The German magazine Bunte is reporting today that Leni Reifenstahl is dead at the age of 101. The award winning director of Triumph of the Will and Olympia, Reifenstahl was known around the world as Hitler’s personal filmmaker. Many believed their relationship was far more than professional, a charge Reifenstahl always denied. Some years ago, I became interested in the story of this woman who helped to shape the rise of the Third Reich when I watched the lengthy, but utterly captivating 1993 documentary “The Wonderful, Horrible Life of Leni Riefenstahl.” One can see the origin of Reifenstahl’s fascination with Hitler and his nietzschean vision of the ubermensch because early in her life and until her death Reifenstahl’s personal vision was the futile search for physical perfection and artistic beauty divorced of Christianity. In that respect, she also drew philosophically from the Greek ideal of worship of body and form. It was Reifenstahl’s haunting, brilliantly directed footage of the Nuremburg Rally, complete with flawless timing, innovative angle shots and stunning choreography which did more to glorify Nazism than anything of that era. In fact, Reifenstahl was the only woman to directly shape the rise of the Third Reich. Utterly unapologetic about her films or their treatment of Nazism, Reifenstahl remained a woman of inexaustable energy, returning during the 1960’s from an exile of post-war scorn with her acclaimed film on the Nuba tribesmen of Africa, surviving a helicopter crash in the Sudan at the age of 100 and that same year strapping on scuba gear to film and release an underwater documentary entitled “Impressions Under Water.” Reifenstahl’s death marks an end of an era. She was probably the last living link to Hitler’s inner circle.