1905 Paris
1980 Paris

Jean-Paul Charles Aymard Sartre was born on June 21, 1905, in Paris. His father was a naval officer. From 1924 until 1928, Sartre attended the Henry IV lycée in Paris. Following that, he studied psychology, philosophy, and sociology at the École Normale Supérieure in Paris. From 1931 until 1934, he lectured at the lycée in Le Havre and received a stipend for the Institut Francais in Berlin in that last year. When he was drafted into military service in 1939, he worked as a medic until he became a prisoner of war in June 1940. In that same year, Sartre published his first and most important philosophical work, "Being and Nothingness." His drama "The Flies" was debuted in occupied Paris in 1942. In the next year, Sartre became a member of the "Comité National des Ecrivains" (C.N.E.), which had close ties to the French resistance. In 1956, he turned his back on the communist movement. At the time of the May Revolution of 1968, Sartre temporarily espoused the issued of radical leftist student groups. His second philosophical work, "Critique of Dialectical Reason," appeared in 1959. For "personal and objective" reasons, he declined the Nobel Prize for literature in 1965. Sartre took over direction of the leftist newspaper "Libération" for one year in 1973. At this time, he visited the German terrorist Andreas Baader in Stuttgart-Stammheim prison. Jean-Paul Sartre died on April 15, 1980, in Paris.

Sartre

Sartre