Bambi House

In Vienna’s lovely Cottagegasse neighborhood sits an unassuming villa with a sculpture and a plaque on its white picket fence. The words “In diesem Haus schrieb Felix Salten 1923 ,Bambi” (“In this house in 1923, Felix Salten wrote ‘Bambi’”) are written on the plaque, and a small fawn statue stands proudly atop the fence. 

Before Disney animated the famous deer we all know and love, Felix Salten (1869–1945) sat down at his home in the 18th district to pen his bestselling story “Bambi: A Life in the Woods.” He published the story in 1923, along with many other animal adventures, which were later published in 1928 in English and made into a movie by Disney in 1942.

Salten, born Siegmund Salzmann, was born into a Jewish family in Pest, Hungary in 1869, but later moved to Vienna when Salten was 4 years old. He took on the name Felix Salten and began his literary career as a journalist in Vienna, writing under pseudonyms, and eventually being published in all the major newspapers in the city. He became part of the Young Vienna (Junge-Wiener) movement, frequenting the Café Grien­stei­dl, and is known to have various connections with other literary figures of Viennese Modernism.

When the First World War broke out, like many of his contemporaries, Salten initially championed the war, becoming enthusiastic about heroic stories of military figures. However, as the realities of the wounded, the dead, and the suffering civilian population made themselves clear throughout the war, Salten rethought his position and committed himself to the ideological shift, turning to more pacifistic writing.

Salten was both an animal lover and a hunter, campaigning against slaughterhouses, while also being a passionate hunter with a hunting ground in Stockerau. According to him, however, observing the natural world was more important than the shooting. Having observed so much, he had plenty of material to work with when he began writing his animal adventures. Not only did he take inspiration from the areas in and around Vienna, but also in his summer holidays to Unterach am Attersee near Salzburg. He would go on to write the novel in his villa in Vienna’s 18th district, Währing, beginning in 1921, about the heroism of a young roe deer (not a white-tailed deer as in the film).

Initially published in 1922 with the Ullstein publishing company, “Bambi” was a flop at first, but in 1923, Saltener switched publishers, and the book became a bestseller within the German-speaking world, and later became an international bestseller after the book was published in English in 1928.

Some have suggested that the English translator, the American writer Whittaker Chambers, diluted the symbolism and meaning of the story in his translation, from a tale of persecution and antisemitism to a more simplistic one.

Unfortunately for Salten, his career would soon struggle with the rise of the Nazis. In 1933 he was obliged to retire from his position as the president of the Austrian PEN Club, and by 1935 his books were banned in Germany.

In spring of 1938, he burnt many letters, documents, and manuscripts in fear of the Gestapo and many of his possessions were taken from him as a result of Nazi persecution. In 1939, after several months of living under Nazi rule, he used his connections among Austrian nobility and officials to obtain a permit to live in Switzerland, where his daughter Anna lived.

He was not allowed to continue his career as a journalist there, but continued writing fiction, which unfortunately was not as popular as his previous work, and he ran into financial difficulties, but was able to live comfortably until his death on October 8, 1945, in Zurich, where he is also buried.