Frederic Morton

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Frederic Morton (October 5, 1924 – April 20, 2015) was an Austrian-born American writer. Born Fritz Mandelbaum in Vienna, his father was a blacksmith who made imperial medals. After the Nazi Anschluss in 1938, his father was arrested but released from Dachau. The family fled to Britain in 1939 and moved to New York City in 1940. They changed their surname to Morton. Morton worked as a baker and began studying literature in 1949. He visited Austria many times, starting in 1951. In 1962 he returned to Austria to marry his fiancée, Marcia, whom he met in college. Beginning in 1959, he wrote columns for The New York Times, Esquire, and Playboy. He died at the Hilton hotel in Vienna on April 20, 2015, aged 90, while visiting; in later years he had been returning to Austria twice a year.