Action scenes from world literature: Karl Kraus

2023-05-23 10:50:08

literature action scenes in world literature

When Karl Kraus was slapped in public

Stand: 23.05.2023 | Reading time: 3 minutes

Went on sick leave for a duel: Karl Kraus

Quelle: Getty Images

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In 1896, a scandal broke out in the legendary Viennese Café Griensteidl. Felix Salten, the later creator of “Bambi”, stormed the hall and attacked the polemicist Karl Kraus. There was a reason – and legal consequences.

EIt was two slaps to be exact. The incident happened in Vienna’s “Café Griensteidl”, which today only exists in name. In the old “Griensteidl” (nickname: “Café Megalomania”), this operated until it was demolished in 1897 Who’s who the literary scene of the time. Arthur Schnitzler, Hugo von Hofmannsthal, Hermann Bahr, Max Reinhardt. They were called the “Young Viennese”. Karl Kraus, even younger than the rest of the clique, joined in the early 1890s and was conspicuous for not mincing his words as a publicist, even among friends.

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He scoffed at Schnitzler and duped his buddy Felix Salten. Born in 1869 in Pest (Hungary) as the son of a Jewish family under the name of Siegmund Salzmann, he was im End of century one of the most important Viennese coffee house writers. Not everyone is familiar with his name today, but every child knows his most famous work: “Bambi. A life story from the forest” provided the literary template for one of the most famous subjects in cinema history.

The 1942 Disney film Bambi

Quelle: picture alliance / Everett Collection

Salten’s novel about the fawn was preprinted in the Vienna Neue Freie Presse in 1922 and published as a book in 1923 by the Ullstein Verlag in Berlin. It was a flop, and experts still see it as a mistake that Ullstein didn’t put a fawn on the cover. And then inflation: Salten’s real fees melted like snow in April. In 1926 a new edition of “Bambi” was published by Zsolnay in Vienna, followed in 1928 by the translation (“Bambi. A Life in the Woods”) by Simon & Schuster.

The world success “Bambi”

The American edition laid the foundation for the Disney film adaptation. “Bambi” (1942) was one of the first major animated productions ever. Although Salten gave away the rights in 1933 rather than sold them – to the MGM man Sidney Franklin. Throughout his life, Felix Salten was hardly ever able to make a living from writing, although he was an extremely productive author of plays, reviews, short stories and later also animal novels. It has never been verified that Salten is behind the pornographic work attributed to him, “Josefine Mutzenbacher or The Story of a Viennese Wench” (1906). The only thing that is certain is that he and Schnitzler shared many a wife in the 1890s.

Felix Salten, 1917

Source: picture-alliance / brandstaetter images / Franz Xaver Setzer

Salten and Kraus were also best friends for a while, but their relationship soon cooled off. Kraus had nasty dissected Salten because of his phrases and stylistic blunders, in his satirical text “Die demolirte Literatur” from December 1896 Kraus made fun of the young Viennese coffee house clique for pages and made Salten’s hitherto secret liaison with the Burgtheater actress Ottilie Metzl public.

“The demolished literature”: writing by Karl Kraus

Quelle: brandstaetter images via Getty Images

Salten then entered the “Café Griensteidl” on December 14, 1896 and slapped Kraus in front of everyone. And one more, “which was welcomed with joy on all sides,” said Schnitzler later in his diary.

The incident had legal consequences. On February 25, 1897, Salten was sentenced to a fine of 20 guilders or four days in prison. According to the times, the beef would have been fought as a duel, but Kraus produced a medical certificate: After that he suffered from a severe spinal deformity, which made it impossible for him to “satisfaction” through a duel. Kraus died in 1936 – he mentioned Salten 620 times in his media-critical magazine “Die Fackel”, never positively. Salten emigrated to Switzerland after Austria was annexed by Hitler’s Germany. In 1945 he died bitter and lonely in Zurich, where the Bambi fountain in the Oberstrass district honors him to this day.

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