Bambi, the most famous deer in history is a character invented by Felix Salten (Siegmund Salzmann), an Austrian Jew who lived during the Nazi era. The original story is about a deer who is chased by the forest animals that prey on each other. The original story is actually a critique of the society that condemns man because of the religion to which he was born. The name Bambi is derived from the word Bambino which means child in ItalianAfter publishing his first book, Salten joined a group of poets sitting in one of the cafes in the city of Budapest, where he met Theodor Herzl who became his best friend and later offered him a job at the “Noya Freya Parsa” newspaper where he was a senior editor
At the beginning of the book, there’s the quote “It is no fairy tale, despite what you want” – a reference to the famous statement of Benjamin Zeev Herzl.
After the Anschluss (annexation of Austria by Germany) the book was confiscated in Austria and most copies were burned by the Nazis. It was subsequently banned in Nazi Germany in 1936 as “political allegory on the treatment of Jews in Europe.” Many copies of the novel were burned, making original first editions rare and difficult to find. He had to flee his native land Austria to Hollywood and sell the rights to the book for $ 1000 to a producer who eventually sold them to Disney for about $ 5,000. Salten was quoted saying “I have been delivered over to Disney with my hands and feet fettered and a gag in my mouth”
The movie was said to have an important moral; even Disney himself wanted to make sure that the viewers caught this moral. The moral was that the forest needed to be taken seriously and needed to be preserved so that animals didn’t get hurt and/or use their homes
Other Disney movies based on Salten’s books are “The Shaggy Dog”, “Three Little Pigs” and “Perri”
Felix Saltan is almost forgotten in history. Disney recently announced they will be producing a live action version of the Bambi movie.