Friedrich Morton
(1890 to 1969)
Friedrich Morton is among the most impressive personalities in the history of research into Hallstatt. A passionate cave researcher
with broad knowledge in many fields, he spent many years commuting between Vienna and Hallstatt. He also wrote many books
about his travels around the world. He contributed greatly to research work in Hallstatt and also prevented part of the village
from destruction by successfully campaigning against plans for a road running along the edge of the lake.Childhood and education
Commuting between Vienna and Hallstatt
Travels and interests
Excavations in Hallstatt
Writer and environmental activist
Childhood and education
Friedrich Morton was born in 1890, the son of an imperial-royal officer in Görz, today Gorizia in Friuli. Due to his father’s profession, Morton lived in many places in the Habsburg Empire. From 1909 to 1914, he studied at Vienna University, and taught at various secondary schools in Vienna. It was in 1915 that he first went to Hallstatt.Commuting between Vienna and Hallstatt
In 1922, he took service as administrator of the national Dachstein caves in Hallstatt. For decades, Morton travelled every weekend by train from Vienna to Hallstatt, so that he could pursue his secondary occupation and indulge his passion for ‘biological cave exploration’. In 1923, he founded the Botanic and Meteorological Station in Hallstatt, and the Hallstatt Museum Association appointed him curator in 1925.Travels and interests
Morton’s scientific activities were not limited to the Salzkammergut: until 1934, he undertook numerous journeys to distant countries such as Venezuela, Guatemala and Panama in Central America. Further excursions took him to Egypt and Abyssinia, presentday Ethiopia, and to Aden, capital of the Yemen, then still under British administration. Botany, meteorology, hydrobiology, mineralogy and geology are just some of the fields that this remarkably versatile scientist took an interest in. In the late 1920s, Morton also studied prehistory and early history.Excavations in Hallstatt
Together with Adolf Mahr, he undertook in 1927 excavations in the prehistoric mine at the Grünerwerk, and he headed archaeological investigations at the Dammwiese at the foot of the Plassen Mountain in 1936 and 1937. The finds there date exclusively from the latest Iron Age period, the 1st + century BC, and came to the Hallstatt Museum. Between 1937 and 1939, Morton explored the north-western part of the prehistoric cemetery; the 61 burials unearthed in this area are mainly assigned to the most recent stage of the cemetery occupancy, that is, to the time between 600 and 400 BC.Writer and environmental activist
Two years after the end of the Second World War, Morton retired and withdrew from field work, but he remained a prolific writer until his death in 1969. He wrote more than 2000 papers and books. He was one of the first Austrian ‘ecological activists’; in fact, it is due in no small part to him that today’s main road in Hallstatt was led through a tunnel and not laid out as a lakeside road.(Kern, A. – Loew, C.)
