Herbert Windt | |
---|---|
Born | September 15, 1894 |
Died | November 2, 1965 71) | (aged
Era | 20th century |
Herbert Windt (15 September 1894, Senftenberg, Brandenburg – 2 November 1965, Deisenhofen, now a part of Oberhaching, Bavaria) was a German composer who became one of the most significant film score composers of the Third Reich. He was best known for his collaborations with the director Leni Riefenstahl on films Triumph of the Will and Olympia .
Windt studied at the Sternsches Konservatorium in Berlin but left to enlist in the army at the start of World War I. Severely wounded, he spent two years in hospital, during which he began composing chamber music.
In 1920 Windt received a grant to study with the renowned Franz Schreker in the composer's master class at the Berlin Academy of Music. Windt joined the NSDAP in 1931. A grant by the government of the Weimar Republic led to his opera Andromache , which was first performed in 1932. An UFA film producer in the audience took notice of Windt's music. Windt was offered a commission to write the music for UFA's 1933 film Morgenrot (Red Morning), a story about a gallant World War I U-boat crew.
Windt became one of the most significant film score composers of the Third Reich along with Wolfgang Zeller, Michael Jary, Franz Grothe, and Georg Haentzschel. He composed music for several Nazi public events and radio programs. He was best known for his collaborations with Leni Riefenstahl, the director of Triumph of the Will (1934/35), Olympia (1938), and Tiefland (1945/54), but he also worked with directors like Wolfgang Liebeneiner ( Die Entlassung ), Georg Wilhelm Pabst ( Paracelsus ), Frank Wisbar ( The Unknown , Fährmann Maria , Stalingrad: Dogs, Do You Want to Live Forever? ), and Gustav Ucicky ( Morgenrot ).
Windt's film scores for propaganda films drew the attention of the sociologist Siegfried Kracauer, who analysed the composer's works in the tracts From Caligari to Hitler: A Psychological History of the German Film and Theory of Film: The Redemption of Physical Reality .
Despite the warm reception for his music in Nazi party circles, Windt himself fell into disfavor with the rulers of Germany in that period. He was completely cleared in the post-war de-Nazification trials. [1]
Helene Bertha Amalie "Leni" Riefenstahl was a German film director, photographer and actress known for producing Nazi propaganda.
Triumph of the Will is a 1935 German Nazi propaganda film directed, produced, edited and co-written by Leni Riefenstahl. Adolf Hitler commissioned the film and served as an unofficial executive producer; his name appears in the opening titles. It chronicles the 1934 Nazi Party Congress in Nuremberg, which was attended by more than 700,000 Nazi supporters. The film contains excerpts of speeches given by Nazi leaders at the Congress, including Hitler, Rudolf Hess and Julius Streicher, interspersed with footage of massed Sturmabteilung (SA) and Schutzstaffel (SS) troops and public reaction. Its overriding theme is the return of Germany as a great power with Hitler as its leader. The film was produced after the Night of the Long Knives, and many formerly prominent SA members are absent.
The Nuremberg rallies were a series of celebratory events coordinated by the Nazi Party in Germany. The first Nazi Nuremberg rally took place in 1923. This rally was not particularly large and did not have much impact; however, as the party grew in size, the rallies became more elaborate and featured larger crowds. They played a seminal role in Nazi propaganda events, conveying a unified and strong Germany under Nazi control. The rallies became a national event once Adolf Hitler rose to power in 1933, when they became annual occurrences. Once the Nazi dictatorship was firmly established, the party's propagandists began filming them for a national and international audience. Nazi filmmaker Leni Riefenstahl produced some of her best known work including Triumph of the Will (1934) and The Victory of Faith (1933), both filmed at the Nazi party rally grounds near Nuremberg. The party's 1938 Nuremberg rally celebrated the Anschluss that occurred earlier that year. The 1939 scheduled rally was cancelled just before Germany's invasion of Poland and the Nazi regime never held another one due to the prioritization of Germany's efforts in the Second World War.
Georg Wilhelm Pabst was an Austrian film director and screenwriter. He started as an actor and theater director, before becoming one of the most influential German-language filmmakers during the Weimar Republic.
Olympia is a 1938 German documentary film written, directed and produced by Leni Riefenstahl, which documented the 1936 Summer Olympics, held in the Olympic Stadium in Berlin during the Nazi period. The film was released in two parts: Olympia 1. Teil — Fest der Völker and Olympia 2. Teil — Fest der Schönheit. The 1936 Summer Olympics torch relay, as devised for the Games by the secretary general of the Organizing Committee, Dr. Carl Diem, is shown in the film.
Arnold Fanck was a German film director and pioneer of the mountain film genre. He is best known for the extraordinary alpine footage he captured in such films as The Holy Mountain (1926), The White Hell of Pitz Palu (1929), Storm over Mont Blanc (1930), The White Ecstasy (1931), and S.O.S. Eisberg (1933). Fanck was also instrumental in launching the careers of several filmmakers during the Weimar years in Germany, including Leni Riefenstahl, Luis Trenker, and cinematographers Sepp Allgeier, Richard Angst, Hans Schneeberger, and Walter Riml.
Der Sieg des Glaubens is the first Nazi propaganda film directed by Leni Riefenstahl. Her film recounts the Fifth Party Rally of the Nazi Party, which occurred in Nuremberg, Germany, from 30 August to 3 September 1933. The film is of great historic interest because it shows Adolf Hitler and Ernst Röhm on close and intimate terms, before Hitler had Röhm killed during the Night of the Long Knives on 1 July 1934. As he then sought to remove Röhm from German history, Hitler ordered all known copies of the film be destroyed, and it was considered lost until a surviving copy was found in the 1980s in East Germany.
Tag der Freiheit: Unsere Wehrmacht is the third documentary directed by Leni Riefenstahl, following Der Sieg des Glaubens and Triumph des Willens. Her third film recounts the Seventh Party Rally of the Nazi Party, which occurred in Nuremberg in 1935, and focuses on the German army.
The Wonderful, Horrible Life of Leni Riefenstahl is a 1993 German documentary film about the life of German film director Leni Riefenstahl, directed by Ray Müller.
Rudolf LotharGerman pronunciation:[r'uːdolfl'oːtar] was an Austrian playwright, librettist, critic and essayist. He was born and died in Budapest.
Tiefland is an opera in a prologue and two acts by Eugen d'Albert, to a libretto in German by Rudolf Lothar. Based on the 1896 Catalan play Terra baixa by Àngel Guimerà, Tiefland was d'Albert's seventh opera, and is the one which is now the best known.
Mathias Wieman was a German stage-performer, silent-and-sound motion picture actor.
Impressionen unter Wasser is a documentary film released in 2002. It was directed by Leni Riefenstahl.
Festliches Nürnberg is a short 1937 propaganda film chronicling the Nazi Party rallies in Nuremberg, Germany in 1936 and 1937. The film was directed by Hans Weidemann.
Wunschkonzert is a 1940 German drama propaganda film by Eduard von Borsody. After Die große Liebe, it was the most popular film of wartime Germany, reaching the second highest gross.
Tiefland ("Lowlands") is a 1954 West German opera drama film directed, produced, co-written, edited by and starring Leni Riefenstahl, and based on the 1903 eponymous opera composed by Eugen d'Albert to a libretto by Rudolph Lothar based on the 1896 Catalan play Terra baixa by Àngel Guimerà. The film co-stars Bernhard Minetti, and is Riefenstahl's last feature film as both director and lead actress.
Giuseppe Becce was an Italian-born film score composer who enriched the German cinema.
Leni Riefenstahl's Memoiren is the 1987 autobiography of German film director Leni Riefenstahl. The book received a 1993 American release and coincided with the release of the acclaimed documentary The Wonderful, Horrible Life of Leni Riefenstahl, as well as Riefenstahl's ninetieth birthday. It was featured on the 1993 New York Times list of notable books of the year.
The Ufa-Palast am Zoo, located near Berlin Zoological Garden in the New West area of Charlottenburg, was a major Berlin cinema owned by Universum Film AG, or Ufa. Opened in 1919 and enlarged in 1925, it was the largest cinema in Germany until 1929 and was one of the main locations of film premières in the country. The building was destroyed in November 1943 during the Bombing of Berlin in World War II and replaced in 1957 by the Zoo Palast.
Walter Gronostay (1906–1937) was a German composer noted for his work on film scores. Gronostay studied under Arnold Schoenberg. From the late 1920s he began working on film music for a mixture of feature films and documentaries. Along with Herbert Windt he composed the music for Leni Riefenstahl's 1938 documentary Olympia, but died unexpectedly at the age of 31 before the film was released.