Das andere Geschlecht

Author text
Born in Paris, January 9, 1908. Her originally wealthy parents lived in the Rue de Rennes after the First World War, due to bad speculation under less than lush conditions. At the age of five and a half Simone came to the Catholic Girls' Institute, the Cours Désir, Rue Jacob; as a model pupil there she passed the Baccalauréat, the French baccalauréat. In 1925/26 she studied French philology at the Institut Sainte-Marie in Neuilly and mathematics at the Institut Catholique before moving to the Sorbonne in 1926/27 to study philosophy. In 1928 she received her licence, wrote a thesis on Leibnitz, completed her probationary period as a teacher candidate at the Lycée Janson-de-Sailly together with Merleau-Ponty and Lévi-Strauss, and prepared for agrégation in philosophy at the Sorbonne and the École Normale Supérieure. In her final year of studies there she met a number of writers who later became famous, including Jean-Paul Sartre, her partner since then. From 1932 to 1936 she taught first in Rouen and then at the Lycée Molière and Camille Sée in Paris until 1943. Afterwards she retired from school life to devote herself entirely to writing. Together with Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir always took an active part in the political and social events of her time. She has been heavily involved in the French women's movement, particularly since the creation of the MLF (Mouvement de Libération des Femmes) in 1970. In 1971 she signed the French Manifesto on Abortion. In 1974, she became president of the Party for Women's Rights, but rejected the "Légion d'Honneur" which had been proposed to her Mittérand. On 14. 4.1986 she died, 78 years old, in the hospital Cochin. She was buried next to Sartre at the Montparnasse cemetery.