Hitler and the Nazi Cult of Celebrity (10 page)

Goebbels presided over the newly created
Reichskulturkammer
(Chamber of Culture). Its goals were: ‘The promotion of German culture in the spirit of the people and of the Reich, to settle economic and social affairs of the cultural sector, and to balance the efforts of groups it controls.’
198
Within the
Reichskulturkammer
were seven chambers: Music, Press, Theatre, Radio, the Visual Arts, Literature and Film (called the
Reichsfilmkammer
– Chamber of the Cinema of the Reich).

Leading artists in the seven cultural fields were named ‘Presidents’ and ‘Vice Presidents’. Richard Strauss became President of the
Music Chamber, and Wilhelm Furtwängler, capitulating to Goebbels’s flattery, was made Vice President. Such people were chosen by Goebbels not just for their talent but also because – perhaps more importantly – they were among Germany’s biggest celebrities; Furtwängler was one of the very few who dared suggest that the banning of Jews was wrong and got away with it. These were household names, which were popular choices for such lofty callings.

The
Reichsfilmkammer
controlled every aspect of film production and distribution, right down to admission prices and advertising, although Goebbels did not nationalise the German cinemas, which, for the most part, were privately owned and operated. However, Goebbels set down strict rules and regulations for all cinemas which included mandatory showings of documentaries and newsreels at every film showing; even if the main features were not political, which few of them were, audiences were still force-fed Nazi propaganda.

Film propaganda had the highest priority in Germany even under the severe conditions of the last years of World War II. In order to boost the propaganda effect, the Nazis supported films being shown in large cinemas to large audiences where the feeling of being part of the crowd was all the more overwhelming for the individual spectator. Film shows were arranged in military barracks and factories, and the Hitler Youth arranged special film programmes –
Jugendfilmstunden
– in which only newsreels and propaganda films were shown. To supply rural and remote areas with films, the Party Propaganda Department –
Reichspropagandaleitung
– operated 300 trucks and two trains that carried all the equipment, including projectors and screens, for screenings held in places like village inns.

Because there were no government subsidies for the film industry, Goebbels founded the
Filmkreditbank
GmbH
in order to fund the industry; the money came from private investors, forcing the industry to remain profitable. A state-run professional school for politically reliable filmmakers, the
Deutsche Filmakademie Babelsberg,
was also founded, and membership to the
Reichsfilmkammer
was made mandatory for all actors, filmmakers and distributors. All films were pre-censored by the
Reichsfilmdramaturg
, which approved screenplays before filming commenced. A national film award was implemented to encourage self-censorship, and was given to films that demonstrated ‘cultural value’ or ‘value to the people’.

The
Reichsfilmkammer
was personally directed by Joseph Goebbels, although the officially named President of the
Reichsfilmkammer
was film director Carl Froelich. He had become a member of the National Socialists in 1933 and had presided over the
Gesamtverband der Filmherstellung und Filmverwertung
(Union of Film Manufacture and Film Evaluation).

Froelich was much admired by Hitler because he had directed
Richard Wagner
, the first film about the Master of Bayreuth, in 1913. Like many important silent movies it had a music score composed especially to be played by a live orchestra. Because the royalties on Wagner’s music proved too expensive, Giuseppe Becce, who played the title role, wrote a new musical score, so ironically nothing of Wagner’s music was heard. Becce was an Italian composer who wrote many scores for German films, from silents to talkies, and in 1932 composed the score for Leni Riefenstahl’s
Das Blaue Licht.
Since the end of the Great War, Becce had been director of the music department of Germany’s major film studio
Decla-Bioscop AG
, which in 1921 became
Universum Film AG
(UFA), where he continued to direct the music department.

Goebbels’s position as President of the
Reichskulturkammer
fulfilled all his dreams beyond his expectations. He once yearned to be a playwright, maybe even a producer of plays; now he had unparalleled power over every aspect of art and culture in Germany. The
Reichskulturkammer
had over 2,000 employees and hundreds of thousands of members from every area of the arts. The ideology of the chamber of culture was to eliminate the individual role of the creative artist, replacing it with a totalitarian role of the artist in a world where the state and culture were one and the artist a part of
the
Volk
, which was the ‘source’ of the artist’s ‘fertility’ according to Goebbels.
199
He declared with undisguised delight:

Goebbels abolished film criticism in 1936 and replaced it with
Filmbeobachtung
(film observation). Journalists, who were also organised as a division of the Propaganda Ministry, were permitted only to report on the content of a film, not offer judgement on its artistic merit or any other worth. Goebbels was the only judge on what was good and what was suitable for public consumption.

Goebbels, the failed playwright and novelist, had essentially become not just the head of all things cultural in Germany but Germany’s premier movie mogul, a position that thrilled him. ‘Joseph Goebbels was in complete control of UFA,’ noted Wolfgang Preiss. ‘Nothing could be done without the approval of Joseph Goebbels who was the propaganda minister for the Third Reich. And if you made films, you made them for the Third Reich.’ This effectively put every man and woman who worked in any section of German culture in a position of supporting the party, regardless of what their true politics were. ‘I am sure there were some who were [Nazis] but most I worked with just wanted to do good work, and you couldn’t work at all without working for UFA and that meant working for the Third Reich,’ said Preiss.
200

But Goebbels’s plans went far beyond that of being the supreme head of the German film industry and all things cultural. His ambitions were limited only by the circumference of the Earth: he would be the supreme head of film and culture throughout the
world
. He said in 1941, ‘It is my ultimate goal to establish the German film as the dominant cultural world power.’
201

Leni Riefenstahl filmed the Nuremberg rally in September 1933, but she was unable to use the number of cameras she had wanted, so made do as best she could. While she was learning her craft as a documentary filmmaker, Hitler was still learning his craft – how to move, how to behave in front of the camera – and the same was true for other party leaders. As a result, her first documentary for the Nazis was a modest affair compared to what was to come.

Of the ritualistic closing ceremonies, Goebbels wrote, ‘That is a church service,’ adding, ‘We don’t need the priests for that any more.’
202
He described the film as a ‘picture-symphony’ when it was premiered in December 1933.
203
The relationship between Riefenstahl and the Third Reich would reach greater heights.

Her personal relationship with Goebbels, however, was fraught. She claimed that he often made attempts to seduce her, and generally wrote disapprovingly of him in her autobiography
The Sieve of Time
. However, Goebbels’s diaries reveal no such animosity on his part, or any episodes of his attempted seductions.

A number of considerations should be made. Goebbels was precise with dates because he wrote in his diary every day. Riefenstahl kept no diary and wrote her memoir some forty years later. As a filmmaker, she was a storyteller, and like many
filmmakers
– and actors – she was prone to elaboration, sometimes combining different events into one, and relating conversations verbatim, as if she were writing a screenplay; this is familiar from almost any of the myriad of celebrity autobiographies available today. But biographers and historians have pointed to the many inaccurate dates in Riefenstahl’s version of events and her verbatim dialogue as indication that her accounts may be false. She denied her own Nazism, and must have written of Goebbels with disdain to distance herself ever further from the Nazis.

However, considering Goebbels’s reputation for pursuing attractive female film stars and engaging in affairs with some of them, it seems inconceivable that he would not have attempted the same with Leni Riefenstahl, and he would not have mentioned her rejection of him in his diary. While he was known for recording his life
in considerable detail, it was more usually in regard to his emotions rather than documenting every single moment and aspect of every single day; there is barely a mention of the ‘Hitler’ film in his diaries, though it remained in his mind. His diary entries regarding his Jewish girlfriend Else Janke display a hugely romantic persona and one generally submissive to the object of his love, such as his subjugation to her numerous attempts to break up with him. To write of himself as a Lothario was not in his nature.

Riefenstahl recollects how shortly before Christmas 1932, while Magda Goebbels was in hospital, Goebbels telephoned her several times a day. One afternoon he turned up at her flat unannounced and asked her to admit that she loved Hitler. She denied it. He told her he wanted her as his mistress: ‘I’ve been in love with you for such a long time.’ He fell to his knees, sobbing and holding her ankles. She ordered him to leave, and so he did, head hung low. He returned to her flat on Christmas Eve with a present and a further attempt to declare his love. She told him his place was with his wife.
204

One summer’s evening in 1933 Goebbels called again on Riefenstahl while she was entertaining friends. Unable to invite him in, they got into her Mercedes to escape the rain, and she drove off to avoid them being seen together. As they were passing through the woods of Grunewald, he put his arm around her; he swerved, the car hit a mound of earth and ended up at a precarious angle. Goebbels told her to catch a taxi home as he couldn’t be seen with her, and walked off into the darkness.
205

On 14 July 1933, new legislation declared that ‘the National Socialist Party of German Workers constitutes the only political party in Germany’, and followed with threats of arrest and imprisonment for those who did not obey. That month, while visiting the Wagner family, Hitler talked at length about getting old and complained bitterly that ten years of valuable time had been lost between the Beer Hall Putsch in 1923 and his accession to power. He found this all very regrettable because he predicted that it would take twenty-two years to get things in adequate shape so that he
could turn them over to a successor. He even talked about retiring when his work was done, when he would then take up residence in Berchtesgaden and, one supposes, sit as God guiding the destinies of the Reich until his death.
206

Sometimes the seamless blend of politics, romance and history that Goebbels sought in his feature films broke down, in Hitler’s opinion – and his opinion was about the only one that mattered. By and large Hitler did not interfere with Goebbels’s work, as indeed he rarely interfered with any of his ministers’ duties – once assigned a role in his ministry, he expected them to do their jobs and leave him alone. One of Goebbels’s most cherished cinema projects was a film about the Nazi saint Horst Wessel, based on the book
Einer von vielen
by Hanns Heinz Ewer, a novelised account of the SA hero’s life and death personally commissioned by Hitler. The book and film attempted to depict his life and his death at the hands of Communists. Goebbels had much admired the book when he read it in 1932,
207
and it seemed to him the basis for the perfect National Socialist film with Communist and Jewish villains and a German hero inspiring a nation. Ernst Hanfstaengl unofficially co-produced the film, which was directed by Franz Wenzler. It was a film commissioned by and made for the National Socialist Party.

The premiere of
Horst Wessel
was to be on 9 October 1933, what would have been Wessel’s birthday; the day had come to be known as ‘the anniversary’, as a result of the cult that had built up around Wessel, carefully crafted by Goebbels. But before the picture could be seen publicly, Goebbels withdrew it, forbidding it to be shown anywhere. He gave a lengthy explanation in what was supposedly an interview in
Der Angriff
– he probably wrote the whole article himself – saying that any film made about National Socialist ideals had to be of ‘absolutely first-class artistic quality’. He said the film was more important than others made about the SA, and the martyrdom of Wessel must not be sentimentalised; the film, however, contradicted the ‘historical truth’, and the character of Wessel in the film did not portray the real man. Goebbels did, at least, praise the music score. Asked by the ‘interviewer’ if the
ban was an attack on artistic freedom, Goebbels replied that it was the opposite, and would be welcomed by true artists because it demanded the highest standards.
208

Goebbels only allowed the film to be released after significant changes were made. The main character was renamed Hans Westmar and direct references to events in Wessel’s life were removed. Some suggest that the name was changed so as not to demystify Wessel,
209
and that some scenes were reshot so that rather than alienating his family, Westmar instead preaches class reconciliation.
210
It has also been suggested that the depiction of stormtroopers goading the Communists into violent fights was not in keeping with the image the National Socialists were trying to project. Under the title
Hans Westmar
, the film was released in December 1933.