This contribution is designed to provide a first survey of the life of Gertrud Mayer-Jaspers (1879–1974), the Jewish wife of the philosopher Karl Jaspers (1883–1969), and an indication as to why research on her and her various relationships is of import beyond the merely personal. The contribution focuses on three main aspects: her parents’ grappling with her decision to marry the non-Jew Jaspers; her relevance for Jaspers’s decision to move to Basel in 1948; and
the question of how ,Jewish‘ Gertrud Mayer-Jaspers was.