[LEN-E] Leni's Silk Stockings

[Ron Koster]

Hi folks!

Over the holidays, I received a rather curious 
old book (published in Vienna in 1929) that I got 
off of eBay, called "Das Lüsterne Weib: 
Sexualpsychologie der Begehrenden, Unbefriedigten 
und Schamlosen Frau" -- to the best of my 
abilities, I think that translates as "The 
Lustful Woman: Sexual Psychology of the Desirous, 
Unsatisfied and Shameless Woman". Perhaps someone 
can give a better translation (if there is one)? 
I'm not sure about the difference between "Weib" 
and "Frau", for one thing -- they both seem to translate as "Woman".

Unfortunately my German isn't good enough to 
really read it, but I think the title(!) speaks 
for itself, and the book is *full* of rather 
bawdy (and often quite titillating) artistic 
depictions of women (drawings, paintings, etc., 
in addition to photographs) on almost every page, 
plus numerous "tipped-in" plates on heavy card 
stock. I'm sure that the book in all likelihood 
takes a very early psychoanalytic (Freudian) -- 
perhaps even somewhat misogynistic -- approach to 
examining this supposed "phenomenon" (no doubt 
influenced by the decadence that was prevalent in 
Berlin and other larger cosmopolitan areas of 
Europe during that period), but what spurred me 
to get it was that the seller described the book 
as including a photograph of Leni (although he 
didn't include a scan of the pic in his auction 
description), and I was naturally only quite 
curious what-on-earth she would be doing in a book of that nature.

So I got the book, and sure enough, I quite 
easily managed to find the photograph in 
question. It is, indeed, almost instantly 
recognizable as a photograph of Leni, although I 
can find no specific mention of her name anywhere 
in the text. The caption to the photograph reads 
"Die Seidenstrümpfe" ("Silk Stockings"), and is 
located in a lengthy chapter entitled "Die 
Begehrende Frau" ("The Desirous Woman"???).

What makes this photo even more interesting -- in 
addition to the fact that I've never seen this 
photo, or any particularly similar photo, 
anywhere else before -- is that although the book 
was published in 1929, this is clearly a much 
earlier shot of her, probably from somewhere 
around 1920-22 or so, I would guess.

Check it out yourself...

http://www.riefenstahl.org/downloads/pics/DasLuesterneWeib.zip

...(about 1.2 megs). In that zip file you'll find 
relatively hi-res scans of the frontispiece/title 
page (with the former giving one a pretty good 
idea of what most of the artwork presented in the 
book is like), plus the copyright notice (from 
the verso of the title page), and a scan of page 
113, which has the photo of (supposedly) Leni.

Apart from just wanting to share this with you 
all, I guess my question is: what do *you* think? 
We discussed a couple of months ago about Steven 
Bach's conclusions regarding his "proof" (via 
frame enlargements) that Leni was in Wege, but it 
would certainly seem that he sees her where he 
does because -- one can only assume -- he *wants* 
to see her where he does (when it's obviously not her).

I'd hate to be doing the same thing myself (as, 
apparently, the seller of this book did as well), 
that is, seeing Leni in this photo because I 
"want" to see her in it. However, when I look at 
that pic, it's very distinctly an immediately 
recognizable early photo of her from her earlier 
dancing years (definitely not later, and 
certainly by no possibility as late as 1929, when 
the book was published) -- but that's not to say, 
of course, that she didn't have a "twin" out there somewhere. ;)

Anyway, there you go -- I'm quite curious, naturally, what others think!

Ron :)

Woof?... http://www.Psymon.com
Ach, du Leni!... http://www.Riefenstahl.org
Hmm... http://www.Imaginary-Friend.ca