In the the Olympia films' "Werberatsichlag," or the cinema owners' guide to promote the film issued by the Tobis film studio in 1938, this statement appeared:

Foreword by Leni Riefenstahl to the OLYMPIA FILM

If the film of the Olympic Games is only now being shown for the first time, this already says that it was never intended as a topical reportage of the Games. This task has been fulfilled excellently by the newsreels.

When I was commissioned to make this film, I immediately realized that I had to express the spiritual idea of the Olympic Games beyond the realistic events, that I had to shape the inner forces that give the sporting battles their greatness and value. The eternal longing in man for perfection and beauty, the struggle and the unifying Olympic idea were the main motifs I saw in my task.

In the prologue section of the films, the ideal of the classical figures is replaced by the living realization of the fighter of today.
He is joined by female figures who embody the longing from which the flame is born again and again.

In the stadium, we experience the battle - the best in the world give their all for their country - for their nation. When the Finns fight, when Glenn Morris competes for a new world record in the decathlon, or when our Karl Hein swings the hammer with the utmost concentration, then we experience beauty and struggle united in the most glorious harmony in these images.

So this film should not only be a souvenir of the unforgettable days of the Olympic Games in Berlin, it should become an incentive and symbol for young people to become even more beautiful, even more perfect.

I would like to express my deepest thanks to all my colleagues and the numerous organizations that helped to realize this work. They have helped to create a sporting document that will tell future generations about the most glorious and magnificent battles in sporting history - the XI Olympic Games in Berlin.

Compare our Czechoslovak poster for the film, printed in Prague in 1938, with the German design. –– the exact same graphic art and ink! Here is the German poster (not in our Collection). Our Czech poster is at the bottom of this web-page.

Below is the German poster alongside the other two graphic designs that were available in 1938 to German cinema owners (scanned from the film's Werberatschlag in our Collection):

The 1986  book by Cooper C. Graham Leni Riefenstahl & Olympia states on page 197:

It is significant that Olympia was not released in Czechoslovakia in 1938. As far as this writer knows, it was the only country in Europe that did not receive the film. German films were still received regularly in Prague, and it is not known whether the Germans withheld the film, or whether the Czechs did not allow the film to run.

Thus, our two Czech language film posters for Olympia, printed in Prague by Tobis Filmkunst using the original German film studio graphic designs were never used. They are exceedingly rare and Leni Riefenstahl’s husband Horst Kettner offered to buy them from us in 2008 because they did not exist in her own private Olympia archive.

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During the 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin, the Ufa movie theaters were running new feature films such as Louis Trenker's Der Kaiser von Kalifornien and Leni Riefenstahl's feature–length documentary film, Triumph des Willens.