ Well, I feel we must not forget
anything so tragic.93

Shown on Westdeutsche Rundfunk (Cologne) in 1982 and by Channel 4 in Britain, the

60-minute film focussed on the Maxglan extras. Reinhardt interviewed the survivors,
mainly his relatives, who referred to ‘Tante Leni’ and were adamant that she had
appeared at the collection camp to select them, insisted that they had been compelled
to work on the film, had not been properly paid, and most seriously, that she had
known that they would be sent to Auschwitz. The documentary concluded with
sequences of Riefenstahl in 1980 in Freiburg giving a lecture on the Nuba at the
invitation of the Badische Zeitung (with Reinhardt seated in the audience) and at a book
signing the following day. Riefenstahl accused Gladitz of using a false name to obtain
permission to film her.94 When she learned of plans to screen the documentary for a
second time at a Baden-Württemberg film festival, she decided to go to court. Failing
to interest the Munich State Prosecutor in pressing criminal charges, she turned to the
civil courts for an injunction forbidding further screenings and sued on grounds of
‘monstrous defamation’.
The civil case was first heard in the Freiburg Landgericht (District Court) in
November 1985. In June 1986, the judge decided mainly in Gladitz’s favour against
which Riefenstahl appealed, but the Oberlandesgericht (Superior District Court) in
Karlsruhe reached a similar decision in March 1987. Riefenstahl’s libel action had
failed. Her claim that she had never set foot in Maxglan to select the extras and had
paid them a hefty 30 marks a day was rejected. She was especially incensed by failing
to prove that she had never visited the camp but there was no reference in the
Salzburg documents either to confirm her presence or absence. That she had not paid
them 30 marks daily is apparent from the same documents. Moreover, the extras had
been compelled to work since labour was compulsory. Riefenstahl won on only one
count, namely that at the time of filming she could not have known the extras were
destined for Auschwitz. Some survivors claimed she could have interceded on their
behalf, and had even promised to do so. However, Auschwitz was not yet a Gypsy
destination between autumn 1940 and summer 1941. Such comments had to be cut,
non-compliance resulting in a fine of DM500, 000 or six months detention. The film
was withdrawn and never again screened.95
Shortly after this judgment in 1987, Riefenstahl published her memoirs in which
she discussed both cases and claimed to have ‘bumped into many of my Tiefland
Gypsies’ after the war, some of whom had expressed gratitude.96 Nevertheless, the
issue rankled. When asked at the Frankfurt Book Fair in October 2000 for the
greatest lie perpetrated against her, she replied: ‘That I was in a concentration camp
and there engaged Gypsies for my film.’ She even had letters from the Gypsies
recalling that this had been ‘the greatest time of their lives’.97
In an interview in April 2002, several months before her centenary, Riefenstahl
returned to the Gypsy question, this time going further: ‘After the war we have seen
again all the Gypsies who worked on Tiefland. Nothing has happened to a single one.’98
Now the tables turned: she faced civil action from 76-year-old Zäzilie Reinhardt, one
of the last surviving Gypsy extras, supported by Rom e V, a Cologne-based local
Gypsy association. Riefenstahl’s production company issued a press statement in
38 HISTORICAL JOURNAL OF FILM, RADIO AND TELEVISION

August denying her words, claiming that it had been a misunderstanding and that only
now had she learned of ‘the terrible fate of the extras’. But the interview had been
taped and Riefenstahl had signed the transcription as a true record. A deadline was set
for Riefenstahl to retract her words with the retraction being faxed shortly before the
expiration. Civil action had been avoided. But Rom e V still held a press conference to
make public their demands on behalf of Zäzilie Reinhardt. She was a member of the
panel and was interviewed about her experiences while seated under an enlarged
Groth-Schmachtenberger photograph of her as a 15-year-old. Rom e V asked that the
names of all the extras be added to the video; that the extras be described as Klein
Darsteller, minor actors, rather than extras; that the surviving extras s be compensated
not only for their labour, but also for the suffering that Riefenstahl had caused in
denying the fate of their murdered relatives. Interestingly, the original contract drawn
up by the Salzburg Criminal Police with Riefenstahl’s company had described them as
‘Klein Darsteller’.99
Rom e V sent the papers on to the Frankfurt State Prosecutor, since in Germany
it is a citizen’s right to request an investigation into Holocaust Denial (§130/3), a
criminal offence. On Riefenstahl’s centenary, the Prosecutor’s Office announced
a preliminary investigation but the following month decided not to proceed due to
lack of evidence, given Riefenstahl’s retraction. Another charge had been
considered—maligning the memory of the dead (§189/1), also a criminal
offence—but a decision was taken not to proceed on grounds of public interest,
given her age. Riefenstahl died the following year, aged 101.
Surprisingly, it was not the filming of party rallies that caused Riefenstahl the
greatest trouble in the post-war era but a feature film. She had some success in
presenting herself as unpolitical, but her ‘Gypsy question’ came to haunt her, not only
because she continued to increase the number of survivors—from ‘many’ to ‘all’,
when the reality was only a few—but also because in the half century since the war
Gypsies had become less marginalised, and their treatment under the Nazis more
widely known. (Compensation, however, took longer, especially for those who had
been in Marzahn, which had been established before the outbreak of war.)100 This led
to Riefenstahl having to face for the first time the prospect of civil and possibly even
criminal proceedings. For the last year of her life, she said nothing on the subject, but
that had been a condition set by Rom e V for dropping the civil action.
Their demands, however, that the surviving extras be paid and that all the extras
be acknowledged in the film credits were ignored.
Riefenstahl herself was, in some ways, a romantic, though a hard realist when it
came to organising her career or a film. But she could not stand the reality of war and
fled the Polish battlefield to take refuge in a feature film, Tiefland. Yet that involved
taking extras from a Gypsy collection camp, Maxglan, who were kept under guard
during filming and, at a later date, were deported to concentration camps like
Buchenwald or to an extermination camp like Auschwitz-Birkenau. Those extras she
later took from Marzahn worked in relatively freer conditions but their final
destination too was Auschwitz-Birkenau. Riefenstahl had her own ‘Gypsy Question’:
almost to her 100th year, she feigned ignorance about the fate of her extras and the
fact that they had not freely chosen to work for her.
 LENI RIEFENSTAHL’S GYPSY QUESTION REVISITED 39

Notes

1 Hans Barkhausen, Footnote to the history of Riefenstahl’s Olympia, Film Quarterly,

28(1) (Fall, 1974), 8–12. Erwin Leiser, Nazi Cinema, trans. Gertrud Mander and
D. Wilson (London, 1974), quotes (pp. 140–141) a letter of Goebbels to the
Charlottenburg court dated 30 January 1936: ‘The Olympia-Film Co. Ltd. is being
founded at the government’s request and with government funds . . . since the state
is unwilling to appear publicly to be the producer of the film.’ And one month
later: ‘It is clearly impracticable to have the Treasury itself acting as film producer.’
See also Rainer Rother, Leni Riefenstahl, The Seduction of Genius, trans. Martin H.
Bott (London, Continuum, 2002), pp. 81–83.
2 Leni Riefenstahl, The Memoirs of Leni Riefenstahl: the sieve of time (London, Quartet,
1992), pp. 103, 136–138, 143–147; Jürgen Trimborn, Riefenstahl: eine deutsche
Karriere, Biographie (Berlin, 2002), pp. 125–36. Rother, Leni Riefenstahl, The
Seduction of Genius, p. 190, n. 25 mentions the references to Jewish critics in the
1938 Tobis press-pack issued at the time of the film’s re-release.
3 Wolfgang Benz, Das Lager Marzahn: zur nationalsozialistische Verfolgung, in Helga
Grabitz, Klaus Bästlein, Johannes Tuches, eds, Die Normalität des Verbrechens (Berlin,
Hentrich, 1994), pp. 260–279; Sybil Milton, Antechamber to Birkenau: the
Zigeunerlager after 1933, in Grabitz et al., eds, Die Normalität des Verbrechens,
pp. 241–259; Michael Burleigh and Wolfgang Wippermann, The Racial State
Germany 1933–1945 (Cambridge, 1991), p. 117.
4 Erika Thurner, Die Verfolgung der Zigeuner, in Christa Mitterrutzner and
Gerhard Ungar, eds, Widerstand und Verfolgung in Salzburg 1934–1945 (Vienna and
Salzburg, Östereichischer Bundesverlag and Universitätsverlag Anton Pustet,
1991), p. 476; Erika Thurner, National Socialists and Gypsies in Austria, trans. Gilya
Gerda Schmidt (Tuscaloosa, Alabama, University of Alabama Press, 1998),
pp. 20–35.
5 Brigitte Hamann, Vienna: a dictator’s apprenticeship, trans. Thomas Thornton
(New York, OUP, 1999), p. 109.
6 Ibid., pp. 302–318; Riefenstahl, The Sieve of Time, pp. 153–156.
7 Trimborn, Riefenstahl: eine deutsche Karriere, pp. 198–199.
8 Riefenstahl, The Sieve of Time, p. 263.
9 I am grateful to Dr Anna Bohn for this suggestion, which she made as
commentator at the IAMHIST conference in Cincinnati, July 2005.
10 Riefenstahl, The Sieve of Time, p. 263.
11 Ibid., pp. 261–263.
12 Riefenstahl, handwritten letter to Julius [no last name], 8 March 1940,
Biographical Cuttings on microfilm, Wiener Library, London.
13 Revue, 1 May 1949; Riefenstahl, The Sieve of Time, p. 263 claims that she sent staff
to Spain rather than go herself to Spain in spring 1940.
14 Riefenstahl, The Sieve of Time, p. 265.
15 Elke Fröhlich, ed., Die Tagebücher von Joseph Goebbels (Munich, K. G. Saur, 1998),
viii, p. 34 (4 April 1940).
16 Riefenstahl, The Sieve of Time, p. 266.
17 Susan Tegel, ‘‘The Demonic Effect’’: Veit Harlan’s use of Jewish extras in Jud Süss
(1940), Holocaust and Genocide Studies, 14 (2000), pp. 215–241.
40 HISTORICAL JOURNAL OF FILM, RADIO AND TELEVISION

18 Jay Hoberman, Far from Lincoln Center, Village Voice, 2 October 1981 cited in
Rentschler, The Ministry of Illusion, p. 317, n. 88.
19 For an account of how Riefenstahl was almost taken to court over this issue in
2002, see Susan Tegel, Leni Riefenstahl’s ‘‘Gypsy Question’’, Historical Journal of
Film, Radio and Television, 23(1) (2003), 3–10.
20 Rother, Leni Riefenstahl, The Seduction of Genius, pp. 99–103.
21 Trimborn, Riefenstahl: eine deutsche Karriere, pp. 298–300.
22 Bundesarchiv, Berlin (cited hereafter as BArch) R43II/810b, Funk to Goebbels,
11 March 1942.
23 Ibid.
24 Ibid.
25 Ibid.
26 BArch, R43II/810b, Groskopf to Bormann, 31 July 1942. Groskopf (spelled as
Grosskopf in Riefenstahl’s memoirs) mentioned that the money for Italy had
seemed assured but had failed in Rome on formalities.
27 Ibid.
28 BArch R43II/810b Bormann to Lammers, 2 August 1942. It is possible that
Bormann did not actually show the papers to Hitler. See also Rother, Riefenstahl,
The Seduction of Genius, p. 124, 234, n. 21–23.
29 BArch R43II/810b Lammers to Funk, 6 August 1942. See also Riefenstahl, The
Sieve of Time, p. 290.
30 BArch R43II/810b Funk to Lammers, 17 August 1942. Funk mentions that
Riefenstahl had requested and obtained 825,000 lire for Italy and 470,000 pesetas
for Spain and was now making available 350,000 lire.
31 BArch R43II/810b, Riefenstahl GmbH to Walther, 27 February 1943. Riefenstahl
had obtained approval for Spanish pesetas on 15 May 1941, via her account with
the Tobis Film Company for money owed her, but later claimed she could
not use the funds for technical reasons. Her new request was made on
9 September 1942.
32 BArch R43II/810b Riefenstahl GmbH to Walther, 11 December 1942; BArch.
R109/111 Riefenstahl to Winkler, 18 June 1944
33 Trimborn, Riefenstahl: eine deutsche Karriere, p. 257.
34 Fröhlich, ed., Die Tagebücher von Joseph Goebbels (Munich, K.G. Saur, 1996), Teil 2,
Diktate 1941–1945, vi, p. 456 (16 December 1942). This entry also appears in
Louis Lochner, trans. and ed., The Goebbels Diaries (London, Hamish Hamilton,
1948), p. 186.
35 BArch R43II/810b, Funk to the President of the Reichfilmkammer, 13 March
1943.
36 BArch R43II/810b, Bormann to Lammers, 9 May 1943. Riefenstahl, The Sieve of
Time, p. 290 plays down the possibility that Bormann actually consulted with
Hitler. Rother, The Seduction of Genius, p. 113, also suggests that it is not clear
whether Bormann obtained Hitler’s personal approval.
37 Arch R43II/810b, Bormann to Lammers, 9 May 1943.
38 Rother, Leni Riefenstahl: the seduction of genius, p. 113. She claimed they were
linking shots for the Spanish and Dolomite location sequences as well as close-ups
of Minetti, the actor playing Pedro, and also of herself.
39 BArch R109/111 Riefenstahl to Max Winkler, 18 June 1944; 11 August 1944;
Winkler to Hans Hinkel, 26 June 1944; Winkler to Riefenstahl, 26 June 1944;
 LENI RIEFENSTAHL’S GYPSY QUESTION REVISITED 41

Walter Müller-Goerner to Riefenstahl, 5 July 1944; Berlin Document Center,

Riefenstahl file, reproduced in David Culbert, ed., Leni Riefenstahl’s Triumph of the
Will (University Publications of America, 1986), microform (cited hereafter as
BDC), Riefenstahl to Hans Hinkel, 11 September 1944; Riefenstahl, The Sieve of
Time, pp. 291–292.
40 BDC, Riefenstahl file, Riefenstahl to Hinkel, 20 August 1944; 11 September 1944;
Riefenstahl to Müller-Goerne, 9 December 1944.
41 BArch, R/109/111, Riefenstahl to Winkler, 18 June 1944.
42 Ibid., Müller-Goerne to Riefenstahl, 5 July 1944.
43 BDC, Riefenstahl file, Riefenstahl to Hinkel, 22 October 1944.
44 Ibid., Riefenstahl to Müller-Goerner, 8 April 1945.
45 Ibid., Riefenstahl file, Bauer to Scheibner, 18 April 1945.
46 BDC, Riefenstahl file, Riefenstahl to Müller-Goerner, 8 April 1945
47 Riefenstahl, The Sieve of Time, pp. 265–267, 274, 288.
48 Helma Sanders-Brahms, Tyrannenmord: Tiefland von Leni Riefenstahl, in Das
Dunklen zwischen den Bilder: Essays, Porträts, Kritiken, Verlag der Autoren, 1992, p.
246; Robert von Dassanowsky, ‘‘Wherever you may run, you cannot escape him’’:
Leni Riefenstahl’s self-reflection and romantic transcendence of Nazism in Tiefland,
Camera Obscura 35 (1995–1996), pp. 106–129.
49 Riefenstahl, The Sieve of Time, p. 262.
50 Eric Rentschler, The Ministry of Illusion (Cambridge, MA, Harvard University
Press, 1999), p. 48 writes that ‘for all its putative resistant energy, Lowlands still
relishes yet another Riefenstahl persona who is patently helpless, indeed
subservient to male power,’ a description which supports her initial attraction
to National Socialism.
51 Riefenstahl, The Sieve of Time, p. 261.
52 Trimborn, Riefenstahl: eine deutsche Karriere, pp. 351–352.
53 Guenter Lewy, The Persecution of the Gypsies (Oxford, 2000), p. 38.
54 Ibid., p. 42.
55 Thurner, National Socialists and Gypsies in Austria, p. 9.
56 Burleigh and Wippermann, The Racial State Germany 1933–1945, pp. 113–116.
57 Lewy, The Persecution of the Gypsies, p. 219.
58 Saul Friedländer, Nazi Germany and the Jews (London, 1997), p. 148.
59 Lewy, The Persecution of the Gypsies, pp. 136–39.
60 Ibid., pp. 142–143.
61 Ibid., pp. 221–222.
62 Landesarchiv, Salzburg, RSTH I/346/1940.
63 Landesarchiv, Salzburg, RSTH I/346/1941.
64 Landesarchiv, Salzburg, RSTH I/346/1940, 1941. Some of the lists are reproduced
in Henry Friedlander and Sybil Milton, eds, Archives of the Holocaust (New York and
London, 1991), pp. 178–180 and in Thurner, Die Verfolgung der Zigeuner, p. 504.
65 Dokumentation Östereichischen Widerstands, E 18518/3, Vienna (hereafter cited
as DÖW) E185/18/3.
66 Landesarchiv, Salzburg, RSTH1/246/1940.
67 Revue, 1 May 1949.
68 Riefenstahl The Sieve of Time, pp. 358–359 cites a letter of gratitude from an
Antonia Reinhardt, whose name however does not appear on the Maxglan lists of
extras. There is an Anna Reinhardt, but she is Josef’s mother and also illiterate.
42 HISTORICAL JOURNAL OF FILM, RADIO AND TELEVISION

Riefenstahl refers to a letter she received from the owner of the barn, Maria
Kramer, whose relatives Josef and Katharina Kramer owned the adjacent hotel,
confirming their good treatment. See also Thurner, Die Verfolgung der Zigeuner,
p. 479. Surviving extras refer to Tante Leni in the Nina Gladitz documentary, Zeit
des Schweigen, Zeit des Dunkelheit (1982). The chocolate is mentioned by the judge
in his summing up of the trial: DÖW E 18518/3.
69 DÖW, E185/18/3, Dr. Reinl’s sworn testimony.
70 Salzburg, Landesarchiv, 17 October 1940, RSTH I/3 98/1940, Memo from
Dr Pitter on behalf of the Salzburg Police Director, to the Reichstatthalter.
71 Rosa Winter, Soviel wie eine Asche, in Karin Berger, Elisabeth Holzinger, Lotte
Podgornik, Lisbeth N Trallosi, eds, Ich geb dir einen Mantel, dass du ihn noch in
Freiheit tragen kannst: Widerstehen im KZ, Öesterreichische Frauen erzählen (Vienna,
Promedia, 1987), pp. 77–81.
72 Offener Brief, Süddeutsche Zeitung, 22 August 2002.
73 Nineteen of these photographs can be found in the Bildarchiv Preussischer
Kulturbesitz, Berlin. But others can be found in other collections.
74 I am grateful to Nina Gladitz for this information.
75 Her photographs can be found in several university archives such as Augsburg,
Marburg and Munich (Institut für deutsche und vergleichende Völkerkunde).
76 DÖW, E 18518/3.
77 Riefenstahl, The Sieve of Time, pp. 262–263, 266.
78 I am grateful to Martin Boswell of the Imperial War Museum for help in
identifying the military uniforms.
79 Ibid., p. 287.
80 Ibid., p. 288.
81 Reimar Gilsenbach and Otto Rosenberg, Berliner Zeitung, 17–18 February 2001.
82 Ibid. Only a part of the list is reproduced; the complete list appeared on the Rom
e V website between August and September 2002: http://www/netcologne,
de-nc-hollku3.
83 I am grateful to Nina Gladitz for this information. She identifies this role as not
being performed by a professional actor.
84 Sterbebücher von Auschwitz, Death Books from Auschwitz (Munich, K. G. Saur, 1995),
3 vols; Memorial Book: the gypsies at Auschwitz-Birkenau (Munich, K. G. Saur, 1993),
2 vols. The Rom e V website between August and September 2002: http://www/
netcologne,de-nc-hollku3 provided this information.
85 See Tegel, Leni Riefenstahl’s ‘‘Gypsy Question’’.
86 Trimborn, Riefenstahl: eine deutsche Karriere, pp. 399ff, 418ff; Rother, Leni
Riefenstahl, The Seduction of Genius, pp. 125, 139ff.
87 Revue 1 May 1949.
88 Thurner, Die Verfolgung der Zigeuner, p. 622, n. 32. Anton Böhmer had lost his
post in May 1944 for not following Führer orders and decrees and initially was
sent to a concentration camp, but after a rehearing was condemned to hard labour
in Salzburg and Hamburg to the end of war.
89 DÖW, E 18518/3. The laughter was reported by critic and feuilletonist Alfred
Polgar, Volksrecht, 24 December 1949, Biographical Cuttings on Microfilm,
Wiener Library, London. See also Der Spiegel, 1 December 1949, p. 33;
Riefenstahl, The Sieve of Time, pp. 358–359, 365, 385.
90 DÖW E 18518/3.
 LENI RIEFENSTAHL’S GYPSY QUESTION REVISITED 43

91 Ibid.
92 Rother, Leni Riefenstahl, The Seduction of Genius, p. 124.
93 American Film, 9(5) (March 1984), 13.
94 Riefenstahl, The Sieve of Time, pp. 361–362.
95 Die Zeit, 9 October 1987. The line which was to be cut was: ‘I told aunt Leni—as
we had to call her—that Maxglan would be dissolved and at the very least at the
end of filming and all would be destroyed in Auschwitz. I said to her what we then
knew about Auschwitz that no one came back from there’.
96 Riefenstahl, The Sieve of Time, p. 358.
97 The Independent, 20 October 2000.
98 Heribert Fritz and Mareen Linnartz, ‘‘Ich bin sehr müde’’, Leni Riefenstahl über
ein Leben im Schatten Hitlers, ihren ersten Film seit 60 Jahren und die Sehnsucht
nach dem Tod, Frankfurter Rundschau, 27 April 2002.
99 Landesarchiv, Salzburg, RSTH1/246/1940.
100 Benz, Das Lager Marzahn: zur nationalsozialistische Verfolgung, pp. 275–276.

Susan Tegel, formerly head of history at the University of Hertfordshire, has published on
aspects of Third Reich film in this journal and elsewhere. She acted as historical adviser to
Rom e V at the time of the planned civil action against Leni Riefenstahl and was a member of
the panel at the press conference in August 2002. She is completing a book on the Nazis and
cinema, which is to be published by Hambledon and London. A chapter on the Tiefland extras
will appear in Gypsies during the Second World War, volume 4, The Aftermath in 2006.