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Riefenstahl's OLYMPIA

The two original Czech language Tobis Filmkunst red and blue design posters for OLYMPIA (shown below, as well as on the poster gallery page) are unique. They were published by Tobis for Czechoslovakia in 1938 once the film was released internationally, but of course that country soon disappeared as it was absorbed into the Greater German Reich. Other copies of these two posters have never been discovered. The exact same blue poster, but with the German language wording, is displayed in the permanent collection of the Deutsche Kinemathek-Berlin Film Museum (Potsdamer Str.2). In January 2014, the Collection acquired the extremely rare original 1939 French poster of the Part I of the film, which can be seen in the Poster Gallery here, and the super–rare original poster for the film from Finland, here. In June, 2015, the Collection acquired the French poster for Part II of the film, which can be seen here.

               

In May 2010, fifty original Tobis Olympia film stills (Standfotos, lobby cards) were won at auction in Berlin, and are now held in the Collection as well. Original stills from  Olympia are exceedingly rare and it can be decades before one or two surface on the open market.  Acquiring fifty stills in one lot was unprecedented. A few of them are displayed here. In 2014, a further ten stills for the film were obtained as part of a "swap" between collectors.

In August 2014 two very rare A4 sized colourised film sheets, used with back lighting in cinema foyers, were purchased. The first one is at the top of this page - the magnificent stadium at night, lit with massive Klieg lights first employed in Nürnberg by Albert Speer in 1934. The other colourised film sheet is below, of the three uniformed equestrian athletes on the victor's podium. Interestingly, Tobis Filmkunst actually used just these two images in a montage cover for their black and white cinema flyer on the film, which is show to the left here.  In November 2018 we won at auction 20 more original lobby cards and 4 press photos from the film which we did not have. Today eighty-four different Olympia stills can be found in this Collection.

ABOVE: Leni Riefenstahl with cameraman filming a swimming pool dive scene from OLYMPIA   ----   an original Tobis Filmkunst press photo, approximately 6 x 9 inches, from our Collection.

 We also have some 1936 issues of the Film–Kurier Tageszeitung in our Collection, which have speciual coverage on the film. We show one below: