A young deer learns the secrets and dangers of the forest from his mother: “Bambi” first appeared in 1922 as a serial in the Neue Freie Presse and in 1923 as a book. Its author was Felix Salten, born Siegmund Salzmann in Pest in 1869 and raised in Vienna, a journalist, theatre critic and member of the Jung-Wien circle around Arthur Schnitzler and Hugo von Hofmannsthal.
From roe deer to white-tailed deer
In 1933 Salten sold the film rights for a mere 1,000 dollars. Through the producer Sidney Franklin they passed to Walt Disney, and in 1942 “Bambi” reached the cinemas. Along the way the European roe deer became an American white-tailed deer; two fawns from Maine travelled to the studio as models. Salten, who had fled the Nazis to Zurich in 1939, died there in 1945.
And Josefine Mutzenbacher?
In 1906 a novel appeared anonymously that is still notorious in Vienna: “Josefine Mutzenbacher”, the supposed life story of a Viennese prostitute. Before long, people said Salten had written it. Schnitzler firmly denied the rumour, while Salten played with it all his life. His authorship has never been proven, and a study published in 2023 even names another candidate, the journalist Ernst Klein. When Salten’s heirs later went to court as the author’s heirs, they lost. It remains a spicy story all the same: among Salten’s papers there really was an erotic tale from his pen.
Vienna around 1900
Salten, Schnitzler, Freud, Klimt: turn-of-the-century Vienna was a city where art, science and scandal lived next door to each other. On our Vienna 1900 walking tour we follow the traces of this era, and our Jewish Vienna tour tells of the people who shaped it, many of whom were later forced to flee.
