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Jean Paul Sartre was born in Paris, June 21, 1905 as the first child of a marriage entered into a little over a year previously. His father, Jean-Baptiste, had meanwhile died of an infection contracted whilst serving in the French navy, Jean Paul grew up in the home of his maternal grandfather, Karl Schweitzer. This Karl Schwietzer was a professor of German language at the Sorbonne, the author of numerous published works, and also an uncle of the celebrated medical missionary Albert Schwietzer. Other circumstances than the demise of his father also conspired to make Sartre's childhood difficult. He was noticeably small in stature and obviously cross-eyed besides being over-intelligent and bookish. His mother was also cloyingly affectionate. The difficulty Sartre found in gaining acceptance, and his precociousness, together with grandfather Karl's tutoring, led to his putting together a book entitles Les Mots (The Words) which related the experience of himself and his mother in the Luxembourg Gardens in Paris in search of childhood playmates.
He was inducted into the French military following the outbreak of European war in 1939 and was detailed to serve in a meterological section charged with the management of weather balloons. He was subsequently captured in June 1940 and imprisoned into 1941 by the Germans. | |
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