Felix Salten (September 6, 1869 - October 8, 1945), whose birth name was Seigmund Salzmann,[1] was a Hungarian-born Austrian author and critic living in Vienna.
Life[]
Felix Salten was born under the name Siegmund Salzmann on September 6, 1869 in Budapest, Austria-Hungary to a Jewish family. His family moved to Vienna four weeks later as that city had granted full citizenship to Jewish people in 1867, prompting many Jewish families to move there.[1]
By the time he was sixteen years old, his father, an engineer, was bankrupt. Siegmund left school and started working for an insurance company to aid his family financially. Around the same time, he began submitting poems and book reviews to journals, soon writing articles for the art magazine Kunstchronik and for various literary periodicals.[1]
In 1890, young Salzmann became part of the "Young Vienna" movement, a group of young authors that met at a café. It was around this time that he began writing stories using the pseudonym Felix Salten.[1] He received full-time work as an art and theater critic for Vienna's press soon after. He published his first collection of short stories in 1900.
In April 1902, 32-year-old Salten married the actress Ollie Metzl. They would have two children throughout their marriage, Paul, who was born in 1903, and Anna Katharina, who was born in 1904. To support his family, Salten began writing more frequently. He continued work as a critic while also writing for a variety of media, crafting his own novels, screenplays, plays, and opera librettos.[1] Salten was publishing an average of one book a year shortly after on short stories, novels, plays, travel books and essay collections. He also wrote for most of the newspapers in Vienna.
In 1922, he wrote Bambi: A Life in the Woods, which was initially released in serialized form and was later published as a novel in 1923. The book was a success, and Salten later wrote three set in the same forest, Perri: The Youth of a Squirrel, Fifteen Rabbits, and A Forest World, and a direct sequel, Bambi's Children. In 1936,[1] he sold the film rights to Bambi to Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer producer Sidney Franklin, who later gave the same rights to the creator of Mickey Mouse, Walt Disney, thus leading to the release of the 1942 animated film, Bambi
Books[]
books about animals:
- The Hound of Florence: A Novel (1923)
- Bambi: A Life in the Woods (1923)
- Fifteen Rabbits (1929)
- The City Jungle (1932)
- Florian: The Emperor's Stallion (1933)
- Perri: The Youth of a Squirrel (1938)
- Bambi's Children (1939)
- Renni the Rescuer: A Dog of the Battlefield (1940)
- A Forest World (1942)
- Good Comrades (1942)
- Djibi, the Kitten (1945)
Other Books:
- Der Gemeine (1899)
- Herr Wenzel auf Rehberg und sein Knecht Kaspar Dinckel (1907)
- Olga Frohgemuth (1910)
- Der Wurstelprater (1911)
- Das Burgtheater (1922)
- Neue Menschen auf alter Erde: Eine Palästinafahrt (1925)
- Martin Overbeck: Der Roman eines reichen jungen Mannes (1927)
- Fünf Minuten Amerika (1931)