 Louis Althusser was born on October 16th, 1918 in Bir Mourad Raïs (formerly Birmandreis), a suburb of Algiers. Hailing from Alsace on his father’s side of the family, his grandparents were French citizens who had chosen to settle in Algeria. At the time of his birth, Althusser’s father was a lieutenant in the French Military. After this service was up, his father returned to Algiers and to his work as a banker. By all accounts save for the retrospective ones contained in his autobiographies, Althusser’s early childhood in North Africa was a contented one. There he enjoyed the comforts of the Mediterranean environment as well as those provided by an extended and stable petit-bourgeois family.