Bambi's Jewish Roots: Semitism in Felix Salten's Novel

We have all seen, and cried over, Walt Disney's Bambi. The 1942 film is a coming-of-age parable, teaching some of life's hard lessons to generations of American children. Bambi's origin, however, isn't as familiar as his story. The character was the invention of Felix Salten, a Viennese-Jewish writer and close friend of Theodor Herzl, Hugo von Hofmannsthal, and Arthur Schnitzler. Salten wrote Bambi: A Life in the Woods in 1923, a perilous moment in European-Jewish history. Was the book a direct response to the unprecedented rise in anti-Semitism that followed World War I? Paul Reitter, professor of German at The Ohio State University and a leading authority on Austrian-Jewish literature, re-reads Bambi in the context of its creation, revealing powerful echoes and surprising meanings.

This program is presented in partnership with the Humanities Institute at The Ohio State University.