Bad Afternoon of a Fawn: Bambi's Dark Secret Revealed

by Stephen J. Gertz

Thumper: Psst!  Hey, you! Who's your daddy?

Bambi: The Great Prince stag.

Thumper: No, I mean the guy who wrote you.

Bambi: Walt Disney?

Thumper: No, he adapted you. I mean the guy who brought you into the world.

Bambi: I don't know.

Thumper: Your author was Felix Salten, an Austrian Jew born in Hungary in 1869. He wrote you in German in 1923 and you were translated into English in 1928.

First edition (1923)

First edition in English (1928).

Thumper: His real name was Siegmund Saltzmann and his family moved to Vienna when he was an infant because the city granted Jews full citizenship in 1867; life was much easier there. When his father went broke he quit school and became an insurance salesman but, with an inch to write, began submitting poems and reviews to local journals. Soon, he was part of the Jung Wien (Young Vienna) movement and writing assignments came his way. In 1901 he published his first collection of short stories and afterward produced an average of a book a year - novels, short stories, essays, plays, you name it - under the pseudonym Felix Salten.

In 1906 he anonymously wrote a scandalous book.

Bambi: Scandalous? 

Thumper: Oh, yes. The book was Josefine Mutzenbacher, oder Die Geschichte einer Wienerischen Dirne, von ihr selbst erzählt.

Bambi: What's that mean?

Thumper: Josephine Mutzenbacher, or The Story of a Viennese Whore, as told by Herself. It's written in a very realistic and explicit manner.

Bambi: No! I'm shocked. Say it isn't so.

First edition.

Thumper: It is! It's a wild thing, privately published in an edition of 1000 copies for subscribers only and an instant hit. It's the most popular German erotic novel of all time. 

Thumper: It was first translated into English c. 1920s in a clandestine edition - a horrible job, all sex no style, Salten's humor lost as well as his voice, the rich flavor of the prose, and spirit of contemporary Vienna. This translation has been reprinted countless times; avoid it like a forest fire.

Thumper: The only translation into English that's worth reading is that done by Rudolf Schleifer in 1967 for Brandon House Library Editions out of North Hollywood, California. It was commissioned by Brian Kirby, the imprint's editor, who is considered to be the American Maurice Girodias due to his taste in fine erotica and boldness in publishing the finest erotic literature and translating for the first time into English many European erotic novels.

This edition bears an introduction by Hilary E. Holt, Ph.D., who did the translation under the pseudonym Rudolf Schleifer. Holt, an Austrian emigré to Los  Angeles, was a "sad, old man" according to Kirby, and a former professor living in a small, dumpy apartment in Hollywood  who translated for Kirby under the pseudonyms Rudolf Schleifer, Andre Gilbert, and Franz Mecklenberg. He  provided Kirby with many German erotic works from his personal collection, including Josefine Mutzenbacher. Holt also wrote introductions for the imprint, sometimes under his own name (when he'd done the book's translation under one of his pseudonyms), sometimes under the pseudonyms John S. Murphy, James E. White, Albert W. Lowy, or Allan D. Warner.

In his introduction Holt recalled a conversation he had with Stefan Zweig (1881-1942), the Vienesse novelist, about Mutzenbacher.

"Stefan Zweig was the only mortal who worked-up enough courage to ask the alleged ghost-writer of the Mutzenbacher Memoirs, Felix Salten, whether he had actually authored the book. The famous author of Bambi, et al, Zweig's senior by twelve years, was a very serious gentleman of dignified bearing which definitely did not encourage any indiscreet questions. Zweig mentinoed this episode to me, 37 years ago, in the following words:

"'Salten and I were discussing the literary phenomenon of famous authors writing bawdy stories containing four letter words and describing sexual bouts with Rabelaisian frankness. Salten reminded me of the poem Der Herr von Iste by Goethe ["Mr. Iste" is Goethe's penis, who refused to cooperate when Goethe, age 78, met a willing wench]. I, in turn, mentioned Mark Twain's bawdy story dealing with the court of Elizabeth I, 1601.

"'I thought this a good occasion to question Salten about his alleged authorship of the Mutzenbacher story. He smiled mysteriously and said, 'If I deny it, you won't believe me, and if I admit it, you'll think I am teasing you. So...' and he shrugged. To me this was a badly disguised admission. Knowing Salten well, I realized he'd have become very angry at being asked such a question unless he was the author.'"

Bambi: I'm plotzing; I need to lie down. It's like discovering daddy was an axe-murderer.

Thumper: More like a pimp. 

Bambi: I feel corrupted.

Thumper: You are. Blame it on Walt Disney. You were born a roe-deer. Disney played Frankenstein and turned you into a white-tailed deer.

Bambi: I feel tainted.

Thumper: You feel tainted? In the book I'm Friend Hare. Disney turned me into Thumper, a rabbit with paw pads. Rabbits don't have paw pads. I'm a freak.

Felix Salten reading to his children.

"The saying is, that young whores become old, religious crones, but that was not my case. I became a whore at an early age and experienced everything a woman can ... in bed, on chairs, tables, standing against walls, benches, lying on the grass, in dark hall-ways, in private bedchambers, on railroad trains, in lodging houses, in jail; in fact in every conceivable place where it was possible...but I have no regrets. I am along in years now...the enjoyment which my sex afforded me is fast disappearing. I am rich but faded, and often being very lonesome, but it never entered my mind, although in the past years I was religious... to now do penance."

That's the opening to the lousy first edition in English.

"When I remember the old popular saying that young whores turn into religious bigots when they become old, I must claim to be one of the few exceptions. Yes, I am old now, and have lost my good looks, and though I am wealthy, I often suffer from loneliness; but I don't regret my past one little bit and don't feel I have to do penance. I believe in God, but I dislike making a show of religion which is a private concern.

"My sex education started very early in life, and theory and practice were never separated. I have experienced everything that a woman can in male company, be it in bed, on the floor, on tables or chairs, leaning against the walls of old houses, in the open field, in carriages and on trains, in military barracks, in prisons and bordellos."

That's the opening as translated by Holt. Quite a difference!

As "translated" by Paul J. Gillette in 1970 for Holloway House in Los Angeles it isn't worth the paper it's printed on. Gillette was notorious for using existing translations of erotic novels, paraphrasing them, and adding graphic scenes not present in the original.

By the way, the memoir is fiction but Josefine Mutzenbacher was real. Born in 1859 in Ottakring, Vienna's 17th district, by the 1890s she had amassed enough wealth to buy a huge, ranch-like estate in the Austrian province of Carinthia. 

Bambi: How do you know so much about books? You must read a lot.

Thumper: Constantly. You know what they say - rabbits do it like bunnies.

Bambi: Thumper the book humper?

Thumper: You're not as innocent as you look, boy. I presume you've experienced sex.

Bambi: I'm only in it for the doe.

Thumper: Ultimately, so was Josephine Mutzenbacher.

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[SALTEN, Felix]. Josefine Mutzenbacher oder Die Geschichte einer Wienerischen Dirne von ihr selbst erzählt. [N.p., n.p.] Privatdruck, 1906. First edition, limited to 1000 copies for subscribers only. Octavo. 332 pp.  In the original silk envelope.

Hayn-Gotendorf VIII, 477: "An extremely naturalistic portrayal of the life of a prostitute seeking Sotadicum."

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Image of title page to first edition of Josefine Mutzenbacher courtesy of  Buchauktionen Hauff & Auvermann of Berlin, offering a copy in its Sale 71, Moderne Literatur und Kunst, October 24, 2013 (featuring an excellent selection of fine erotica), with our thanks. The lower margin of the title page has been Photoshopped to remove an inventory ticket.

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The Bauhaus Bird Paradise of Carl Ernst Hinkefuss

by Stephen J. Gertz

In 1929, graphic designer Carl Ernst Hinkefuss (1881-1970) published, Mein Vogel Paradies (My Bird Paradise), a tie-bound modern block book for children featuring stunning color lithographs depicting abstracted forms of birds reduced to their fundamental forms, accompanied by verse about each individual bird, both text (printed in silver ink) and images printed on black paper. A two-page introduction by Hinkefuss encourages children to create their own pictures based upon his simple designs.

Carl Ernst Hinkefuss was a popular Bauhaus illustrator known for modernist graphic design work that integrated art with commercial values. He did a great deal of advertising design for Hamburg Amerika oceanliners. Hinkefuss was also the editor of the design periodical Qualität, 1920-1932.

He "trained as a painter, graphic artist, and architect at the Königliche Kunstschule and the Kunstgewerbemuseum in Berlin at the turn of the century. While still a student, Hinkefuss became interested in the idea of artists collaborating with the business world, and after graduation he became a commercial graphic designer. From 1905 to early 1910, he worked in the advertising and publicity departments of several firms in Berlin and Dessau, and then later in 1910 set out as an independent publicist in Berlin" (Online Archive of California). 

He ultimately partnered with Wilhelm Deffke (1887-1950) in Wilhemwerk, their commercial design house.

Prospectus for Mein Vogel Paradies, 1929.

According to the prospectus for the book, it was produced using a fifteen color offset-lithography process. The prospectus also mentions a gift box but, apparently, it was never produced; no copies in a publisher's gift box have ever been seen.

Mein Vogel Paradies is an extremely rare book. OCLC/KVK note only four copies in institutional holdings worldwide. According to the ABPC Index, 1923-2011, no copies have ever come to auction. Fine copies, if you can find them, now sell in the low five figures.

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HINKEFUSS, Carl Ernst. Mein Vogel Paradies. Gesamtwerk von Karl Ernst Hinkefuss. [Berlin: Verlag International GMBH / Internationale Propaganda für Qualitatserzeugnisse], 1929. First edition, limited to 1500 copies signed by the artist. Quarto (11 5/8 x 8 1/4 in.). [14]  leaves on black paper printed in silver and fourteen other colors. Color lithographs. Color pictorial wrappers side-stitched with black string.

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Book images courtesy of Aleph-Bet Books, with our thanks.

Image of prospectus courtesy of Wilhelmwerke, with our appreciation.
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Pogany's Parsifal in a Beautiful Inlaid Binding

by Stephen J. Gertz

Title page.

Willy Pogany's Parsifal of 1912 is one of the five books he designed and illustrated that immortalized his career as an illustrator, the others being The Rubáiyat of Omar Khayyám (1909), The Rime of the Ancient Mariner (1910),  Tannhäuser (1911), and Lohengrin (1913).

This, the limited edition, was originally published in a full white vellum binding richly gilt decorated. Here,  we see it in a masterful, singular, and very attractive pictorially inlaid binding, c. 1933-34, in full crushed crimson morocco by Riviere & Son.

The upper cover possesses a gilt-ruled border surrounding a brown, black, and green morocco inlaid frame of broad leaves climbing two spears of Christ as a snake coils through the lower section of the frame, all against a hand-pointillé'd background, the whole surrounding a sunken panel in brown crushed morocco with darker brown foliage at its base within which are three lilies with ivory-morocco blossoms atop bright green leafy stems. Rising from this motif is a staff supporting the banner of Jesus in pale blue-gray noil silk with gilt tassels and ornaments, a gilt crucifix at its top. Central on the banner is a chalice of acrylic glass in relief with gilt rays emanating from it and IHS, the sacred monogram of Jesus, in gilt within an ivory hemisphere rising from within the cup. Surmounting the central panel is the dove of peace, with wings spread, in ivory morocco.

The lower cover features a gilt-ruled border inside of which are two frames in black with gilt borders that highlight twenty-six small blindstamped hearts that lie between. Blindtooled dots within the innermost frame finish the cover. Five raised bands, inlaid compartments with red, ivory, brown and black floral and heart motifs within black, gilt-ruled frames highlight the spine. 

 

Inlaid pictorial doublures in deer brown, the upper featuring a Jesuit staff, a forest green wreath with emanating gilt rays enclosing its cruciform top, as six ivory lilies with green leaves flower the background along with a vine of thorns outlined in black.

Upper doublure.

The lower doublure is a variant of the upper, with a vine of thorns, three ivory lilies atop a single, long, leafy stem, the swords and helmet of a warrior for Christ in gray morocco with bright sheen highlighting in white, the swords' hilts in brown.

 

Each doublure is framed by turn-ins inlaid with green, dark brown, black, and deer brown in a foliate trellis. All edges gilt, and pale straw moire silk endpapers finish the binding. 

Though the binding is stamp-signed "J. and E. Bumpus of Oxford,"  it was, in reality, bound by Riviere & Sons. Bumpus of Oxford St, a London department store that sold books, won acclaim for accomplished bindings that they never created;  they farmed out their binding work to Riviere, amongst others, who, at this time, deep into the Great Depression, needed all the commissions they could get and was willing to surrender a formal attribution for their work).

Lower doublure.

I date this binding to c. 1933-34 on the following: Bayntun bought Riviere & Sons in 1939. Acrylic glass, the material used for the binding's chalice, was introduced into the marketplace in 1933; it may have taken a year for the new, miracle material to work its way down to artisans seeking novel materials to work with. Acrylic glass was used for this binding earlier after its appearance in the 1930s rather than later, we presume, simply because of its exotic (for its time a cool, and fine science novelty; this entire binding employs the finest materials available, even integrating fine silk into its front cover). Using acrylic glass later into the 1930s, after it became commonplace and inexpensive, would not have been considered by Riviere; it had, by then, lost its novel luster. This binding may very well represent one of the earliest uses by artisan of acrylic glass. True glass has rarely been used by binders; it shatters easily; acrylic must have  seemed the perfect material, at last. To the client, it was surely considered a modern marvel, a miracle of the age, and yes, prestigious. Acrylic glass was the nest big thing, the future, now. Everybody was happy. Plastic did not yet acquire the taint of being, well, plastic.

Text page. All have pictorial borders.

William Andrew ("Willy") Pogany (born Vilmos Andreas Pogány) (August 1882 – 30 July 1955) was a prolific Hungarian illustrator of children's and other books. Pogany's best known works consist of illustrations of classic myths and legends done in the Art Nouveau style. He also worked as an art director on several Hollywood films, including Fashions of 1934 and Dames.

 

The publication of Pogány's Parsifal was one in his trilogy of masterworks focusing on Wagner's Germanic tales, including Tannhäuser and Lohengrin, books that demonstrated a firm commitment to ongoing innovation resulting in the gorgeous suite of illustrations, including color lithographs, monotone and marginal illustrations and the delightful tipped-in color plates (produced with a four-color process) included in Parsifal.

Here, the themes of medieval chivalry, erotic love and moral test are lavishly illustrated  by Pogány with an outstanding use of iconography, form and color. And in this binding the Holy Grail has never looked so desirably... questible.

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[RIVIERE (Binder)]. [POGANY, Willy (Illustrator)]. ROLLESTON, T.W. Parsifal. Or, the Legend of the Holy Grail Retold From Ancient Sources with Acknowledgment to the Parsifal of Richard Wagner. London: Harrap & Co., n.d. [1912].

One of 525 copies signed by the illustrator, this being copy no. 396. Tall octavo (10 7/8 x 7 1/8 in; 275 x 181 mm). Unpaginated. Sixteen mounted color plates within decorative borders, numerous full-page illustrations, each text leaf with elaborate pictorial borders, the text in calligraphy.

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Images courtesy of David Brass Rare Books, with our thanks.
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