 Zelnik achieved success through period operetta films in the 1920s and 1930s.Friedrich Zelnik was born into a Jewish family in Czernowitz, today in Ukraine, at the time the capital of the Duchy of Bukovina in the Austrian part of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy.After studying in Vienna, Friedrich Zelnik worked as an actor in theaters in Nürnberg, Aachen, Worms, Prague and finally Berlin - in the theaters Theater an der Königsgrätzer Straße, Berliner Theater, and Komödienhaus.