Felix Salten

Born in Budapest in 1869 as Siegmund Salzmann, he moved with his family to Vienna as an infant and grew up to become a self-taught writer, journalist, and critic. Writing under the name Felix Salten, he became part of the rich literary world of fin-de-siècle Vienna and was associated with major cultural figures of his time.

He wrote widely for newspapers and magazines, along with fiction, plays, and essays, but he is remembered most of all for Bambi, a Life in the Woods (1923). Although many readers know the gentler Disney adaptation, Salten’s original novel is more reflective and often harsher, using the life of a deer to explore danger, loss, and survival.

Salten was born into a Jewish family, and the rise of Nazism shaped the final part of his life. He left Austria for Switzerland in the late 1930s and died in Zurich in 1945.