Fritzi Burger - Biography

Friederike "Fritzi" Burger (6 June 1910, Vienna, Austria - 16 February 1999, Vienna, Austria) was an Austrian figure skater competitive in the late 1920s and early 1930s. She was Jewish.

Career

She won the first-ever contested European Championships, held in 1930. Sonja Henie, who held a monopoly in women's figure skating at the time, was not present at this championship and Burger never defeated her in competition. She placed second behind Henie at the 1928 and 1932 Winter Olympics, and in the 1929 and 1932 World Championships.

After the 1932 Olympics, Burger ended her skating career and went to London, where in 1935 she married Shinkichi Nishikawa, a grandson of the Japanese pearl tycoon Kokichi Mikimoto. She returned with her husband to Vienna where she gave birth to her son in the spring of 1938, just before Austria's annexation by Nazi Germany.

In the 1990s, living in the United States, she was interviewed for several documentaries on the history of figure skating.

Results

Quotes

• "I had two husbands. She even beat me at that. She had three." -- Fritzi Burger speaking of Sonja Henie, in a 1994 interview.

See also

• List of select Jewish figure skaters

External links

• Picture of Fritzi Burger
• New York Times topics: In the Fading Light Of the Brilliant Henie
• Jews in sports - Burger, Fritzi
• Preface to "Searching for Fritzi"
• Reviews of "Searching for Fritzi," 1999

Book

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