Editing Marc Bloch (section)

==Personal life==
[[File:Book_signed_by_Marc_Bloch_and_offered_to_Maurice_Halbwachs.JPG|alt=Book signed by Marc Bloch and offered to Maurice Halbwachs|left|thumb|upright=2|Bloch's signature on "La ministérialité en France et en Allemagne" in ''Revue historique de droit français et étranger'', 1928; Bloch offered the book to [[Maurice Halbwachs]] and it is now held in the [[Human and Social Sciences Library Paris Descartes-CNRS]]]]

Bloch was not a tall man, being {{convert|5|ft|5|in}} in height.{{Sfn|Weber|1991|p=256}} He was an elegant dresser.  Eugen Weber has described Bloch's handwriting as "impossible".{{Sfn|Weber|1991|p=256}} He had expressive blue eyes, which could be "mischievous, inquisitive, ironic and sharp".{{Sfn|Friedman|1996|p=10}} Febvre later said that when he first met Bloch in 1902, he found a slender young man with "a timid face".{{Sfn|Hughes|2002|p=127}} Bloch was proud of his family's history of defending France: he later wrote, "My great-grandfather was a serving soldier in 1793; ... my father was one of the defenders of Strasbourg in 1870 ... I was brought up in the traditions of patriotism which found no more fervent champions than the Jews of the Alsatian exodus".{{Sfn|Fink|1989|p=1}}

Bloch was a committed supporter of the Third Republic and politically left-wing.{{Sfn|Schöttler|2010|p=415}} He was not a [[Marxism|Marxist]], although he was impressed by [[Karl Marx]] himself, whom he thought was a great historian if possibly "an unbearable man" personally.{{Sfn|Friedman|1996|p=11}} He viewed contemporary politics as purely moral decisions to be made.{{Sfn|Davies|1967|p=282}} He did not, however, let it enter into his work; indeed, he questioned the very idea of a historian studying politics.{{Sfn|Dosse|1994|p=44}} He believed that society should be governed by the young, and, although politically he was a moderate, he noted that revolutions generally promote the young over the old: "even the Nazis had done this, while the French had done the reverse, bringing to power a generation of the past".{{Sfn|Chirot|1984|p=43}} According to Epstein, following the First World War, Bloch presented a "curious lack of empathy and comprehension for the horrors of modern warfare",{{Sfn|Epstein|1993|p=276}} while [[John Lewis Gaddis]] has found Bloch's failure to condemn [[Stalinism]] in the 1930s "disturbing".{{Sfn|Gaddis|2002|p=128}} Gaddis suggests that Bloch had ample evidence of Stalin's crimes and yet sought to shroud them in utilitarian calculations about the price of what he called 'progress'".{{Sfn|Gaddis|2002|p=128}}

Although Bloch was very reserved{{Sfn|Friedman|1996|p=10}}—and later acknowledged that he had generally been old-fashioned and "timid" with women{{Sfn|Fink|1998|p=43}}—he was good friends with Lucien Febvre and Christian Pfister.{{Sfn|Davies|1967|p=267}} In July 1919 he married [[Simonne Vidal]], a "cultivated and discreet, timid and energetic"{{Sfn|Friedman|1996|p=12}} woman, at a [[Jewish wedding]].{{Sfn|Epstein|1993|p=276}} Her father was the [[Ponts et chaussées|''Inspecteur-Général de Ponts et Chaussées'']], and a very prosperous and influential man. Undoubtedly, says Friedman, his wife's family wealth allowed Bloch to focus on his research without having to depend on the income he made from it.{{Sfn|Friedman|1996|p=11}} Bloch was later to say he had found great happiness with her, and that he believed her to have also found it with him.{{Sfn|Fink|1998|p=43}} They had six children together,{{Sfn|Fink|1998|p=40}} four sons and two daughters.{{Sfn|Loyn|1999|p=163}} The eldest two were a daughter Alice,{{Sfn|Fink|1998|p=42}}{{Sfn|Epstein|1993|p=274}} and a son, Étienne.{{Sfn|Epstein|1993|p=274}} As his father had done with him, Bloch took a great interest in his children's education, and regularly helped with their [[homework]].{{Sfn|Friedman|1996|p=12}} He could, though, be "caustically critical"{{Sfn|Fink|1998|p=42}} of his children, particularly Étienne. Bloch accused him in one of his wartime letters of having poor manners, being lazy and stubborn, and of being possessed occasionally by "evil demons".{{Sfn|Fink|1998|p=42}} Regarding the facts of life, Bloch told Etienne to attempt always to avoid what Bloch termed "contaminated females".{{Sfn|Fink|1998|p=42}}

Bloch was agnostic, if not [[Atheism|atheist]], in matters of religion.{{Sfn|Epstein|1993|p=276}} His son Étienne later said of his father, "in his life as well as his writings not even the slightest trace of a supposed Jewish identity" can be found. "Marc Bloch was simply French".{{Sfn|Birnbaum|2007|p=248}} Some of his pupils believed him to be an [[Orthodox Jew]], but Loyn says this is incorrect. While Bloch's Jewish roots were important to him, this was the result of the political tumult of the [[Dreyfus affair|Dreyfus years]], said Loyn: that "it was only anti-semitism that made him want to affirm his Jewishness".{{Sfn|Loyn|1999|p=163}}

Bloch's brother Louis became a doctor, and eventually the head of the [[diphtheria]] section of the [[Hôpital des Enfants-Malades]]. Louis died prematurely in 1922.{{Sfn|Friedman|1996|p=7}} Their father died in March the following year.{{Sfn|Friedman|1996|p=7}} Following these deaths, Bloch took on responsibility for his aging mother as well as his brother's widow and children.{{Sfn|Friedman|1996|p=12}} Eugen Weber has suggested that Bloch was probably a [[monomania]]c{{Sfn|Weber|1991|p=249}} who, in Bloch's own words, "abhorred falsehood".{{Sfn|Fink|1998|p=42}} He also abhorred, as a result of both the [[Franco-Prussian War]] and [[World War I]],{{Sfn|Lyon|1985|p=183}} [[German nationalism]]. This extended to that country's culture and scholarship, and is probably the reason he never debated with [[German historiography|German historians]].{{Sfn|Epstein|1993|p=278}} Indeed, in Bloch's later career, he rarely mentioned even those German historians with whom he must, professionally, have felt an affinity, such as [[Karl Gotthard Lamprecht|Karl Lamprecht]]. Lyon says Lamprecht had denounced what he saw as the German obsession with political history and had focused on [[Art history|art]] and comparative history, thus "infuriat[ing] the ''Rankianer''".{{Sfn|Lyon|1985|p=183}} Bloch once commented, on English historians, that "en Angleterre, rien qu'en Angleterre"{{Sfn|Davies|1967|p=266}} ("in England, only England"). He was not, though, particularly critical of English historiography, and respected the long tradition of rural history in that country as well as more materially the government funding that went into historical research there.{{Sfn|Raftis|1999|p=64}}