(The Times Of Israel) Besides writing Bambi — the obscure novel upon which the Disney animated movie is based — the Jewish author Felix Salten also wrote a notorious pornographic novel about a child prostitute which was so obscene that it became illegal to even own a copy of it:
While the 1942 Disney film “Bambi” is world famous as a classic of animated cinema, the man behind the story — an eminent writer in pre-war Vienna who had to flee the Nazis — is little known. Felix Salten was a product of the cultural blossoming in the capital of the then Austro-Hungarian empire around the turn of the 20th Century. As a Vienna exhibition which shines a spotlight on the neglected creator shows, he was a prolific writer who moved in the same circles as the likes of Sigmund Freud, the father of psychoanalysis.
Salten wrote the iconic and poignant tale of the fawn bereaved of his mother by hunters in 1922 under the title “Bambi: A Life In The Woods.” On its publication the following year, it did not enjoy immediate success among the reading public. However, in the 1930s, Salten — himself a hunter — sold the film rights for the text for $1,000 to an American producer, who in turn sold them to Disney.
As for the book itself, “Felix Salten changed publishers and from then on it became much more successful,” said Ursula Storch, curator of the exhibition at the Wien Museum dedicated to the city’s history. “Of course it was made even more famous by the film adaptation in 1942,” Storch told AFP. But by then, “Bambi,” along with the rest of Salten’s work, had been banned because he was Jewish, first in Germany and then in Austria after Hitler’s annexation of the country in 1938.
Storch says that while Salten himself never offered a commentary on the meaning of the book, it is a powerful evocation of the dark side of human nature and the relationship between humans and the environment. “It’s a book which is deeply anchored in its time and is much more than a simple children’s story about the loss of one’s mother,” said philosopher Maxime Rovere, author of the preface to a new French edition.
Given “the impression of fear, the way the animals must constantly escape,” Rovere says it is “impossible not to make the link with (Salten’s) personal experience,” living as he did through an era of rising antisemitism. But as the exhibition makes clear, there is much more to the work of Salten than “Bambi.”
Born in 1869 in Budapest, he and his family moved to the imperial capital the following year. At around the age of 20, he began a career as a journalist, which remained his staple source of income for around 50 years, according to Marcel Atze, head of the manuscripts department at Vienna City Library. However, Salten’s oeuvre of some 50 books spans opera librettos, poetry, art criticism, film scripts and even a pornographic novel under the title of “Josefine Mutzenbacher.” He won a reputation as a versatile literary “chameleon.”
Storch says that his social life was no less notable, with Freud and composer Richard Strauss among his acquaintances. But the Anschluss shattered that world, with Salten later writing of his “contempt for the Viennese and for Austrians in general” after many of them joyfully welcomed Hitler’s takeover of their country.
His diaries record an ever-growing anxiety. “His writings are very moving,” Atze, who spent several weeks poring over the journals with colleagues, said. “When you read them you can absolutely imagine what was happening,” he added. Atze says that only a few such documents survive from this tumultuous period, making Salten “an unbelievably valuable witness.”
In March 1939, Salten fled to Switzerland, taking with him a library comprising thousands of volumes. Two years later, the Nazis stripped him of his nationality. Atze notes that this news is written in red in Salten’s diary instead of the usual blue or black and that the attendant possibility of being deported from Switzerland as a stateless individual must have left him “trembling” until his death in 1945.
His Swiss granddaughter Lea Wyler never knew him personally but says that accounts handed down through the family tell of a “broken man” marked by successive tragedies. “He had lost his only son in a car accident, he lost his home, Vienna, friends,” she told AFP by phone. She laments the fact that out of work left by her “loving, humorous, cheeky” grandfather, only “Bambi” is remembered — and that the Disney adaptation has eclipsed the original.
“The crazy thing is that everybody thinks that Disney wrote it. He did not even get that credit, that is really annoying,” she said. Nevertheless, Wyler adds the fact that Vienna is now celebrating Salten has brought “a feeling of redemption.”
Ironically, Lea Wyler, Salten’s granddaughter, tried to sue different publishers for royalties — not for Bambi, but for the pornographic novel Josefine Muzenbacher — and lost in court because her family could not prove Salten wrote it — because he had published it anonymously.
This book, Josefine Mutzbacher was so obscene that it was banned in Austria from 1913 until 1971 — possessing it or distributing it was a criminal offense.
No doubt it was this book that made Salten fear the “Nazis” — and it was this book, not Bambi, that contributed to him getting his citizenship stripped — not merely because he was a Jew as this article claims.
And in 1992, even the liberal Austrian courts still found the book so obscene that it was permanently put on a restricted “Media Harming The Youth” list.
Considering that the book graphically depicts pedophilia — sexual acts with a child — it’s anyone’s guess why adults are even allowed to possess it — why isn’t there a “Media Harming Everyone List?”
But then again, the courts in the Netherlands recently ruled that a notorious book instructing people on “how to” be a pedophile is considered “free speech” — and is not a criminal offense to possess.
In a few years, if Jews like Saltern are allowed to continue to further degrade our society, Felix Salten’s pornographic novel will be given a posthumous Nobel Prize — and it will be required reading for all school children right along with Anne Frank’s Diary.
Arch Stanton
File this under: Everything you know is Jewish
Kalin Flournoy
Didn’t the Meyer Levin vs Otto Frank lawsuit (1958) prove that Otto Frank forged his daughter Anne Frank’s alleged diaries?
Ken Dahl
Yes, Otto Frank, who was a con man wanted by the German occupation authorities on charges of financial chicanery, did forge much of his daughter’s diary, and actually hired a ghost writer to do it. He foolishly used a ballpoint pen to write the new parts of her diary, which proved beyond all doubt that it couldn’t be authentic as those type of pens weren’t invented until after the War. But there was an original diary, much shorter than was published, and included banal material not included in the book.
Quartermain
I never saw the movie Bambi, and now I am really glad I didn’t.
CHRIST IS KING
“… he was a prolific writer who moved in the same circles as the likes of Sigmund Freud, the father of psychoanalysis.”
“cultural blossoming”
That says it all, really, eh.
cosmo
Anne Frank wrote candidly about sex in her original diary (the part her father didn’t write), and this sexual material was edited out when it was first published because it wasn’t appropriate for children. Writing about underage sex seems to be a Jewish pastime.
Arch Stanton
Right up there with the Jews’ scatological obsessions. Jews are the most twisted, disgusting, filthiest and perverse race on the planet.
Jews are Treasonous – Vicious – debauched – immoral – warmongering – slanderous – gossiping – debased- venal – perverse – shallow – petty – greedy – sarcastic – foul – squalid – grimy – whiny – murderous – treacherous – dirty – nasty – vile – reprobate – snobbish- racist – prejudice – hideous – gruesome – monstrous vindictive – insufferable – mean – disloyal – wanton – vicious – cowardly – abominable – lustful – self-righteous – unrepentant – lawless – criminal – gluttonous – thieves – hateful – psychopathic – sociopath – cruel – haughty – vain – uncivil – despicable – wicked – depraved – villainous – nefarious – corrupt – baneful – gaudy – garish – insidious – repulsive – rude – offensive – obnoxious – demented – devilish – fiendish – impudent – obstinate – quarrelsome – belligerent – divisive – untrustworthy – egocentric – stingy – blasphemous – Godless – profane – shifty – dishonest – vulgar – unregenerate and simply the ultimate scum of the Earth!
And this is the short list!
Shlomo Bergsteinowitz
Was the child prostitute’s name Anne Franks?