Hitler and the Nazi Cult of Celebrity (11 page)

Goebbels certainly disliked the film in its original form for what he saw as its inaccuracies, and condemned it in his diary: ‘Most bloody stupid dilettantism.’
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He saw himself as the appointed defender of the cult of Horst Wessel, the ideologies of which embodied all that was fundamental within Goebbels’s propaganda, which emphasised and glorified the pervading sense of divinity and the cults of sacrifice and death. Moreover, Goebbels felt he had the right to monopolise the cult of Wessel and resented Wessel’s mother’s attempt to share in it. These cults all combined into one: the cult of celebrity. Famous names would help create world Nazism, and Nazism would create famous names – and destroy those who opposed it. Few epitomised this Nazi cult of celebrity more than Leni Riefenstahl: as a film director, her name was as famous as any actor; and she rose with the Third Reich, a celebrity created by Nazism, while at the same time helping to create the image of the Third Reich on film and in the mind. She was, simultaneously, both its creation and co-creator with the Great Creator, Hitler.

‘Prohibition of the film [
Horst Wessel
] is arousing great interest,’ noted Goebbels. ‘But I stand firm.’
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He was supported by many, including Riefenstahl, who sat with him at his home the day before the anniversary and abandoned premiere, and ‘rummaged through
Der Angriff
from Horst Wessel’s time’, he wrote. ‘Blessed
memories.’ They were later joined by actor Willi Fritsch, another member of the Nazi Party.

The next day Goebbels met with Hitler and
Horst Wessel
’s co-director Ernest Hanfstaengl, who disapproved of Goebbels’s actions over the film and was ‘agitating’ by refusing to offer Goebbels his hand. Goebbels noted Hitler’s displeasure at Hanfstaengl’s attitude – ‘Chief is furious with him’ – and refused to change his position on the film, claiming he was ‘responsible for the remembrance of Wessel’. Hitler agreed with him. Following the meeting, Goebbels went to the Friedrichshain hospital where Wessel had been treated, to dedicate the room where Wessel died as a memorial chamber. He described Wessel’s mother as ‘insufferable’.
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Then he went alone to Wessel’s grave.

Hanfstaengl disliked the final cut of the film because ‘it was too bourgeois in approach, emphasised Horst Wessel’s Christian background too much, was not full of the National-Socialist revolutionary spirit, was trite – everything was wrong.’
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Goebbels may have had another reason to ban the film in its original form. Both the book and the screenplay had been written by poet, philosopher and adventurer Hanns Heinz Ewers, renowned as a writer of short stories and novels, and particularly famous for his works of horror. He recognised cinema as a legitimate art form and began writing scripts for films as early as 1913.

He was a world traveller and was in South America when the First World War broke out, at which time he relocated to New York where he continued to write. There he spoke as a representative of Germany in an attempt to dissuade America from entering the war as Britain’s ally; this led to his arrest in 1918 as an ‘active propagandist’ and agent who had travelled to Spain during 1915 and 1916 using an alias and a false passport. He was also accused of travelling to Mexico to meet with revolutionary Pancho Villa in an attempt to persuade him to attack America.
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He was interned at Fort Oglethorpe, Georgia, without a trial, released in 1921 and sent back to Germany. Continuing his successful career as a writer, he became involved with the National Socialist
Party during the last years of the Weimar Republic, although he never officially became a member and disagreed with the party’s anti-Semitism. In his trilogy of novels about fictional adventurer Frank Braun – based on himself – the hero’s mistress Lotte Levi is Jewish, and a patriotic German. This would not have pleased Goebbels, who would have been ever more outraged to discover that Ewers had homosexual tendencies. Goebbels detested
homosexuality
and often tried to persuade Hitler to bring down the SA, within which it was rife.

Goebbels had liked the book
Einer von vielen
when he read it in 1932, and would have been aware of Ewers’s past as a patriotic German agent during the war, but clearly he had no knowledge at that time of some of Ewer’s sexual practices or he would never have approved of Ewers writing the screenplay for such a sacred project. It is possible that Goebbels, having become aware that Ewers had not joined the party and disagreed with the party’s anti-Semitic approach, had the author investigated, and towards the end of 1933, prior to the film being premiered, was informed of Ewers’s sexual practises. As the one ‘responsible for the remembrance of Wessel’, he had to prevent the memory of the Nazi saint from being tainted by such a corrupt soul as Ewers; consequently in 1934, just months after the film version of the Wessel story was banned, all of Ewers’s works, including
Einer von vielen
, were banned in Germany and all his assets and property seized. His screen version of the life of Horst Wessel would never be seen. He died from tuberculosis in poverty in Berlin on 12 June 1943.

Homosexuals and Jews were not to be tolerated in Goebbels’s new order of German culture. As well as being Germany’s moral defender and arbiter of taste who decided what films could be made, which ones would ultimately be shown, and what music the people could listen to, he became obsessed with removing anyone even remotely suspected of having Jewish ancestry from whichever area of the arts they worked in. It took time to set up the necessary bureaucracy, so expulsions didn’t begin until early in 1934. It would be another year before anti-Semitism would become a legality – to
be ratified at the 1935 Nuremberg rally – and therefore obligatory for all Germans.

According to Riefenstahl, she was summoned to the Propaganda Ministry and asked by Goebbels to make a film about the Nazi press; she rejected the idea. He told her that he liked her because she had a mind of her own and said, ‘I will never stop fighting for you’; then he grabbed her breast and tried to force himself on her. She attempted to escape, but he held her against the wall and tried to kiss her. She managed to press a buzzer, and he let her go just before his servant arrived. Following this event, she was summoned again; Goebbels accused her of criticising him and his staff and told her to get out of his sight.
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While Leni Riefenstahl was evading Goebbels’s advances, an exodus was taking place.

G
erman, Austrian and Hungarian writers, actors, directors and other celebrated artists, who were working in Germany and also happened to be Jewish, were getting out before it was too late. Among them was Max Reinhardt, a director of many acclaimed plays in Germany since 1902. Because of his Jewish ancestry, he left Germany for Austria in 1933; then in 1934 he went to America, where he had previously directed his own play
The Miracle
in 1924, to direct a stage production of
A Midsummer Night’s Dream
, following it with the famous film version. Both productions featured James Cagney as Bottom and Olivia de Havilland as Hermia; the play was staged at the Hollywood Bowl, and the film was produced at Warner Brothers. The latter was subsequently banned by Joseph Goebbels in Germany because of Reinhardt’s Jewish ancestry, and because the soundtrack featured music by Felix Mendelssohn, who was also Jewish.

Reinhardt returned to Austria in 1938, but fled Europe for good when Austria came under Nazi rule.
A Midsummer Night’s Dream
was his only film with sound; he was more interested in continuing his outstanding work as a director and producer of plays on both coasts of America, and he also founded a Hollywood-based theatre workshop and an acting school in New York. His was a considerable talent for Germany to lose. He died in New York in 1943.

Samuel Wilder was born to a Jewish family in Sucha Beskidzka in Austria-Hungary, and became a screenwriter in Berlin, working with Fred Zinnemann and Robert Siodmak on the 1929 movie
Menschen am Sonntag
(
People on Sunday
). In 1933 he chose to leave Germany and settle in Paris where he directed his first film,
Mauvaise Graine
, and then moved to America to pursue his film
career in Hollywood, where he became known as Billy Wilder and went on to write and direct such classics as
Some Like it Hot
,
Sunset Boulevard
and
The Apartment
. His mother, grandmother and stepfather all died in Auschwitz.

Fred Zinnemann, from Vienna, had already left Germany in 1930 to study film in America and went on to direct
High Noon, The Nun’s Story
and
A Man for all Seasons
. His friend Robert Siodmak was born in Dresden to Polish-Jewish parents, and became a screenwriter and director in Germany until the rise of the Nazis forced him to flee to Paris. At the outbreak of war he arrived in America and became established as a director of thrillers and
film noir
. He returned to Europe in peacetime and worked in both France and Germany.

Fritz Lang also fled. He was born in Vienna to a mother of Jewish extraction who had converted to Catholicism. He became one of Germany’s leading filmmakers with such early masterpieces as
Dr Mabuse: The Gambler, Metropolis
and
M
. In 1932 his wife, the actress and screenwriter Thea von Harbou, joined the National Socialist Party, but Lang fretted over the new regime, partly because of his Jewish heritage, and before long their marriage broke down irretrievably and they divorced. His 1933 film
The Testament of Dr Mabuse
, a remake of his earlier
Dr Mabuse
picture about a mad doctor who is also a master criminal, had its premiere delayed by Goebbels for ‘technical reasons’.
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At a meeting held at Goebbels’s home, where Lang and several other German filmmakers discussed censorship, Goebbels declared that Lang’s films displayed the style that Hitler wanted for German films.
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Yet not long after, on 30 March 1933, Goebbels banned the film on the grounds that it would incite public disorder, as it ‘showed that an extremely dedicated group of people are perfectly capable of overthrowing any state with violence’.
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Lang later claimed that Goebbels wanted him to make films for the Third Reich, so after the meeting Lang left for France that very night. Some dispute Lang’s account because he didn’t leave Germany until June, and even after that he made return trips to
Germany throughout 1934
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but, as with many storytellers, he likely embellished his account to add to the drama. Goebbels wrote in 1938 that on looking at
The Testament of Dr Mabuse
he was ‘struck by the dullness of its portrayal, the coarseness of its construction, and the inadequacy of its acting’, and yet he must have admired it because he kept a private print of it, uncensored, which he took delight in screening for close friends.
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Lang moved to America in 1936, where he became acclaimed as a master of
film noir
, much to Goebbels’s annoyance. Although Lang was a Catholic, his fears that he would have faced persecution as a Jew were realised when Nazi eugenics laws identified him as a Jew, by which time he was permanently absent from Germany.

Meanwhile, Lang’s former wife Thea von Harbou did well for herself working for the Third Reich, writing and directing an adaptation of Gerhart Hauptmann’s play
The
Assumption of Hannele
in 1934, and writing the screenplay for
Der Herrscher
(1937), which celebrated unconditional submission under absolute authority. It was directed by one of Hitler’s and Goebbels’s favourite filmmakers, Veit Harlan.

The exodus of considerable talent continued, and it was not just Jews fleeing from the Nazis. Novelist Thomas Mann was not Jewish, but had spoken out against National Socialism; he fled to Switzerland to escape the concentration camps. Erich Maria Remarque fled Germany because Goebbels asserted he was of Jewish decent. In 1943 his sister Elfriede Scholz was arrested by the Gestapo and tried in the
Volksgerichtshof
– Hitler’s ‘People’s Court’ – where she was found guilty of ‘undermining of military strength’ because she had considered the war lost. The court President, Roland Friesler, told her, ‘Unfortunately your brother has escaped us – you, however, will not escape us.’ She was guillotined on 16 December 1943.
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Those who remained to write, to make films, to ensure that German culture didn’t disappear altogether, had to toe the party line. With fear and paranoia spreading, neighbours began spying on neighbours, reporting anything that seemed in any way suspicious
to the Gestapo. Film stars were no exceptions to the rule. While anti-Semitism was rife in Germany during Hitler’s rule, many actors did not share such hatred, for instance Wolfgang Preiss, who began working in films during the war years: ‘I can only speak personally. I am an actor, I have worked with many nationalities. Italian, English, American, French, Jew. I do not care about nationality or religion. But hate for Jews was among many Germans who believed Hitler.’
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In 1933, just after Hitler took power, Marlene Dietrich was in America, where she was under contract to Paramount. Her husband Rudolf Sieber, with whom she had one child, Maria, sent her a telegram warning: ‘Situation Berlin terrible’ and ‘Jews in our business gone’.
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Dietrich had made several films in Hollywood, most of them directed by Josef von Sternberg, but had not intended to remain there, planning to return to Germany to make German films. Germany was her home, where her heart was. She had been born Marie Magdalene Dietrich on 27 December 1901 in Schöneberg, a district of Berlin. Her mother was from an affluent Berlin family who owned a clock-making firm, and her father was a police lieutenant. He died in 1911, and her stepfather, an aristocrat first lieutenant, died in 1916 from injuries sustained in the First World War. She was nicknamed ‘Lene’ (pronounced Lay-neh) within the family, and around the age of eleven she joined her two first names to form the then novel name of ‘Marlene’. She wanted to be a violinist, but after injuring her wrist she became a chorus girl on tour with Guido Thielscher’s
Girl-Kabarett
, in
vaudeville-style
entertainments and in Rudolf Nelson revues in Berlin.

In 1922 she failed an audition for theatrical Max Reinhardt’s drama academy but landed small roles in plays. That same year she made her film debut in a minor role in
So sind die Männer
(
The Little Napoleon
). After marrying Rudolf Sieber in Berlin on 17 May 1923, her career progressed through a succession of plays and musicals and leading roles in films until she shot to stardom as Lola-Lola in
The Blue Angel
, directed by Josef von Sternberg; this brought her, and him, to Hollywood.

She wasn’t Jewish, and was not at risk, but she was so alarmed by Sieber’s warning telegram that she decided not to return immediately to Germany, and attended a reception in France for German immigrants, including acclaimed Austrian tenor Richard Tauber, who had co-starred with Dietrich in the 1929 film
Ich küsse Ihre Hand, Madame
(
I Kiss Your Hand, Madam
). He had been assaulted in the street by a gang of Nazi brownshirts because of his Jewish ancestry, so decided to leave Germany and return to Austria. He, and others like him, told her what was happening in Germany, and she became more determined not to return there while Hitler was in power,
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even though her mother, sister Elisabeth and daughter Maria were still there. She returned to Hollywood.

Hitler and Goebbels called her a traitor for abandoning her country, but not all Germans felt that way. Actress Evelyn Künneke recalled, ‘She didn’t approve of what the Nazis were doing and had the chance to get away from it. It would be nonsense to think ill of her, or see it as treason.’
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The exodus continued. Fritz Kortner, the Austrian-born actor who made over eighty films from 1917 and famously portrayed Beethoven in
Das Leben des Beethoven
(
The Life of Beethoven
) in 1927, fled Germany in 1933. He worked in America as a character actor in many films, including two anti-Hitler films,
The Strange Death of Adolf Hitler
in 1943 and
The Hitler Gang
, playing Gregor Strasser, in 1944. He also directed plays and, after returning to Germany in 1949, directed several films.

The persecutions affected many who were not Jewish. Hans Albers, a legend of German cinema with over a hundred silent films to his credit, starred in the first German ‘talkie’ in 1929,
Die Nacht gehört uns
(
The Night Belongs to Us
). He had a Jewish girlfriend, actress Hansi Burg, daughter of the established actor Eugen Burg. She and Albers met and fell in love in 1925 and, knowing they needed to avoid a scandal, she moved into her own apartment. The couple were seen together only as friends and colleagues, while in private they continued their love affair. After Hitler came to power, Albers was one of many film stars and other
artists invited to the inauguration of Joseph Goebbels as President of the
Reichskulturkammer
, but he didn’t attend. He refused to join the Reich Film Chamber, which was mandatory for actors, nor would he attend government-sponsored events. He became one of the very few actors who remained in Germany to work under the Third Reich but didn’t receive an autographed photo of Hitler,
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an indication his resistance had come to the
Führer
’s notice. The Gestapo began keeping a watchful eye on Albers.

Threatened with a ban, he finally agreed to join the Reich Film Chamber, but was expelled from it in June 1934, his passport withheld and payments due to him suspended. The Gestapo had discovered his clandestine involvement with Hansi Burg. In Nazi Germany, there were few such secrets, and it was well known in the film business that the two were lovers; somebody had talked. Neither Hans nor Hansi were arrested, possibly because Goebbels had some unspoken sympathy for Albers’s case, having loved a Jewish girl himself. At the time, Goebbels needed stars of the calibre of Hans Albers.

In October 1935 Albers wrote to Goebbels that ‘in fulfilling my duty towards the [government … I have] solved my personal relations’ with Hansi Burg, asking that he therefore be accorded ‘the protection [the state] gives its artists’ and signing off with ‘Heil Hitler!’ Goebbels was reported as being very happy with this outcome.
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In fact, Albers had arranged with a Norwegian, Erich Blydt, to marry Hansi and live safely in Norway. Albers provided them with money, and met with Hansi whenever he could. Eventually Hansi left Norway for the safety of Switzerland, but her father Eugen Burg remained in Germany and was murdered in Theresienstadt concentration camp in 1944.

Hans Albers continued to work and proved especially popular teamed with Heinz Rühmann in a number of successful films, among them
Der Mann, der Sherlock Holmes war
(
The Man Who Was Sherlock Holmes
) in 1937, with Albers as Holmes and Rühmann as Watson. But without Hansi he was often lonely, as well as depressed over losing friends to the Nazis, such as the actors Kurt
Gerron and Otto Wallburg, both Jewish. They were arrested in the Netherlands, deported and murdered. One of Albers’s favourite directors, Herbert Selpin, with whom he made several films from 1938 to 1941, was denounced after declaring ‘Fuck the Knight’s Cross’; he was arrested and later found hanged in his cell.
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Albers retreated to an estate on Lake Starnberg, while Hansi Burg fled to England in 1938; they would not see each other again until the end of the war. He tried to console himself with alcohol, and was known often to speak recklessly, especially under the influence.

There were others in a similar position to Hans Albers and Hansi Burg. Joachim Gottschalk was a romantic lead in the style of Britain’s Leslie Howard, starring in a series of German films opposite the popular actress Brigitte Horney. He married a Jewish woman, Meta Wolff, shortly before Hitler came to power, and they had a half-Jewish son, Michael, a secret they managed to keep for a while. Gottschalk took Meta to a social function at the Arts Centre and introduced her to some prominent Nazis who were charmed by her, including Goebbels. But when he learned that she was Jewish, he decreed that Gottschalk would be required to separate from her. Gottschalk refused. Actor Will Quadflieg recalled, ‘He was such a resolute and great person. If only there had been more like him who wouldn’t go along with it.’
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