Born Fritz Mandelbaum, Frederic Morton was a child when he and his family left Austria after the Nazis took over. He grew up and lived in New York City for most of the rest of his life. This past Monday, Morton died at age 90 in Vienna, visiting the city that figured largely in his histories and novels--and which embraced him in later years. Morton won several Austrian honors, was given several 90th birthday parties last year in Vienna, and in 2002, the city distributed 100,000 copies of The Forever Street (Simon & Schuster), his saga of three generations of a Jewish family in Vienna, to residents as the first offering of its "one city, one book" program. Asked if the honors and attention might be an act of expiation, a request for forgiveness, Morton told the New York Times in 2003: "I'm sure. I always say on such occasions that I accept this on behalf of my generation, because I feel that this is in a sense restitution."
Morton's best-known work was The Rothschilds: A Family Portrait, about the banking family, which became a Broadway musical in 1970. Other nonfiction included A Nervous Splendor: Vienna, 1888-1889, which focuses on the Mayerling deaths and has appearances by Sigmund Freud, Gustav Klimt and Arthur Schnitzler; Thunder at Twilight: Vienna 1913-14, about the city on the cusp of World War I; and a memoir, Runaway Waltz (Simon & Schuster). He also wrote a series of novels that have "a European flavor on themes involving money and power," the Times wrote. Morton led a remarkable, inspiring life, and his works are a testament to that.