Volume 54, Number 10 · June 14, 2007
Fascinating Narcissism
By Ian Buruma
Leni: The Life and Work of Leni Riefenstahl
by Steven Bach
Knopf, 386 pp., $30.00
Leni Riefenstahl: A Life
by Jürgen Trimborn, translated from the German by Edna McCown
Faber and Faber, 351 pp., $30.00
That Leni Riefenstahl was rather a monster is not really in dispute. And if it ever was, two new biographies provide enough information to nail her. Bad behavior began early. Steven Bach, in his excellent Leni, tells the story of Walter Lubovski, a Jewish boy in Berlin who fell madly in love with Riefenstahl after meeting her at a skating rink. In a fit of teenage cruelty, Leni and her girlfriends tormented the boy so badly that he slashed his wrists at the summer cottage of Riefenstahl's family. To stop her father from discovering what had happened, she shoved the bleeding boy under the sofa. He survived and ended up in a mental institution before escaping to America, where he went blind. All Riefenstahl had to say when she heard was: 'He never forgot me as long as he lived.'
Review, 4857 words
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