Josefine Mutzenbacher
By Felix Salten
- Release Date: 2010-02-15
- Genre: Fiction & Literature
Josephine Mutzenbacher – The Life Story of a Viennese Whore, as Told by Herself (German: Josefine Mutzenbacher – Die Lebensgeschichte Einer Wienerischen Dirne, Von Ihr Selbst Erzählt) is an erotic novel first published anonymously in Vienna, Austria in 1906. The novel is famous in the German-speaking world, having been in print in both German and English for over 100 years and sold over 3 million copies, becoming an erotic bestseller.
Although no author claimed responsibility for the work, it was originally attributed to either Felix Salten (see Bambi) or Arthur Schnitzler by the librarians at the University of Vienna. Today, critics, scholars, academics and the Austrian Government designate Salten as the sole author of the "pornographic classic", Josephine Mutzenbacher. The original novel uses the specific local dialect of Vienna of that time in dialogues and is therefore used as a rare source of this dialect for linguists. It describes also to some extend the social and economical conditions of the lower class of that time. The novel has been translated into English, French, Portuguese, Spanish, Italian, Hungarian, Dutch, Japanese, Swedish and Finnish, and been the subject of numerous films, theater productions, parodies, and university courses, as well as two sequels.
