Translator’s Introduction

Leni Riefenstahl May Seem like an odd selection for the short list of authors included in this volume, since her fame rests on her films in service of National Socialism, not on her skills as a mountaineer or writer. But for her place in mountain history, Riefenstahl demands inclusion. Her central role as an actress in Bergfilme (mountain films) and director of Nazi propaganda films, as well as aesthetic similarities between Weimarera mountain films and her later propaganda films, have served as fodder for the frequent condemnation of Bergfilme as protofascist works. Her 1933 memoir Kampf in Schnee und Eis (Struggle in Snow and Ice) describes the mountains with an emphasis on struggle, heroism, and physical hardship that matches the sentiment of the Weimar-era Bergfilme in which she played a key role. While the prose is not virtuosic, ranging from conversational and glib to pathos-laden and awkward, the text nonetheless offers an important opportunity to confront the persistently troubling relationship between Alpinism and fascism.

Kampf in Schnee und Eis was published in 1933. Riefenstahl had already acted in her last mountain film under director Arnold Fanck, to whom the book is dedicated, and had directed her own mountain film, Das blaue Licht (The Blue Light, 1932). But she had not yet sealed her reputation as Hitler’s preferred filmmaker with films such as Triumph des Willens (Triumph of the Will, 1935) and Olympia (1938). The book details her early career as a dancer, her first encounter with the Alps through Fanck’s 1924 film Der Berg des Schicksals (The Mountain of Destiny), her enthusiastic embrace of mountain sports in order to join Fanck’s filmmaking team, the complicated and physically strenuous work of filmmaking in the mountains, the process of directing her first film, as well as more reflective elements such as her ambivalence between competing career paths in dance and film.