Remembering the 100th Birthday of Marlene Dietrich
On the occasion of the 100th anniversary of Marlene Dietrich’s birthday (27 December 1901), the Berlin cultural scene opened its doors wide to pay honor to its most celebrated screen star. What a memorial bouquet it was! A week of galas and tributes, book publications and news articles, film screenings and media events, tv and radio broadcasts, new CDs and DVDs, and, last but not least, two exhibitions in Berlin. The first, the »Forever Young« exhibition at the Film Museum on Potsdamer Platz, is scheduled until February 17 to allow Berlinale visitors a peep into a portion of the legacy maintained by the Deutsche Kinemathek. The second, titled »Schöneberg Hollywood Berlin Marlene Dietrich 1901 - 2001« and initiated by Fred Ostrowski, publicist and Marlene-fan, can be viewed until the end of February in the Schöneberg Rathaus in the actual neighborhood where Marlene was born.
The birthday-gala brought together a host of well known stars. A wreath was laid on her grave at the Friedenau Cemetery - where she wanted to be buried next to her mother. Thus, State Secretary André-Schmitz made some amends for the ill-will experienced by Dietrich upon her return from the USA after the Second World War namely, the »Marlene, go home!« abuses she suffered in 1960, when she first set foot again on German soil. Back then, she was stamped »a traitor to the fatherland« because she sided with the Americans against the land of her birth by entertaining American soldiers on the front with her songs.
Despite the fact that, as of 1997, you can visit the Marlene-Dietrich-Platz in the new Potsdamer Platz quarter, it’s still problematic to name a street after her in Schöneberg. According to Fred Ostrowski, the Marlene Dietrich memorial exhibition in the Schöneberg Rathaus would not have taken place either without his initiative. Displayed in a large room in the rear of the Rathaus, a space given free-of-charge to the organizers, the exhibition displays paintings and sculptures of varied quality by Berlin and Munich artists. In addition, Fred Ostrowski has published his own »memorial« book, »Au Revoir Marlene Nachruf aus Deutschland« (Nienburg: Betzel Verlag, 1995).
Nevertheless, it’s a moving testimony to the rapturous enthusiasm felt by many contemporary artists for both the person and the mythos. In particular, Ursula Brawe’s »Mythos Marlene« impressed for its perfection as a work of art, thus reflecting Dietrich’s own penchant for the same. Some objects neatly arrayed in a glass case were on loan from the legacy purchased in 1993 by Land Berlin from Maria Riva, Marlene’s daughter. The »perfectionist« preferred brass name-plates on her garderobe door, prepared especially for her in London (1972) and Cardiff (1973) from the time her show tours, and cuff-links with her »MD« initials. As I was about to leave the exhibition, Fred Ostrowski assured me he will continue his plea to have a street named in Schöneberg for Marlene. One wishes him luck.
The visitor to the »Forever Young« exhibition in the Berlin Film Museum will find a veritable treasure-trove of memorabilia: photographs, film excerpts, stage dresses, portraits of famous artists and friends acquainted with Marlene Dietrich during her lifetime. Most exhibits stem from the legacy of 15,000 photos, 300,000 letters and documents, and 3,000 costumes and private dress wear. At the entrance to the exhibition are a pair of true-life bronze busts: one, Josef von Sternberg (1931, David Edstrom); the other, Jean Gabin (1940) the two most important persons in Marlene’s life. Jo(sef), her discoverer, made her a star.
Thanks to von Sternberg, she was what she was his creation. He was her maker. Together, privately and artistically, they collaborated on seven Hollywood films between 1930 and 1935. After the release of Der blaue Engel in Berlin, in January of 1930, they celebrated the following November the world success of her first world wide success: Morocco. This good fortune to be molded into a star by a highly gifted director, and then afterwards to remold this »creation« on her own into a talented, courageous, motivated woman and artist comes along only seldom in life. Moreover, she consciously vindicated herself and cultivated her own image, even as »the world’s most beautiful grandmother« on triumphant tours.
The »Dietrich« portraits that line the walls of the exhibition in chronological order, from 1929 to the end of the 1970s, show the transformation in the face and figure of this amazing woman, not just displaying her famous, matchless legs. For the first time, her spectacular »Nacktkleid« is to be seen, the one she had made for her show in Las Vegas. Other portraits hanging from the ceiling, especially made for the exhibition, show the most important of the personalities she was acquainted with, each captioned with one or two sentences to specify their relationship to Marlene. Also, original letters from »Knef« and »Piaf« are on view. Who didn’t she know, and love, and was loved in return! Willy Forst, Maurice Chevalier, Frank Sinatra, Erich Maria Remarque, her husband Rudolf Sieber, Yul Brynner, Edith Piaf, Elisabeth Bergner, Mercedes de Acosta, among others, were all her male and female lovers. Only Jean Gabin therefore his bust at the entrance of the museum counted as the love of her life.After her unfortunate fall during one of her many tours, which had also brought her to Israel, she retired in 1979 from the stage of her successes and lived the rest of her life in her Paris apartment, seldom leaving her bed for the remaining 13 years. After all, where should she go after having achieved all that man strives for to attain fame and fulfillment? She wanted to preserve her myth as long as she lived, and therefore she never allowed herself to be photographed again. Even in Maximilian Schell’s documentary (1983) we can only hear her voice and feel her unyielding vitality.
In the catalogue published by the Film Museum can be found the following sentences: »Next to Marilyn Monroe, Greta Garbo, Humphrey Bogart, and Charles Chaplin, Marlene Dietrich is one of the world stars whose fame has reached mystical heights. She embodies what many long for: good fortune and fulfillment, success and glamour. At the same time she radiates an aura of ambiguity, of the undefinable and the equivocal, finally of that ambiance between the sexes that made her equally seductive, for men as well as for women.« The exhibition, though modest, is finely balanced. For even the hurried visitor, it offers a satisfying glance into the life and career of Marlene Dietrich. And to be recommended among the many fine publications on Marlene Dietrich is Ulrike Wiebrecht’s »Blauer Engel aus Berlin« (berlin.brandenburg: be.bra verlag, 2001).
Dorothea Paschen