Bror von Blixen-Finecke

Baron Bror Fredrik von Blixen-Finecke (25 July 1886 – 4 March 1946) was a Swedish nobleman, writer, professional hunter and guide on African big-game hunts. He was married to Karen Blixen (née Dinesen) from 1914 to 1925.

Personal life

Bror Fredrik "Blix" von Blixen-Finecke and his twin brother, Hans Gustaf, were the youngest of seven children born to Baron Fredrik von Blixen-Finecke (1847–1919) and his wife, Countess Clara Krag-Juel-Vind-Frijs (1855–1925).

Aage Westenholz, Tanne's maternal uncle and family trustee after her father died, turned the farm into a company in 1918 with Aage as the chairman. Blaming the farm's losses on Blix, Aage banned Blix from the farm in the spring of 1920, and by 1921 Tanne and Blixen were separated. They managed Singu, a property at Babati, owned by Blixen's first hunting client Dick Cooper. In 1929, Blixen concentrated on his safari business and became Cooper's East Africa agent. The safari work enabled the Blixens to purchase their own farm at Ndasagu. In 1935, he and "Cockie" divorced,

"Hunting with Blix was a magnificent experience," said Ebba Hamilton, "With his quiet, almost lyrical narrative of what happened around us, he got nature to live like I have never experienced since.

Rose Cartwright stated that Blixen was, "An excellent shot, a meticulous organizer, and very good teacher. He was on a par with the best African trackers, and they admired him greatly for his skills and stamina." especially in terms of the character's "cynicism and womanizing".

Writing Bror von Blixen-Finecke was a talented writer; his best-known book was his autobiography African Hunter (1938), long regarded as fine Africana since its translation from Swedish in 1938 by F. H. Lyon. In 1988, St. Martin's Press published a collection of von Blixen-Finecke's letters to family and friends in a book titled Bror Blixen: The Africa Letters.

In popular culture In the film Out of Africa (1985), which is based on Karen Blixen's memoirs of the same name, the role of Bror von Blixen-Finecke is played by Austrian actor Klaus Maria Brandauer, who also plays his brother Hans. Blix is a central character in the best selling war/thriller/spy novel The Bullet Garden by Stephen Hunter.