Frederic Morton


Frederic Morton was an Austrian-born American writer.

Life

Born Fritz Mandelbaum in Vienna, Morton was the son of a blacksmith who specialized in forging imperial medals. In the wake of the Anschluss of 1938, his father was arrested, but later released from Dachau concentration camp. The family fled to Britain in 1939 and migrated to New York City the next year, when the senior Mandelbaum also changed the family name in order to be able to join an anti-Semitic labor union.
Morton worked as a baker but began studying literature in 1949. He would visit Austria several times from 1951 until his death in 2015. His 1962 visit was to marry his fiancée, Marcia, whom he had met at college.
From 1959, Morton worked as a columnist for several American periodicals including The New York Times, Esquire, and Playboy. He died at the Hilton hotel in Vienna at the age of 90 on April 20, 2015 while visiting, returning twice a year in his later years.

Selected works