Karl Jaspers: 100 years of General Psychopathology.

Karl Jaspers (1883–1969) was born into an upper-middle-class family. He was a sickly child but it was only in April 1901 that bronchiectasis was diagnosed. This was a lifelong condition that influenced his choice of career but also his outlook as he was not expected to live long. Jaspers studied medicine in Berlin, Göttingen and Heidelberg. At Heidelberg, he came into contact with many of the leading intellectuals of his day: Max Weber, Friedrich Gundolf, Georg Lukács, and Ernst Bloch. It was here, too, that he met Ernst Mayer whose sister, Gertrud, Jaspers married in 1910. Jaspers and Gertrud had remained in Heidelberg throughout the war years despite Gertrud being Jewish and it is a remarkable fact that they survived. Jaspers was retired as professor of philosophy at the end of September 1937 because of a Nazi law excluding from office any civil servant married to a Jew.