 Born on February 11, 1900, in Marburg, in Southern Germany, Gadamer grew up in Breslau (now Wroclaw in Poland), where his father was Professor of Pharmacy at the University of Breslau, later taking the Chair of Pharmaceutical Chemistry at Marburg. Gadamer’s family background was Protestant, and his father was sternly Prussian. His mother died of diabetes when Gadamer was only four, and he had no surviving brothers or sisters. Showing an early interest in humanistic studies, Gadamer began university studies in Breslau in 1918 (studying with Richard Hoenigswald), moving to Marburg with his father in 1919. Gadamer completed his doctoral studies at Marburg in 1922 (in his own words, ‘too young’—see Gadamer 1997b, 7) with a dissertation on Plato. In that same year, Gadamer also contracted poliomyelitis, from which he recovered only slowly, and the after-effects of which remained with him for the rest of his life.