Sartre, Jean-Paul

The French author and philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre was born in Paris. His father, who was a naval officer, died when Sartre was only one year old. Together with his mother he moved to his grandfather, the famous language pedagogue Karl Schweitzer. (Incidentally, Sartre is also related to another Nobel laureate, Albert Schweitzer.) After his mother had remarried, the family moved to La Rochelle. Sartre, however, spent most of his high school days in Paris. In 1929 he took his final degree in philosophy at École Normale Supérieure, this together with Simone de Beauvoir, whom he later had a lifelong relationship with. They never married, and because of their free relationship, they have been mentioned as one of the most famous couples of the 20th century.