Willy Zielke

Countless people around the world know the pictures from Leni Riefenstahl's films, even if they have not seen them in their entirety. The work of the German director has burned itself into the collective memory. Even decades after the end of the Nazi era, she showed no remorse and presented herself as an apolitical, naive follower of the Nazi criminal regime. Her artistic service for the cinema was always recognized. But book author Nina Gladitz shows after decades of research that Hitler's favorite filmmaker was not only a follower, but also a perpetrator during the Third Reich, who instrumentalized other filmmakers such as the brilliant cinematographer Willy Zielke in order to gain fame for herself.

Se trata de un film propagandístico del las fuerzas armadas del régimen nazi, que actualmente está parcialmente perdido (sólo se conservan aproximadamente 17 minutos que fueron redescubiertos en 1970). El documental es una cobertura del VII Congreso del Partido Nazi, que tuvo lugar en Núremberg. Se presenta una advertencia de lo que está por venir por medio de la representación de un simulacro de batalla, escenificado por las tropas alemanas durante la ceremonia en Núremberg del Día de las Fuerzas Armadas de Alemania, en 1935. La cámara sigue a los soldados desde sus preparativos a comienzos del día en sus tiendas de campaña, y cuando marchan cantando a la amplia plaza donde tiene lugar una guerra en miniatura, en la que participan la infantería, caballería, aeronaves y defensas antiaéreas. Asimismo, tiene lugar la primera aparición pública del nuevo tanque alemán, que es presentado ante Adolf Hitler y miles de espectadores.

Alemania, año 1934. Adolf Hitler acababa de llegar al poder un año antes. En Nuremberg el partido nacionalsocialista celebra un triunfalista y patriótico congreso en el que se exaltan los valores raciales y patrios del pueblo ario alemán.

Klaassen receives a phone call, and he is happy with his transfer to head the railway line's controlling team. He accepts well his change of job, but when he meets his co-workers, uncultured and rough people, he starts having second thoughts. However, he takes it easy, recognizes that they're highly trained works, and teaches them a number of (flashback) stories of pioneers of the present steam train: the early invention by Denis Papin (1679); the three legendary land-surveyors of Caton Hill; the 1769 experiment by Nicolas-Joseph De Cugnot; the 1813 machine test of William Hedley; the 1829 developments by Robert Stephenson; and finally the grand opening of the first German steam railway line of Nürnberg-Fürth - stories in which man's will to conquer the machine was sometimes met with disaster.

Klaassen receives a phone call, and he is happy with his transfer to head the railway line's controlling team. He accepts well his change of job, but when he meets his co-workers, uncultured and rough people, he starts having second thoughts. However, he takes it easy, recognizes that they're highly trained works, and teaches them a number of (flashback) stories of pioneers of the present steam train: the early invention by Denis Papin (1679); the three legendary land-surveyors of Caton Hill; the 1769 experiment by Nicolas-Joseph De Cugnot; the 1813 machine test of William Hedley; the 1829 developments by Robert Stephenson; and finally the grand opening of the first German steam railway line of Nürnberg-Fürth - stories in which man's will to conquer the machine was sometimes met with disaster.

Willy Zielke was a brilliant photographer and filmmaker from Łodź who suffered greatly at the hands of the Nazis: His German feature films of the 1930s, Arbeitslos and Das Stahltier, were banned; Leni Riefenstahl made use of him to conceive, direct, and shoot the prologue for Olympia, but gave him no credit; and later, in a mentally incapacitated state, he was confined to an insane asylum where he was forcibly sterilized, only to be released after five years in 1942 so that Riefenstahl could make use of him once again on the final shooting of Tiefland. Zielke’s 1933 film Arbeitslos, commissioned by a Maffei railway company unemployment shelter, presented a despairing portrait of a nation in near-total collapse.