Who is Eugen Weber? What is his personality trait; his demeanor and why did he decides on a lifetime long career as a historian?

In his very personal book, My France, a book so personal and so dear to him, Eugen Weber tells us about his story: far, from a prodigy, the child I was, and later the young boy, seemed then as he seems now remarkably unremarkable, except for reading – reading then, and later politics (I do not know what else, other than politics), to call my vague dissatisfaction with the social hierarchy, the subjection of servants and peasants, the diffuse of violence of everyday life in a relatively peaceful country among apparently gentle folk.

Eugen Weber was born in Bucharest, Romania. This is how he describes the place of his birth: “Where I lived as a boy others had lived and fought: the Romans, and those whom they conquered, the Dacians. Many had trampled this dark and bloody ground where the Carpathian mountains curved west before they petered out near the Danube: Scythians, Tracians, Goths, Slavs, Hunnish tribes”.

“I grew up reading Karl May, Alexander Dumas, Stefan Zweig, Victor Hugo, Homer, George Sand, Jules Verne, the Comtesse de Segur and ever cheap paperback I can afford to buy”.

Many Romanians, especially among the bourgeoisie, drew ancestors from Greeks, Armenians, Poles, Germans. Nicolae Iorga, the great historian, was distantly of Greek descent.

More recent Polish blood flowed in the veins of Corneliu Codreanu, who founded the Legion of the Archangel Michael, otherwise known as the Iron Guard.

Eugen Weber is perhaps known as a historian with a keen interest on French history. That did not happen by accident ot was a natural flow, he explains that, again in My France: “Good Romanians go to Paris when they die. Those who can afford it go there sooner”.

Romanian culture is very much French-oriented. Eugen Weber’s father was captain of industry and held prominent corporate positions in the Romanian business. He was university educated man having studied in a German university. Her mother too, we learn from My France, that she completed her high school in Switzerland. Eugen Weber started reading from his cousin’s books at the age of five. He tells us he was fascinated by the words that were placed around his counsin’s picture books and wanted to know about them.

By the time Eugen was ten years old his parents hired a personal tutor for him. According to him, it seems that the personal tutor was communist inclined and as he assimilated that understanding and the words used, his uncles discovered what was happening and they used their influence to get the personal tutor fired.

As times went on, Eugen became restless and dissatisfied with his Romania. He wanted an escape. As a young boy he wanted his own space and thought it rather mundane and boring to go to France since many Romanians go there.

He wanted a distinctive experience. He rejected Germany for the simple reason that his father studied there. And so he finally opted for Britain.

As a young boy he settled in Britain at a boarding school. He tells us that he was very bad student in both mathematics and physical science. He like to read literature. And he had a wild imagination to which he says he could gave been the best fiction writer if he wanted to.

He was completing his high school on the eve of the Second World War. Because of his dislike of mathematics and physics in class, he felt he could explore a life and career in the army. And so he joined the British Royal Army. He became a soldier during the Second World War. I guess that is the reason that makes him a master of events and have such deep grasp of human psychology.

Regarding his time in the army he says it was much more like the American football, where there are intense moments of brutal intensity that are followed by long time of lull.

As time went on, he felt his interest in the army was waning and by the time the Second World War was over he was done.

Then began his academic career, that blossomed first at Cambridge University and was to reach for the stars at the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA).

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