Friederike "Fritzi" Burger (6 June 1910 – 16 February 1999) was an Austrian figure skater. She was a two-time Olympic silver medalist (1928, 1932), a four-time World medalist (silver in 1929 and 1932, bronze in 1928 and 1931), the 1930 European champion, and a four-time Austrian national champion (1928–1931).
Life and career Burger was born on 6 June 1910 in Vienna. Her family was Jewish.
Burger was the Austrian national champion from 1928 to 1931. 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. She placed second behind Henie at the 1928 and 1932 Winter Olympics and earned bronze medals at the 1929 World Championships, behind Henie and Maribel Vinson of the U.S., and at the 1931 World Championships, behind Henie and Hilde Holovsky from Austria.
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 Kōkichi Mikimoto. She returned with her husband to Vienna, where she gave birth to her son in the summer of 1937, just before the Anschluss (annexation of Austria by Nazi Germany). She, her husband and her son moved to London in 1938 and a few years later moved to Tokyo, Japan, where Nishikawa was from.
In the 1990s, living in the United States, Burger was interviewed for several documentaries on the history of figure skating. She joked in a 1994 interview, "I had two husbands. [Sonja Henie] even beat me at that. She had three."
Burger died on 16 February 1999 in Bad Gastein, Austria.
Results International Event 1927 1928 1929 1930 1931 1932 1933 1934 Winter Olympics 2nd 2nd World Championships 3rd 2nd 3rd 2nd European Championships 1st 2nd 2nd 3rd National Austrian Championships 3rd 1st 1st 1st 1st 2nd 3rd
See also List of select Jewish figure skaters
References
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
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