Overview

Marlene Dietrich and Leni Riefenstahl, born less than a year apart, lived so close to each other that Riefenstahl could see into Dietrich's Berlin flat. Coming of age in the Weimar Republic, both sought fame in Germany's silent film industry. While Dietrich's depiction of Lola Lola in The Blue Angel catapulted her to Hollywood stardom, Riefenstahl—who missed out on the part—insinuated herself into Hitler's inner circle and directed Nazi propaganda films, most famously, Triumph of the Will. Dietrich could never truly go home again, while Riefenstahl was contaminated by her political associations. Moving deftly between two stories never before told together, Karin Wieland contextualises these lives, chronicling revolutions in politics, fame and sexuality on a grand stage.

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9781631492280

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Reviews

...classical in scope and style. It [Dietrich & Riefenstahl] puts together cradle-to-grave biographies of two women who hardly met, offering admirably researched accounts that leave barely a telegram or plot summary unturned. -- The Telegraph ... epic, enthralling tome about two of the 20th century's most compelling artists... -- The Independent Wieland offers abundant - and now and then overwhelming - material and produces a captivating chronological narrative that is rich in sources... The emerging story is fascinating... -- Times Higher Education In telling their stories, Karin Wieland has decided to juxtapose their lives without making the comparisons explicit. This can be very effective: she is an evocative scene setter and so it is easy to grasp the implication that both women were created by their time and place. -- Literary Review Newly translated dual biography by German historian provides an illuminating look at two famous, ambitious women who reacted very differently to the Nazis...Via a fluent, often witty translation by Shelley Frisch, Wieland draws the portrait of women who were ambitious to a degree stunning in their day. -- The Guardian

Wieland is shrewd...about her subjects and has done serious work...that give her book credibility, texture, and unending interest. This is the story of two glamorous women whose achievements in another time might have been no more substantial than the images on a screen but who assumed real-life roles with the highest historical stakes. -- Claudia Roth Pierpont - The New Yorker In this lively, deliciously gossipy dual biography, Karin Wieland treats both with great sympathy but also clear-eyed assessment. -- Kate Tuttle - Boston Globe [With] hypnotic power... Wieland uses these two virtuosos' lives to generate piercing insights about ambition, ego, creativity and the life-changing, world-altering repercussions of a momentous choice. -- Michael Sragow - Washington Post Illuminating... Via a fluent, often witty translation by Shelley Frisch, Wieland draws the portrait of women who were ambitious to a degree stunning in their day. Moreover, by tracking their divergent careers together, she is able subtly to suggest some answers to a question that hangs over every mid-century German artist: what kind of responses were available to the Nazi apocalypse? -- Farran Smith Nehme - The Guardian (UK) A sweeping, revelatory dual biography. -- Kirkus Reviews (starred review) Marlene Dietrich and Leni Riefenstahl have found an ideal biographer in Karin Wieland. She brings a lively style, a wealth of detail, and a perfect balance between skeptical objectivity and measured sympathy to her account of the parallel and then diverging lives of these two ambitious women. -- Celia Applegate, Vanderbilt University

Author Information

Karin Wieland lives in Berlin and is an historian of political theory at the Hamburg Foundation for the Advancement of Science and Culture. Shelley Frisch is the prize-winning translator of biographies of Nietzsche, Einstein, and Kafka. She lives in Princeton, New Jersey.

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