Which body was desirable in the Third Reich and which one is not? How is the desired body constructed and depicted? The essay surveys the answers to these questions on the basis of visual and written sources of the era. Leni Riefenstahl’s film, Olympia and the 1936 Berlin Olympic Games stand in the centre of the essay. The study offers an account on the ways of presenting the male Aryan body as ideal. It also recounts how it was constructed around an image that was – although invisible in Olympia – present in its absence: namely, the image of the Jewish body.

full text in Sic Itur ad Astra 62. (2011)