Sandra Maischberger on the Nazi filmmaker "For me, Leni Riefenstahl is something like the first influencer"

She was considered the muse of the Nazis and a visionary director: Leni Riefenstahl. The documentary "Riefenstahl", produced by Sandra Maischnberger, sorts through the artist's legacy and turns it into an ingenious search for clues.

Sandra Maischberger, you got to know the filmmaker Leni Riefenstahl personally when you interviewed her in 2002 on the occasion of her 100th birthday. What was the woman like?

On the one hand, I was impressed because this centenarian was still very much herself. She came to greet me. Leni Riefenstahl was a person who made an impression.

She showed me her underwater film, which she had just edited, and also her modern editing suite, which she actually knew how to use. As a personality, she didn't leave me untouched.

But ... ?

I had studied her in detail before the appointment, read or watched all the interviews. So I knew that the version of her life she told was not true. That she knew nothing about the Nazi atrocities and was an apolitical artist.

I wanted to pin her down as an intelligent person on these inconsistencies - and I bounced off her. That's why I was very dissatisfied with the interview in the end.

Leni Riefenstahl never regretted anything?

No, it didn't work with her on that level. I reflected on my encounter with her from time to time. Also in interview courses that I gave. At some point, I called it the Riefenstahl principle: how do you deal with someone who you know for sure is telling a lie?

Was she actually lying or did she perhaps believe her version?

That's exactly what I wanted to describe with the "Riefenstahl principle": It was probably a mixture of both. She may have lied until she no longer knew the difference between what was true and what she had made up. It's almost impossible to get through this kind of untruth in an interview.

There's something very contemporary about it, because we're thinking and talking a lot about lies again today, for example about fake news. Leni Riefenstahl was a bit like the "Fifty Shades of Lies". You can use her to work out and analyze many different types of lies.

What types of lies are you thinking of?

She simply lied to my face about certain things. For example, that she no longer has any contact with people who deny Nazi crimes. That was demonstrably not true. But then there are also areas that I would describe as repression.

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If it is true, for example, that she not only saw one of the first massacres of Jews in the early days of the war in Poland, but possibly helped to trigger it with a director's order, it would explain that she also strongly repressed.

For the film with director Andres Veiel, you sifted through 700 boxes of estate material. How did you get hold of the things?

Leni Riefenstahl's husband, who was 40 years younger than her, died unexpectedly in 2016. The house they shared was suddenly empty and was to be sold. Riefenstahl herself had decreed that her estate should go to the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation. So virtually the entire house was packed up - in those 700 boxes. Today, the estate is accessible to the public. In order to speed up the cataloging process, we offered to support the Foundation at the time by being the first to make a film from the material.

Leni Riefenstahl even archived her telephone calls and messages on answering machines. Many of these audio documents can be heard in the film. Why would someone who lied a lot document her life so meticulously?

We were totally surprised at what we found on these small audio cassettes. We only noticed them towards the end of our research. They turned out to be perhaps the most important finds. Leni Riefenstahl recorded many telephone conversations that could be described as sales pitches.

It was about licensing rights to her films and the like. Perhaps it was a kind of protection. This resulted in audio documents such as the one where she talks to Albert Speer on the phone and discusses how to market an autobiography, or how much you can charge for TV appearances in different countries and so on.

In the movie you also hear fan calls from her answering machine, which she also saved ...

I think she was so excited by the reception she got after being on the talk show in the 1970s that she wanted to save something like that. About 90 percent of the letters and phone calls she received were supporters and fans.

It was a kind of comeback for her, and she was so enthusiastic about it that she dropped her cover in her answers, which can also be heard in the recordings. She then says things like: Our time will come again. This is a woman speaking among like-minded people. I heard Leni Riefenstahl speak for the first time on the recordings, and I didn't know her like that. She felt unobserved and agreed with avowed Nazis.

What do you take away from your involvement with Leni Riefenstahl for the present day?

We are experiencing many things today that also happened back then. Objective truths are being called into question. Fascist ideas are becoming acceptable again. Since the war in Ukraine, tanks have been rolling through Europe again and we are seeing imperialist wars of aggression. There is renewed talk of the superiority of one people or even one race over others. And there are military parades reminiscent of the Third Reich. The Russian military celebration on 8 May 2022 on Red Square in Moscow after the invasion of Ukraine was reminiscent in many details of Leni Riefenstahl's film "Triumph of the Will" - only in color.

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What role would Leni Riefenstahl play in today's world?

For me, she's like the first Instagram star. Today, Leni Riefenstahl would be a social media star. She would walk around all the time with her cell phone in her hand and film herself. That's exactly what she did back then - with the tools that were available in her day: Photography and film.

We also have so much footage of her because she always put herself at the center of attention. Like an influencer of today. She twisted the truth in one sense and constantly repeated this narrative, which is very popular again today. You can already find all the tools of fake news in her way of communicating.

With your talk show, you have been working for many years to find out the truth. Has this task become more difficult today?

We just had the founder of Wikipedia on our show, Jimmy Wales. He said that we are currently losing our consensus on reality. In the past - despite all the political differences - we had certainty:

We all live in the same world. Of course, there were always different realities of life. Someone who lives in a small village sees the world differently in many ways to someone who lives in a big city. Someone who lives in a very poor neighborhood sees the world differently than someone who lives in a middle-class or rich neighborhood.

But there were still places or media where people met or exchanged ideas. Today, however, the perception of the world is drifting apart much more dramatically, because many people are exchanging ideas in their bubbles with like-minded people about things they actually agree on. This is exactly what destroys the idea of an objective reality.

As the face of public service broadcasting, what can you do to counter this development? As an ARD talk show host, do you still reach people outside your own bubble?

We are working on this with all our might. First of all, we have to adhere to our journalistic standards. Every piece of information, every source is double-checked. All the statements and facts that we compile and broadcast are carefully checked beforehand. This sets us apart from fake news and social media, where this doesn't happen. Our second task is to get through to people who are critical of journalism and public media and who we may no longer be able to reach via the old channels.

My program is therefore also present on Instagram, with Tagesschau 24 also on YouTube and so on. The public broadcaster must try to reach those again that we have lost in recent years. We have to convince them that our work and our news follow high standards of craftsmanship and that when we make mistakes, we clearly state this and learn from it. For me, there is no alternative to this approach. We have to work on re-establishing a consensus reality. And this can then be discussed and argued about controversially. That's how democracy works.

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