Monday, June 15, 2026

A00214 - Albert Schweitzer, Alsatian-German Theologian, Philosopher, Organist, and Mission Doctor

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Schweitzer, Albert

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The Reverend
Albert Schweitzer
OM
Schweitzer in 1955
Born14 January 1875
Kaysersberg, Alsace–Lorraine, German Empire
Died4 September 1965 (aged 90)
Lambaréné, Gabon
Citizenship
  • Germany (until 1919)
  • France (from 1919)
Alma materUniversity of Strasbourg
Known for
Spouse
​
​
(m. 1912; died 1957)​
Awards
Scientific career
Fields


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"As soon as a man does not take his existence for granted, but beholds it as something unfathomably mysterious, thought begins." (01/14/2024)

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"Truth has no special time of its own.  Its hour is now -- always."

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Albert Schweitzer (born Jan. 14, 1875, Kaysersberg, Upper Alsace, Ger. [now in France]—died Sept. 4, 1965, Lambaréné, Gabon) was an Alsatian-German theologian, philosopher, organist, and mission doctor in equatorial Africa, who received the 1952 Nobel Prize for Peace for his efforts in behalf of “the Brotherhood of Nations.”

The eldest son of a Lutheran pastor, Schweitzer studied philosophy and theology at the University of Strasbourg, where he took the doctor’s degree in philosophy in 1899. At the same time, he was also a lecturer in philosophy and a preacher at St. Nicholas’ Church, and the following year he received a doctorate in theology. His book Von Reimarus zu Wrede (1906; The Quest of the Historical Jesus) established him as a world figure in theological studies. In this and other works he stressed the eschatological views (concerned with the consummation of history) of Jesus and St. Paul, asserting that their attitudes were formed by expectation of the imminent end of the world.

During these years Schweitzer also became an accomplished musician, beginning his career as an organist in Strasbourg in 1893. Charles-Marie Widor, his organ teacher in Paris, recognized Schweitzer as a Bach interpreter of unique perception and asked him to write a study of the composer’s life and art. The result was J.S. Bach: le musicien-poète (1905). In this work Schweitzer viewed Bach as a religious mystic and likened his music to the impersonal and cosmic forces of the natural world.

In 1905 Schweitzer announced his intention to become a mission doctor in order to devote himself to philanthropic work, and in 1913 he became a doctor of medicine. With his wife, Hélène Bresslau, who had trained as a nurse in order to assist him, he set out for Lambaréné in the Gabon province of French Equatorial Africa. There, on the banks of the Ogooué (Ogowe) River, Schweitzer, with the help of the natives, built his hospital, which he equipped and maintained from his income, later supplemented by gifts from individuals and foundations in many countries. Interned there briefly as an enemy alien (German), and later in France as a prisoner of war during World War I, he turned his attention increasingly to world problems and was moved to write his Kulturphilosophie (1923; “Philosophy of Civilization”), in which he set forth his personal philosophy of “reverence for life,” an ethical principle involving all living things, which he believed essential to the survival of civilization.

Schweitzer returned to Africa in 1924 to rebuild the derelict hospital, which he relocated some two miles up the Ogooué River. A leper colony was added later. By 1963 there were 350 patients with their relatives at the hospital and 150 patients in the leper colony, all served by about 36 white physicians, nurses, and varying numbers of native workers.

Schweitzer never entirely abandoned his musical or scholarly interests. He published Die Mystik des Apostels Paulus (1930; The Mysticism of Paul the Apostle), gave lectures and organ recitals throughout Europe, made recordings, and resumed his editing of Bach’s works, begun with Widor in 1911 (Bachs Orgelwerke, 1912–14). His address upon receiving the Nobel Peace Prize, Das Problem des Friedens in der heutigen Welt (1954; The Problem of Peace in the World of Today), had a worldwide circulation.

Quick Facts
Born:
Jan. 14, 1875, Kaysersberg, Upper Alsace, Ger. [now in France]
Died:
Sept. 4, 1965, Lambaréné, Gabon (aged 90)
Awards And Honors:
Nobel Prize (1952)
On the Web:
The Nobel Prize - Albert Schweitzer (May 21, 2026)

Despite the occasional criticisms of Schweitzer’s medical practice as being autocratic and primitive, and despite the opposition sometimes raised against his theological works, his influence continues to have a strong moral appeal, frequently serving as a source of encouragement for other medical missionaries.



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Here are some notable quotes by Albert Schweitzer:

  • "The purpose of human life is to serve, and to show compassion and the will to help others." A-Z Quotes
  • "Success is not the key to happiness. Happiness is the key to success. If you love what you are doing, you will be successful." BrainyQuote
  • "I don't know what your destiny will be, but one thing I know: the only ones among you who will be really happy are those who will have sought and found how to serve." Wisdom Quotes
  • "Ethics is the activity of man directed to secure the inner perfection of his own personality." wikiquote.org
  • "A man does not have to be an angel in order to be a saint." noxquotes.com

These quotes reflect his philosophy on life, service, and compassion.

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Ludwig Philipp Albert Schweitzer (German: [ˈalbɛʁt ˈʃvaɪtsɐ] ⓘ; 14 January 1875 – 4 September 1965) was a German polymath from Alsace. He was a theologian, organist, musicologist, writer, humanitarian, philosopher, and physician. As a Lutheran minister, Schweitzer challenged both the secular view of the historical Jesus as depicted by the historical-critical method current at this time, as well as the traditional Christian view. His contributions to the interpretation of Pauline Christianity concern the role of Paul's mysticism of "being in Christ" as primary and the doctrine of justification by faith as secondary.

He received the 1952 Nobel Peace Prize for his philosophy of "Reverence for Life".[1] His philosophy was expressed in many ways, but most famously in founding and sustaining the Hôpital Albert Schweitzer in Lambaréné, French Equatorial Africa (now Gabon). As a music scholar and organist, he studied the music of German composer Johann Sebastian Bach and influenced the Organ Reform Movement (Orgelbewegung).

Early years

Albert Schweitzer's birthplace in Kaysersberg, now in Alsace in France
Schweitzer in 1912. Oil on canvas painting by Émile Schneider, Strasbourg Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art

Schweitzer was born on 14 January 1875 in Kaysersberg in Alsace, in what had less than four years previously become the Imperial Territory of Alsace-Lorraine in the German Empire. He later became a citizen of France after World War I, when Alsace became French territory again. He was the son of Adèle (née Schillinger) and Louis Théophile Schweitzer.[2][3] He spent his childhood in Gunsbach, also in Alsace, where his father, the local Lutheran-Evangelical pastor of the EPCAAL, taught him how to play music.[4] The tiny village would become home to the Association Internationale Albert Schweitzer (AIAS).[5]

The medieval parish church of Gunsbach was shared by the Protestant and Catholic congregations, which held their prayers in different areas at different times on Sundays. This compromise arose after the Protestant Reformation and the Thirty Years' War. Schweitzer, the pastor's son, grew up in this exceptional environment of religious tolerance, and developed the belief that true Christianity should always work towards a unity of faith and purpose.[6]

Schweitzer's first language was the Alsatian dialect of German. At the Mulhouse gymnasium he received his "Abitur" (the certificate at the end of secondary education) in 1893. He studied organ in Mulhouse from 1885 to 1893 with Eugène Munch, organist at the Protestant cathedral, who inspired Schweitzer with his enthusiasm for the music of German composer Richard Wagner.[7] In 1893, he played for the French organist Charles-Marie Widor (at Saint-Sulpice, Paris), for whom Johann Sebastian Bach's organ music contained a mystic sense of the eternal. Widor, deeply impressed, agreed to teach Schweitzer without fee, and a great and influential friendship thus began.[8]

From 1893 Schweitzer studied Protestant theology at the Kaiser Wilhelm University in Strasbourg. There he also received instruction in piano and counterpoint from professor Gustav Jacobsthal, and associated closely with Ernest Munch, the brother of his former teacher, organist of St William church, who was also a passionate admirer of J. S. Bach's music.[9] Schweitzer served his one-year compulsory military service in 1894. Schweitzer saw many operas of Richard Wagner in Strasbourg under Otto Lohse, and in 1896 he managed to afford a visit to the Bayreuth Festival to see Wagner's Der Ring des Nibelungen and Parsifal, both of which impressed him.[10]

In 1898, he returned to Paris to write a PhD dissertation on The Religious Philosophy of Kant at the Sorbonne, and to study in earnest with Widor. Here he often met with the elderly Aristide Cavaillé-Coll. He also studied piano at that time with Marie Jaëll.[10] In 1899, Schweitzer spent the summer semester at the University of Berlin and eventually obtained his theology degree at the University of Strasbourg.[11][12][13][14] He published his PhD thesis at the University of Tübingen in 1899.[15]

In 1905, Schweitzer began his study of medicine at the University of Strasbourg, culminating in the degree of M.D. in 1913.[11][14]

Music

Schweitzer rapidly gained prominence as a musical scholar and organist, dedicated also to the rescue, restoration and study of historic pipe organs. With theological insight, he interpreted the use of pictorial and symbolical representation in J. S. Bach's religious music. In 1899, he astonished Widor by explaining figures and motifs in Bach's Chorale Preludes as painter-like tonal and rhythmic imagery illustrating themes from the words of the hymns on which they were based. They were works of devotional contemplation in which the musical design corresponded to literary ideas, conceived visually. Widor had not grown up with knowledge of the old Lutheran hymns.[16]

The exposition of these ideas, encouraged by Widor and Munch, became Schweitzer's last task, and appeared in the masterly study J. S. Bach: Le Musicien-Poète, written in French and published in 1905. There was great demand for a German edition, but, instead of translating it, he decided to rewrite it.[17] The result was two volumes (J. S. Bach), which were published in 1908 and translated into English by Ernest Newman in 1911.[18] Ernst Cassirer, a contemporaneous German philosopher, called it "one of the best interpretations" of Bach.[19]

During its preparation, Schweitzer became a friend of Cosima Wagner, then resident in Strasbourg, with whom he had many theological and musical conversations, exploring his view of Bach's descriptive music, and playing the major Chorale Preludes for her at the Temple Neuf.[20] Schweitzer's interpretative approach greatly influenced the modern understanding of Bach's music. He became a welcome guest at the Wagners' home, Wahnfried.[21] He also corresponded with composer Clara Faisst, who became a good friend.[22]

The Choir Organ at St Thomas' Church, Strasbourg, designed in 1905 on principles defined by Schweitzer

His 1906 pamphlet "The Art of Organ Building and Organ Playing in Germany and France",[23] republished with an appendix on the state of the organ-building industry in 1927, effectively launched the 20th-century Orgelbewegung, which turned away from romantic extremes and rediscovered baroque principles—although this sweeping reform movement in organ building eventually went further than Schweitzer had intended. In 1909, he addressed the Third Congress of the International Society of Music at Vienna on the subject. Having circulated a questionnaire among players and organ-builders in several European countries, he produced a very considered report.[24]

This provided the basis for the International Regulations for Organ Building. He envisaged instruments in which the French late-romantic full-organ sound should work integrally with the English and German romantic reed pipes, and with the classical Alsace Silbermann organ resources and baroque flue pipes, all in registers regulated (by stops) to access distinct voices in fugue or counterpoint capable of combination without loss of distinctness: different voices singing the same music together.

Schweitzer also studied piano under Isidor Philipp, head of the piano department at the Paris Conservatory.

In 1905, Widor and Schweitzer were among the six musicians who founded the Paris Bach Society, a choir dedicated to performing J. S. Bach's music, for whose concerts Schweitzer took the organ part regularly until 1913. He was also appointed organist for the Bach Concerts of the Orféo Català at Barcelona, Spain, and often travelled there for that purpose.[16] He and Widor collaborated on a new edition of Bach's organ works, with detailed analysis of each work in English, French, and German. Schweitzer, who insisted that the score should show Bach's notation with no additional markings, wrote the commentaries for the Preludes and Fugues, and Widor those for the Sonatas and Concertos: six volumes were published in 1912–14. Three more, to contain the Chorale Preludes with Schweitzer's analyses, were to be worked on in Africa, but these were never completed, perhaps because for him they were inseparable from his evolving theological thought.[25]

On departure for Lambaréné in 1913, he was presented with a pedal piano, a piano with pedal attachments to operate like an organ pedal-keyboard.[26] Built especially for the tropics, it was delivered by river in a huge dug-out canoe to Lambaréné, packed in a zinc-lined case. At first, he regarded his new life as a renunciation of his art, and fell out of practice, but after some time he resolved to study and learn by heart the works of Bach, Mendelssohn, Widor, César Franck, and Max Reger systematically.[27] It became his custom to play during the lunch hour and on Sunday afternoons. Schweitzer's pedal piano was still in use at Lambaréné in 1946.[28] According to a visitor, Dr. Gaine Cannon, of Balsam Grove, N.C., the old, dilapidated piano-organ was still being played by Dr. Schweitzer in 1962, and stories told that "his fingers were still lively" on the old instrument at 88 years of age.

Sir Donald Tovey dedicated his conjectural completion of Bach's The Art of Fugue to Schweitzer.[citation needed]

Schweitzer's recordings of organ music, and his innovative recording technique, are described below.

One of his pupils was conductor and composer Hans Münch.[citation needed]

Theology

Saint-Nicolas, Strasbourg

In 1899, Schweitzer became a deacon at the church of Saint Nicholas in Strasbourg. In 1900, with the completion of his licentiate in theology, he was ordained as priest, and that year he witnessed the Oberammergau Passion Play. In the following year, he became provisional Principal of the Theological College of Saint Thomas, from which he had just graduated, and in 1903 his appointment was made permanent.[note 1]

In 1906, he published Geschichte der Leben-Jesu-Forschung (History of Life-of-Jesus research). This book, which established his reputation, was first published in English in 1910 as The Quest of the Historical Jesus. Under this title the book became famous in the English-speaking world. A second German edition was published in 1913, containing theologically significant revisions and expansions: this revised edition did not appear in English until 2001. In 1931, he published Mystik des Apostels Paulus (The Mysticism of Paul the Apostle).[34] A second edition was published in 1953.

The Quest of the Historical Jesus (1906)

Main article: The Quest of the Historical Jesus

In The Quest, Schweitzer criticised the liberal view put forward by liberal and romantic scholars during the first quest for the historical Jesus. Schweitzer maintained that the life of Jesus must be interpreted in the light of Jesus' own convictions, which reflected late Jewish eschatology and apocalypticism. Schweitzer writes:

The Jesus of Nazareth who came forward publicly as the Messiah, who preached the ethic of the kingdom of God, who founded the kingdom of heaven upon earth and died to give his work its final consecration never existed. He is a figure designed by rationalism, endowed with life by liberalism, and clothed by modern theology in a historical garb. This image has not been destroyed from outside; it has fallen to pieces...[35]

Instead of these liberal and romantic views, Schweitzer wrote that Jesus and his followers expected the imminent end of the world.[36] Schweitzer cross-referenced the many New Testament verses declaring imminent fulfilment of the promise of the World's ending within the lifetime of Jesus's original followers.[37] [failed verification]

He wrote that in his view, in the Gospel of Mark, Jesus speaks of a "tribulation", with his "coming in the clouds with great power and glory." In Mark 13:30 Jesus says "This generation will not pass away until all these things have taken place." In Matthew 16:28 Jesus says "Truly I tell you, some who are standing here will not taste death before they see the Son of Man coming in his kingdom." Obviously, Jesus and his followers truly believed that he would return within the disciples lifetime and specifically states the timeframe that it will happen, but it has not! "This generation shall not pass, till all these things be fulfilled" (Matthew, 24:34) or, "have taken place" (Luke 21:32). Similarly, in 1st Peter 1:20, "Christ, who verily was foreordained before the foundation of the world but was manifest in these last times for you", as well as "But the end of all things is at hand" (1 Peter 4:7) and "Surely, I come quickly." (Revelation 22:20). Either Jesus, his disciples and/or the noted chapter authors were and remain seriously mistaken; the promised second return timeframe has long ago passed.

Schweitzer concluded his treatment of Jesus with what has been called the most famous words of twentieth-century theology:

He comes to us as One unknown, without a name, as of old, by the lake-side, He came to those men who knew him not. He speaks to us the same word: 'Follow thou me' and sets us to the task which He has to fulfill for our time. He commands. And to those who obey Him, whether they be wise or simple, He will reveal Himself in the toils, the conflicts, the sufferings which they shall pass through in His fellowship, and as an ineffable mystery, they shall learn in their own experience Who He is.[38]

The Mysticism of Paul the Apostle (1931)

In The Mysticism of Paul the Apostle, Schweitzer first distinguishes between two categories of mysticism: primitive and developed.[39] Primitive mysticism "has not yet risen to a conception of the universal, and is still confined to naive views of earthly and super-earthly, temporal and eternal". Additionally, he argues that this view of a "union with the divinity, brought about by efficacious ceremonies, is found even in quite primitive religions".[39]

On the other hand, a more developed form of mysticism can be found in the Greek mystery-cults that were popular in first-century A.D. society. These included the cults of Attis, Osiris, and Mithras. A developed form of mysticism is attained when the "conception of the universal is reached and a man reflects upon his relation to the totality of being and to Being in itself". Schweitzer claims that this form of mysticism is more intellectual and can be found "among the Brahmans and in the Buddha, in Platonism, in Stoicism, in Spinoza, Schopenhauer, and Hegel".[40]

Next, Schweitzer poses the question: "Of what precise kind then is the mysticism of Paul?" He locates Paul between the two extremes of primitive mysticism and developed mysticism. Paul stands high above primitive mysticism, due to his intellectual writings, but never speaks of being one with God or being in God. Instead, he conceives of sonship to God as "mediated and effected by means of the mystical union with Christ".[41] He summarizes Pauline mysticism as "being in Christ" rather than "being in God".

Paul's imminent eschatology, from his background in Jewish eschatology, causes him to believe that the kingdom of God has not yet come and that Christians are now living in the time of Christ. Christ-mysticism holds the field until God-mysticism becomes possible, which is in the near future.[42] Therefore, Schweitzer argues that Paul is the only theologian who does not claim that Christians can have an experience of "being-in-God". Rather, Paul uses the phrase "being-in-Christ" to illustrate how Jesus is a mediator between the Christian community and God. Additionally, Schweitzer explains how the experience of "being-in-Christ" is not a "static partaking in the spiritual being of Christ, but as the real co-experiencing of His dying and rising again". The "realistic" partaking in the mystery of Jesus is only possible within the solidarity of the Christian community.[42]

One of Schweitzer's major arguments in The Mysticism of Paul the Apostle is that Paul's mysticism, marked by his phrase "being in Christ", gives the clue to the whole of Pauline theology. Rather than reading justification by faith as the main topic of Pauline thought, which has been the most popular argument set forward by Martin Luther, Schweitzer argues that Paul's emphasis was on the mystical union with God by "being in Christ". Jaroslav Pelikan, in his foreword to The Mysticism of Paul the Apostle, points out that:

the relation between the two doctrines was quite the other way around: 'The doctrine of the redemption, which is mentally appropriated through faith, is only a fragment from the more comprehensive mystical redemption-doctrine, which Paul has broken off and polished to give him the particular refraction which he requires.[43]

Paul's "realism" versus Hellenistic "symbolism"

Schweitzer contrasts Paul's "realistic" dying and rising with Christ to the "symbolism" of Hellenism. Although Paul is widely influenced by Hellenistic thought, he is not controlled by it. Schweitzer explains that Paul focused on the idea of fellowship with the divine being through the "realistic" dying and rising with Christ rather than the "symbolic" Hellenistic act of becoming like Christ through deification.[44] After baptism, Christians are continually renewed throughout their lifetimes due to participation in the dying and rising with Christ (most notably through the Sacraments). On the other hand, the Hellenist "lives on the store of experience which he acquired in the initiation" and is not continually affected by a shared communal experience.[45]

Another major difference between Paul's "realism" and Hellenistic "symbolism" is the exclusive nature of the former and the inclusive nature of the latter. Schweitzer unabashedly emphasizes the fact that "Paul's thought follows predestinarian lines".[46] He explains, "only the man who is elected thereto can enter into relation with God".[47] Although every human being is invited to become a Christian, only those who have undergone the initiation into the Christian community through baptism can share in the "realistic" dying and rising with Christ.

Medicine

At the age of 30, in 1905, Schweitzer answered the call of The Society of the Evangelist Missions of Paris, which was looking for a physician. The committee of this missionary society was not ready to accept his offer, considering his Lutheran theology to be "incorrect".[48] He could easily have obtained a place in a German evangelical mission, but wished to follow the original call despite the doctrinal difficulties. Amid a hail of protests from his friends, family and colleagues, he resigned from his post and re-entered the university as a student in a three-year course towards the degree of Doctorate in Medicine, a subject in which he had little knowledge or previous aptitude. He planned to spread the Gospel by the example of his Christian labour of healing, rather than through the verbal process of preaching, and believed that this service should be acceptable within any branch of Christian teaching.

Even in his study of medicine, and through his clinical course, Schweitzer pursued the ideal of the philosopher-scientist. He completed his studies successfully at the end of 1911. His medical degree dissertation was another work on the historical Jesus, Die psychiatrische Beurteilung Jesu. Darstellung und Kritik[49] (The psychiatric evaluation of Jesus. Description and criticism), published in English in 1948 as The Psychiatric Study of Jesus. Exposition and Criticism.[50] He defended Jesus' mental health in it.[51] In June 1912, he married Helene Bresslau, municipal inspector for orphans and daughter of the Jewish pan-Germanist historian Harry Bresslau.[52]

In 1912, now armed with a medical degree, Schweitzer made a definite proposal to go as a physician to work at his own expense in the Paris Missionary Society's mission at Lambaréné on the Ogooué river, in what is now Gabon, in Africa, then a French colony. He refused to attend a committee to inquire into his doctrine, but met each committee member personally and was at last accepted. Through concerts and other fund-raising, he was ready to equip a small hospital.[53]

In early 1913, he and his wife set off to establish a hospital, the Hôpital Albert Schweitzer, near an existing mission post. The site was nearly 200 miles, 14 days by raft,[54] upstream from the mouth of the Ogooué at Port Gentil (Cape Lopez). It was accessible to external communications, but downstream of most tributaries, so that internal communications within Gabon converged towards Lambaréné.

The catchment area of the Ogooué River occupies most of Gabon. Lambaréné is marked centre left.

In the first nine months, he and his wife had about 2,000 patients to examine, some travelling many days and hundreds of kilometres to reach him. In addition to injuries, he was often treating severe sandflea and crawcraw infections, yaws, tropical eating sores, heart disease, tropical dysentery, tropical malaria, sleeping sickness, leprosy, fevers, strangulated hernias, necrosis, abdominal tumours and chronic constipation and nicotine poisoning, while also attempting to deal with deliberate poisonings, fetishism and fear of cannibalism among the Mbahouin.

Schweitzer's wife, Helene Schweitzer, served as an anaesthetist for surgical operations. After briefly occupying a shed formerly used as a chicken hut, in late 1913 they built their first hospital of corrugated iron, with a consulting room and operating theatre and with a dispensary and sterilising room. The waiting room and dormitory were built, like native huts, of unhewn logs along a path leading to the boat landing. The Schweitzers had their own bungalow and employed as their assistant Joseph, a French-speaking Mpongwe, who first came to Lambaréné as a patient.[55][56]

After World War I broke out in July 1914, Schweitzer and his wife, German citizens in a French colony when the countries were at war, were put under supervision by the French military at Lambaréné, where Schweitzer continued his work.[57] In 1917, exhausted by over four years' work and by tropical anaemia, they were taken to Bordeaux and interned first in Garaison and then from March 1918 in Saint-Rémy-de-Provence. In July 1918, after being transferred to his home in Alsace, he was a free man again. At this time Schweitzer, born a German citizen, had his parents' former pre-1871 French citizenship reinstated, and became a French citizen.

Working as a medical assistant and assistant-pastor in Strasbourg, he advanced his project on the philosophy of civilization, which had occupied his mind since 1900. By 1920, his health recovering, he was giving organ recitals and doing other fund-raising work to repay borrowings and raise funds for returning to Gabon. In 1922, he delivered the Dale Memorial Lectures in the University of Oxford, and from these in the following year appeared Volumes I and II of his great work, The Decay and Restoration of Civilization and Civilization and Ethics. The two remaining volumes, on The World-View of Reverence for Life and a fourth on the Civilized State, were never completed.

In 1924, Schweitzer returned to Africa without his wife, but with an Oxford undergraduate, Noel Gillespie, as his assistant. Everything was heavily decayed, and building and doctoring progressed together for months. He now had salvarsan for treating syphilitic ulcers and framboesia. Additional medical staff, nurse (Miss) Kottmann and Dr. Victor Nessmann,[58] joined him in 1924, and Dr. Mark Lauterberg in 1925; the growing hospital was staffed by native orderlies. Later Dr. Trensz replaced Nessmann, and Martha Lauterberg and Hans Muggenstorm joined them. Joseph also returned. In 1925–6, new hospital buildings were constructed, and also a ward for white patients, so that the site became like a village. The onset of famine[when?][why?] and a dysentery epidemic created fresh problems.[citation needed]

Much of the building work was carried out with the help of local people and patients. Drug advances for sleeping sickness included Germanin and tryparsamide [de; fi; it]. Trensz conducted experiments showing that the non-amoebic strain of dysentery was caused by a paracholera vibrion (facultative anaerobic bacteria). With the new hospital built and the medical team established, Schweitzer returned to Europe in 1927, this time leaving a functioning hospital at work.

He was there again from 1929 to 1932. Gradually his opinions and concepts became acknowledged, not only in Europe, but worldwide. There was a further period of work in 1935. In January 1937, he returned to Lambaréné and continued working there throughout World War II.

Hospital conditions

In 1953, the journalist James Cameron visited Lambaréné, when Schweitzer was 78, and found significant flaws in the practices and attitudes of Schweitzer and his staff. The hospital suffered from squalor and was without modern amenities, and Schweitzer had little contact with the local people.[59] Cameron did not make public what he had seen at the time: according to a BBC dramatisation, he made the unusual journalistic decision to withhold the story, and resisted the expressed wish of his employers to publish an exposé.[60]

The poor conditions of the hospital in Lambaréné were also famously criticized by Nigerian professor and novelist Chinua Achebe in his essay on Joseph Conrad's novel Heart of Darkness: "In a comment which has often been quoted Schweitzer says: 'The African is indeed my brother but my junior brother.' And so he proceeded to build a hospital appropriate to the needs of junior brothers with standards of hygiene reminiscent of medical practice in the days before the germ theory of disease came into being."[61]

Schweitzer's biographer Edgar Berman, who was a volunteer surgeon at Lambarene for several months and had extended conversations with Schweitzer, has a different perspective.[62] Schweitzer felt that patients were better off, and the hospital functioned better given the severe lack of funding, if patients' families lived on the hospital grounds during treatment. Surgical survival rates were, Berman asserts, as high as in many fully equipped western hospitals. The volume of patients needing care, the difficulty of obtaining materials and supplies, and the scarcity of trained medical staff willing to work long hours in the remote setting for almost no pay all argued for a spartan setting with an emphasis on high medical standards nevertheless.

Schweitzer's views

Colonialism

Schweitzer considered his work as a medical missionary in Africa to be his response to Jesus' call to become "fishers of men".

Who can describe the injustice and cruelties that in the course of centuries they [the coloured peoples] have suffered at the hands of Europeans?... If a record could be compiled of all that has happened between the white and the coloured races, it would make a book containing numbers of pages which the reader would have to turn over unread because their contents would be too horrible.

Schweitzer was one of colonialism's harshest critics. In a sermon that he preached on 6 January 1905, before he had told anyone of his plans to dedicate the rest of his life to work as a physician in Africa, he said:[63]

Our culture divides people into two classes: civilized men, a title bestowed on the persons who do the classifying; and others, who have only the human form, who may perish or go to the dogs for all the 'civilized men' care.

Oh, this 'noble' culture of ours! It speaks so piously of human dignity and human rights and then disregards this dignity and these rights of countless millions and treads them underfoot, only because they live overseas or because their skins are of different colour or because they cannot help themselves. This culture does not know how hollow and miserable and full of glib talk it is, how common it looks to those who follow it across the seas and see what it has done there, and this culture has no right to speak of personal dignity and human rights...

I will not enumerate all the crimes that have been committed under the pretext of justice. People robbed native inhabitants of their land, made slaves of them, let loose the scum of mankind upon them. Think of the atrocities that were perpetrated upon people made subservient to us, how systematically we have ruined them with our alcoholic 'gifts', and everything else we have done... We decimate them, and then, by the stroke of a pen, we take their land so they have nothing left at all...

If all this oppression and all this sin and shame are perpetrated under the eye of the German God, or the American God, or the British God, and if our states do not feel obliged first to lay aside their claim to be 'Christian'—then the name of Jesus is blasphemed and made a mockery. And the Christianity of our states is blasphemed and made a mockery before those poor people. The name of Jesus has become a curse, and our Christianity—yours and mine—has become a falsehood and a disgrace, if the crimes are not atoned for in the very place where they were instigated. For every person who committed an atrocity in Jesus' name, someone must step in to help in Jesus' name; for every person who robbed, someone must bring a replacement; for everyone who cursed, someone must bless.

And now, when you speak about missions, let this be your message: We must make atonement for all the terrible crimes we read of in the newspapers. We must make atonement for the still worse ones, which we do not read about in the papers, crimes that are shrouded in the silence of the jungle night ...

In a second memoir, he exalted colonialism as a moral good:

When the indigenous people express their discontent for being dominated by the whites, I tell them that without us they would no longer exist, since they would have killed each other off or would have ended up in the cooking-pot of the Pahouins [also known as the Fang, a leading Gabonese tribe]. They cannot rebut this argument. In general, despite the mischief for which the whites are guilty in their work of colonisation everywhere, they can however assert that they have brought peace to conquered peoples.[64]

Paternalism

Schweitzer was nonetheless still sometimes accused of being paternalistic in his attitude towards Africans.[65] For instance, he thought that Gabonese independence came too early, without adequate education or accommodation to local circumstances. Edgar Berman quotes Schweitzer as having said in 1960, "No society can go from the primeval directly to an industrial state without losing the leavening that time and an agricultural period allow."[66] Schweitzer believed dignity and respect must be extended to blacks, while also sometimes characterizing them as children.[67]

He summarized his views on European-African relations by saying "With regard to the negroes, then, I have coined the formula: 'I am your brother, it is true, but your elder brother.'"[67] Chinua Achebe has criticized him for this characterization, though Achebe acknowledges that Schweitzer's use of the word "brother" at all was, for a European of the early 20th century, an unusual expression of human solidarity between Europeans and Africans.[61] Schweitzer eventually emended and complicated this notion with his later statement that "The time for speaking of older and younger brothers has passed".[68]

American journalist John Gunther visited Lambaréné in the 1950s and reported Schweitzer's patronizing attitude towards Africans. He also noted the lack of Africans trained to be skilled workers.[69] By comparison, his English contemporary Albert Ruskin Cook in Uganda had been training nurses and midwives since the 1910s, and had published a manual of midwifery in the local language of Luganda.[70] After three decades in Africa, Schweitzer still depended on Europe for nurses.[71]

In line with his well-documented racial views, he once summarized:

A word in conclusion about the relations between the whites and the blacks. What must be the general character of the intercourse between them? Am I to treat the black man as my equal or my inferior? I must show him that I can respect the dignity of the human personality in every one, and this attitude in me he must be able to see for himself; but the essential thing is that there should be a real feeling of brotherliness. How far this is to find complete expression in the sayings and doings of daily life must be settled by circumstances. The negro is a child, and with children nothing can be done without the use of authority. We must therefore so arrange the circumstances of daily life that my natural authority can find expression. With regard to the negroes, then, I have coined the formula: "I am your brother, it is true, but your elder brother."[72]

Reverence for life

Main article: Reverence for Life
Schweitzer in 1955

The keynote of Schweitzer's personal philosophy, which he considered to be his greatest contribution to mankind, was the idea of Reverence for Life (Ehrfurcht vor dem Leben). He thought that Western civilization was decaying because it had abandoned affirmation of life as its ethical foundation.

In the Preface to Civilization and Ethics (1923) he argued that Western philosophy from Descartes to Kant had set out to explain the objective world expecting that humanity would be found to have a special meaning within it. But no such meaning was found, and the rational, life-affirming optimism of the Age of Enlightenment began to evaporate. A rift opened between this world-view, as material knowledge, and the life-view, understood as Will, expressed in the pessimist philosophies from Schopenhauer onward. Scientific materialism, advanced by Herbert Spencer and Charles Darwin, portrayed an objective world process devoid of ethics, entirely an expression of the will-to-live.

Schweitzer wrote, "True philosophy must start from the most immediate and comprehensive fact of consciousness, and this may be formulated as follows: 'I am life which wills to live, and i exist in the midst of life which wills to live.'"[73] In nature one form of life must always prey upon another. However, human consciousness holds an awareness of, and sympathy for, the will of other beings to live. An ethical human strives to escape from this contradiction so far as possible.

Though we cannot perfect the endeavour we should strive for it: the will-to-live constantly renews itself, for it is both an evolutionary necessity and a spiritual phenomenon. Life and love are rooted in this same principle, in a personal spiritual relationship to the universe. Ethics themselves proceed from the need to respect the wish of other beings to exist as one does towards oneself. Even so, Schweitzer found many instances in world religions and philosophies in which the principle was denied, not least in the European Middle Ages, and in the Indian Brahminic philosophy.

For Schweitzer, mankind had to accept that objective reality is ethically neutral. It could then affirm a new Enlightenment through spiritual rationalism, by giving priority to volition or ethical will as the primary meaning of life. Mankind had to choose to create the moral structures of civilization: the worldview must derive from the life-view, not vice versa. Respect for life, overcoming coarser impulses and hollow doctrines, leads the individual to live in the service of other people and of every living creature. In contemplation of the will-to-life, respect for the life of others becomes the highest principle and the defining purpose of humanity.[74]

Such was the theory which Schweitzer sought to put into practice in his own life. According to some authors, Schweitzer's thought, and specifically his development of reverence for life, was influenced by Indian religious thought and in particular the Jain principle of ahimsa, or non-violence.[75] Albert Schweitzer noted the contribution of Indian influence in his book Indian Thought and Its Development:[76]

The laying down of the commandment to not kill and to not damage is one of the greatest events in the spiritual history of mankind. Starting from its principle, founded on world and life denial, of abstention from action, ancient Indian thought – and this is a period when in other respects ethics have not progressed very far – reaches the tremendous discovery that ethics know no bounds. So far as we know, this is for the first time clearly expressed by Jainism.

Further on ahimsa and the reverence for life in the same book, he elaborates on the ancient Indian didactic work of the Tirukkural, which he observed that, like the Buddha and the Bhagavad Gita, "stands for the commandment not to kill and not to damage".[77][78] Translating several couplets from the work, he remarked that the Kural insists on the idea that "good must be done for its own sake" and said, "There hardly exists in the literature of the world a collection of maxims in which we find so much lofty wisdom."[77][78]

Dr. Schweitzer had a great love of cats. "There are two means of refuge from the miseries of life: music and cats" he stated.[citation needed]

Later life

The Schweitzer house and Museum at Königsfeld in the Black Forest

After the birth of their daughter (Rhena Schweitzer Miller), Albert's wife, Helene Schweitzer was no longer able to live in Lambaréné due to her health. In 1923, the family moved to Königsfeld im Schwarzwald, Baden-Württemberg, where he was building a house for the family. This house is now maintained as a Schweitzer museum.[79]

Albert Schweitzer's house at Gunsbach, now a museum and archive

From 1939 to 1948, he stayed in Lambaréné, unable to return to Europe because of the war. Three years after the end of World War II, in 1948, he returned for the first time to Europe and kept travelling back and forth (and once to the US) as long as he was able. During his return visits to his home village of Gunsbach, Schweitzer continued to use the family house, which after his death became an archive and museum of his life and work. His life was portrayed in the 1952 movie Il est minuit, Docteur Schweitzer, starring Pierre Fresnay as Albert Schweitzer and Jeanne Moreau as his nurse Marie. Schweitzer inspired actor Hugh O'Brian when O'Brian visited in Africa. O'Brian returned to the United States and founded the Hugh O'Brian Youth Leadership Foundation (HOBY).

Schweitzer was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize of 1952,[80] accepting the prize with the speech, "The Problem of Peace".[81] With the $33,000 prize money, he started the leprosarium at Lambaréné.[14] From 1952 until his death he worked against nuclear tests and nuclear weapons with Albert Einstein, Otto Hahn and Bertrand Russell. In 1957 and 1958, he broadcast four speeches over Radio Oslo, which were published in Peace or Atomic War.

In 1957, Schweitzer was one of the founders of The Committee for a Sane Nuclear Policy. On 23 April 1957, Schweitzer made his "Declaration of Conscience" speech; it was broadcast to the world over Radio Oslo, pleading for the abolition of nuclear weapons. His speech ended, "The end of further experiments with atom bombs would be like the early sunrays of hope which suffering humanity is longing for."[82]

Weeks prior to his death, an American film crew was allowed to visit Schweitzer and Drs. Muntz and Friedman, both Holocaust survivors, to record his work and daily life at the hospital. The film The Legacy of Albert Schweitzer, narrated by Henry Fonda, was produced by Warner Brothers and aired once. It resides in their vault today in deteriorating condition. Although several attempts have been made to restore and re-air the film, all access has been denied[why?].[83]

In 1955, he was made an honorary member of the Order of Merit (OM) by Queen Elizabeth II.[84] He was also a chevalier of the Military and Hospitaller Order of Saint Lazarus of Jerusalem.

Schweitzer's grave in Lambaréné, marked by a cross he made himself

Schweitzer died on 4 September 1965 at his beloved hospital in Lambaréné, now in independent Gabon. His grave, on the banks of the Ogooué River, is marked by a cross he made himself.

His cousin Anne-Marie Schweitzer Sartre was the mother of Jean-Paul Sartre. Her father, Charles Schweitzer, was the older brother of Albert Schweitzer's father, Louis Théophile.[85][better source needed]

Schweitzer is often cited in vegetarian literature as being an advocate of vegetarianism in his later years.[86][87][88] Schweitzer was not a vegetarian in his earlier life. For example, in 1950, biographer Magnus C. Ratter commented that Schweitzer never "commit[ted] himself to the anti-vivisection, vegetarian, or pacifist positions, though his thought leads in this direction".[89] Biographer James Bentley has written that Schweitzer became a vegetarian after his wife's death in 1957 and he was "living almost entirely on lentil soup".[90] In contrast to this, historian David N. Stamos has written that Schweitzer was not a vegetarian in his personal life nor imposed it on his missionary hospital, but he did help animals and was opposed to hunting.[91] Stamos noted that Schweitzer held the view that evolution ingrained humans with an instinct for meat, so it was useless in trying to deny it.[91]

The Albert Schweitzer Fellowship was founded in 1940 by Schweitzer to unite US supporters in filling the gap in support for his Hospital when his European supply lines were cut off by war, and continues to support the Lambaréné Hospital today. Schweitzer considered his ethic of Reverence for Life, not his hospital, his most important legacy, saying that his Lambaréné Hospital was just "my own improvisation on the theme of Reverence for Life. Everyone can have their own Lambaréné".[92]

Today, the ASF helps large numbers of young Americans in health-related professional fields find or create "their own Lambaréné" in the US or internationally. ASF selects and supports nearly 250 new US and Africa Schweitzer Fellows each year from over 100 of the leading US schools of medicine, nursing, public health, and every other field with some relation to health, including music, law, and divinity. The peer-supporting lifelong network of "Schweitzer Fellows for Life" numbered over 2,000 members in 2008, and is growing by nearly 1,000 every four years. Nearly 150 of these Schweitzer Fellows have served at the Hospital in Lambaréné, for three-month periods during their last year of medical school.[92]

Schweitzer eponyms

Schweitzer's writings and life are often quoted,[93] resulting in a number of eponyms, such as the 'Schweitzer technique' (discussed below), and the 'Schweitzer effect'. The 'Schweitzer effect' refers to his statement that 'Example is not the main thing in influencing others; it is the only thing'.[93] This eponym is used in medical education to highlight the relationship between lived experience/example and medical students' opinions on professional behaviours.[94]

  • A statue of Albert Schweitzer in Strasbourg
    A statue of Albert Schweitzer in Strasbourg
    •  
  • The Albert Schweitzer Memorial and Museum in Weimar, 1984
    The Albert Schweitzer Memorial and Museum in Weimar, 1984
    •  
  • An Albert Schweitzer Monument in Wagga Wagga, Australia
    An Albert Schweitzer Monument in Wagga Wagga, Australia

Legacy

  • The International Albert Schweitzer Prize was first awarded on 29 May 2011 to Eugen Drewermann and the physician couple Rolf and Raphaela Maibach in Königsfeld im Schwarzwald, where Schweitzer's former residence now houses the Albert Schweitzer Museum.[95]
  • The Schweitzer Institute based in Cambridge and affiliated with Peterhouse, the University's oldest college is an academic think tank founded in 2004.[96]
  • The Albert Schweitzer Institute is a Quinnipiac University campus organization that conducts local, national and international programs that link education, ethics, and voluntarism, and also sponsors speakers and other academic events on campus, and connects students with opportunities in the local and global communities in areas of sustainability, peace, human rights, and humanitarian service.[97][98] The Institute also houses The Albert Schweitzer Museum and offers The Albert Schweitzer Faculty Fellowship.[99]
  • The Albert Schweitzer Collections at Quinnipiac University's Arnold Bernhard Library comprise books, documents, and artifacts related to the life and legacy of Schweitzer[100]
  • The Albert Schweitzer Organ Festival (est. 1979) in the Netherlands[101]
  • Albert Schweitzer Organ Festival Hartford at Trinity College (Connecticut) in the US.
  • The Schweitzer Foundation UK is a charity registered in 2019 in the UK[102]

Sound recordings

Recordings of Schweitzer playing the music of Bach are available on CD. In 1934 and 1935 he resided in Britain, delivering the Gifford Lectures at Edinburgh University, and those on Religion in Modern Civilization at Oxford and London. He had originally conducted trials for recordings for His Master's Voice on the organ of the old Queen's Hall in London. These records did not satisfy him, the instrument being too harsh.[103]

In mid-December 1935, he began to record for Columbia Records on the organ of All Hallows, Barking-by-the-Tower, London.[103] At his suggestion the sessions were transferred to the church of Ste Aurélie in Strasbourg, on a mid-18th-century organ by Johann Andreas Silbermann (brother of Gottfried), an organ-builder greatly revered by Bach, which had been restored by the Lorraine organ-builder Frédéric Härpfer shortly before the First World War. These recordings were made in the course of a fortnight in October 1936.[104]

Schweitzer technique

Schweitzer developed a technique for recording the performances of Bach's music;[105] or perhaps engineers developed it to record his performances.[106] Known as the "Schweitzer technique", it is a slight improvement on what is commonly known as mid-side. The mid-side sees a figure-8 microphone pointed off-axis, perpendicular to the sound source. Then a single cardioid microphone is placed on axis, bisecting the figure-8 pattern. The signal from the figure-8 is muted, panned hard left and right, one of the signals being flipped out of polarity.

In the Schweitzer method, the figure-8 is replaced by two small diaphragm condenser microphones pointed directly away from each other. The information that each capsule collects is unique, unlike the identical out-of-polarity information generated from the figure-8 in a regular mid-side. The on-axis microphone is often a large diaphragm condenser. The technique has since been used to record many modern instruments.[citation needed][further explanation needed]

Columbia recordings

Altogether his early Columbia discs included 25 records of Bach and eight of César Franck. The Bach titles were mainly distributed as follows:

  • Queen's Hall: Organ Prelude and Fugue in E minor (Edition Peters[note 2] Vol 3, 10); Herzlich thut mich verlangen (BWV 727); Wenn wir in höchsten Nöten sein (Vol 7, 58 (Leipzig 18)).[107]
  • All Hallows: Prelude and Fugue in C major; Fantasia and Fugue in G minor (the Great); Prelude and Fugue in G major; Prelude and Fugue in F minor; Little Fugue in G minor; Toccata and Fugue in D minor.[108]
  • Ste Aurélie: Prelude and Fugue in C minor; Prelude and Fugue in E minor; Toccata and Fugue in D minor. Chorale Preludes: Schmücke dich, O liebe Seele (Peters Vol 7, 49 (Leipzig 4)); O Mensch, bewein dein Sünde groß (Vol 5, 45); O Lamm Gottes, unschuldig (Vol 7, 48 (Leipzig 6)); Christus, der uns selig macht (Vol 5, 8); Da Jesus an dem Kreuze stand (Vol 5, 9); An Wasserflüssen Babylon (Vol 6, 12b); Christum wir wollen loben schon (Vol 5, 6); Liebster Jesu, wir sind hier (Vol 5, app 5); Mit Fried und Freud ich fahr dahin (Vol 5, 4); Sei gegrüßet, Jesu gütig (Var 11, Vol 5, app. 3); Jesus Christus, unser Heiland (Vol 6, 31 (Leipzig 15)); Christ lag in Todesbanden (Vol 5, 5); Erschienen ist der herrlich Tag (Vol 5, 15).[109][110]
Gunsbach parish church, where the later recordings were made

Later recordings were made at Parish church, Günsbach: These recordings were made by C. Robert Fine during the time Dr. Schweitzer was being filmed in Günsbach for the documentary "Albert Schweitzer". Fine originally self-released the recordings but later licensed the masters to Columbia.

  • Fugue in A minor (Peters, Vol 2, 8); Fantasia and Fugue in G minor (Great) (Vol 2, 4); Toccata, Adagio and Fugue in C major (Vol 3, 8).[111]
  • Prelude in C major (Vol 4, 1); Prelude in D major (Vol 4, 3); Canzona in D minor (Vol 4, 10) (with Mendelssohn, Sonata in D minor op 65.6).[112]
  • Chorale-Preludes: O Mensch, bewein dein Sünde groß (1st and 2nd versions, Peters Vol 5, 45); Wenn wir in höchsten Nöten sein (Vor deinen Thron tret ich hiermit) (vol 7, 58 (Leipzig 18)); Ich ruf zu dir, Herr Jesu Christ (Vol 5, 30); Gelobet seist du, Jesu Christ (Vol 5, 17); Herzlich tut mich verlangen (Vol 5, 27); Nun komm, der Heiden Heiland (vol 7, 45 (BWV 659a)).[113]

The above were released in the United States as Columbia Masterworks boxed set SL-175.

Philips recordings

  • J. S. Bach: Prelude and Fugue in A major, BWV 536; Prelude and Fugue in F minor, BWV 534; Prelude and Fugue in B minor, BWV 544; Toccata and Fugue in D minor, BWV 538.[114]
  • J. S. Bach: Passacaglia in C minor, BWV 582; Prelude and Fugue in E minor, BWV 533; Prelude and Fugue in A minor, BWV 543; Prelude and Fugue in G major, BWV 541; Toccata and Fugue in D minor, BWV 565.[115]
  • César Franck: Organ Chorales, no. 1 in E major; no. 2 in B minor; no. 3 in A minor.[116]

Portrayals and dedication

Dramatisations of Schweitzer's life include:

The Greek author Nikos Kazantzakis dedicated his novel The Poor Man of Assisi to him.

Bibliography

See also

Notes

  1.  He officiated at the wedding of Theodor Heuss (later the first President of West Germany) in 1908.[29][30][31][32][33]
  2.  Schweitzer's Bach recordings are usually identified with reference to the Peters Edition of the Organ-works in 9 volumes, edited by Friedrich Konrad Griepenkerl and Ferdinand August Roitzsch, in the form revised by Hermann Keller.

References

Citations

  1.  Schweitzer, Albert (10 December 1953), "Award Ceremony Speech", The Nobel Peace Prize 1952, The Nobel prize.
  2.  Oermann 2016, p. 43.
  3.  Free 1988, p. 74.
  4.  Stammbaum – Genealogic tree Arbre généalogique de la famille Schweitze, Schweitzer, archived from the original on 26 April 2006.
  5.  Association Internationale Albert Schweitzer, archived from the original on 9 December 2010, retrieved 1 August 2012.
  6.  Seaver 1951, p. 3–9.
  7.  A. Schweitzer, Eugene Munch (J. Brinkmann, Mulhouse 1898).
  8.  Joy 1953, p. 23–24.
  9.  Joy 1953, p. 24.
  10.  George N. Marshall, David Poling, Schweitzer, JHU Press, 2000, ISBN 0-8018-6455-0
  11.  Cicovacki, Predrag (2 February 2009). Albert Schweitzer's Ethical Vision A Sourcebook. Oxford University Press. ISBN 9780199703326.
  12.  Schweitzer, Albert; Bresslau, Helene; Stewart, Nancy (2003). Albert Schweitzer-helene Bresslau: the Years Prior to Lambarene. Syracuse University Press. ISBN 9780815629948.
  13.  Brabazon 2000, p. 84.
  14.  "Albert Schweitzer – Biographical". nobelprize.org. Retrieved 10 March 2018.
  15.  Joy 1953, p. 24–25.
  16.  Seaver 1951, p. 20.
  17.  Schweitzer, My Life and Thought, pp. 80–81; cf. Seaver 1951, pp. 231–232
  18.  Joy 1953, p. 58–62.
  19.  Cassirer, Ernst (1979). Verene, Donald Phillip (ed.). Symbol, Myth, and Culture: Essays and Lectures of Ernst Cassirer 1935–1945. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press. p. 230. ISBN 978-0-300-02666-5.
  20.  Schweitzer, in Joy 1953, pp. 53–57
  21.  Joy 1953, pp. 53–57, quoting from and translating A. Schweitzer, 'Mes Souvenirs sur Cosima Wagner', in L'Alsace Française, XXXV no. 7 (12 February 1933), p. 124ff.
  22.  Wedel, Gudrun (2010), Autobiographien von Frauen: ein Lexikon
  23.  Reproduced in Joy 1953, pp. 127–129, 129–165: cf. also Seaver 1951, pp. 29–36
  24.  Joy 1953, pp. 165–166: Text of 1909 Questionnaire and Report, pp. 235–269.
  25.  Seaver 1951, p. 44.
  26.  Given by the Paris Bach Society, Seaver 1951, p. 63; but Joy 1953, p. 177, says it was given by the Paris Missionary Society.
  27.  Seaver 1951, p. 63–64.
  28.  Joy 1953 plate facing p. 177.
  29.  Oermann 2016, p. 101-102.
  30.  Brabazon 2000, p. 422.
  31.  Pierhal 1956, p. 63.
  32.  Pierhal 1957, p. 63f.
  33.  "The Bulletin". Bulletin des Presse- und Informationsamtes der Bundesregierung [...] [Englische Ausgabe] = the Bulletin. 9–10. Bonn, West Germany: Press and Information Office: 36. 1962. ISSN 0032-7794.
  34.  Avey, Albert E. (1934). "Review of The Mysticism of Paul the Apostle". The Philosophical Review. 43 (1): 84–86. doi:10.2307/2179960. JSTOR 2179960.
  35.  Schweitzer, Albert (2001). The Quest of the Historical Jesus. Fortress Press. p. 478. ISBN 9781451403541.
  36.  Ehrman, Bart D. (20 March 2012). Did Jesus Exist?: The Historical Argument for Jesus of Nazareth. HarperCollins. pp. 11–. ISBN 978-0-06-208994-6. I agree with Schweitzer's overarching view, that Jesus is best understood as a Jewish prophet who anticipated a cataclysmic break in history in the very near future, when God would destroy the forces of evil to bring in his own kingdom here on earth.
  37.  "Review of "The Mystery of the Kingdom of God"". Pcisys.
  38.  The Quest of the Historical Jesus. Macmillan. 1910. p. 403.
  39.  Schweitzer 1931, p. 1.
  40.  Schweitzer 1931, p. 2.
  41.  Schweitzer 1931, p. 3.
  42.  Schweitzer 1931, p. 13.
  43.  Schweitzer 1931, p. xvi.
  44.  Schweitzer 1931, p. 16.
  45.  Schweitzer 1931, p. 17.
  46.  Schweitzer 1931, p. 103.
  47.  Schweitzer 1931, p. 9.
  48.  Seaver 1951, p. 40.
  49.  Schweitzer, Albert (1913). Die psychiatrische Beurteilung Jesu: Darstellung und Kritik (in German). Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr (Paul Siebeck). LCCN 13021072. OCLC 5903262. OL 20952265W.
  50.  Schweitzer, Albert (1948). The Psychiatric Study of Jesus: Exposition and Criticism. Translated by Joy, Charles R. Boston: Beacon Press. LCCN 48006488. OCLC 614572512. OL 6030284M.
  51.  Seidel, Michael (January 2009). "Albert Schweitzer's MD thesis on Criticism of the medical pathographies on Jesus". Würzburger medizinhistorische Mitteilungen. 28 (1). Königshausen & Neumann: 276–300. ISSN 0177-5227. PMID 20509445.
  52.  Marxsen, Patti M. Helene Schweitzer: A Life of Her Own. First edition. Syracuse, New York: Syracuse University Press, 2015.
  53.  From the Primeval Forest, Chapter 1.
  54.  From the Primeval Forest, Chapter 6.
  55.  Monfried, Walter (10 February 1947). "Admirers Call Dr. Schweitzer "Greatest Man in the World"". Milwaukee, Wisconsin. pp. 1, 3.
  56.  From the Primeval Forest, Chapters 3–5.
  57.  Albert Schweitzer 1875–1965 Archived 14 December 2007 at the Wayback Machine. schweitzer.org (in German)
  58.  Nessmann worked with the French Resistance during the Second World War, was captured and executed by the Gestapo in Limoges in 1944. cf Guy Penaud, Dictionnaire Biographique de Périgord, p. 713. ISBN 978-2-86577-214-8
  59.  Cameron, James (1966) [1978]. Point of Departure. Law Book Co of Australasia. pp. 154–174. ISBN 9780853621751.
  60.  On Monday 7 April 2008 ("The Walrus and the Terrier" – programme outline) BBC Radio 4 broadcast an Afternoon Play "The Walrus and the Terrier" by Christopher Ralling concerning Cameron's visit.
  61.  Chinua Achebe. "An Image of Africa: Racism in Conrad's Heart of Darkness" Archived 18 January 2006 at the Wayback Machine – the Massachusetts Review. 1977. (c/o North Carolina State University)
  62.  Berman, Edgar (1986). In Africa with Schweitzer. Far Hills, New Jersey, U.S.: New Horizon Press. ISBN 0-88282-025-7.
  63.  Schweitzer 2005, p. 76–80.
  64.  "The Legacy of Albert Schweitzer | Commonweal Magazine". www.commonwealmagazine.org. 14 February 2023. Retrieved 31 August 2025.
  65.  Brabazon 2000, p. 253-256.
  66.  Berman, Edgar (1986), In Africa With Schweitzer, Far Hills, New Jersey: New Horizon Press, p. 139, ISBN 978-0-88282-025-5.
  67.  Schweitzer 1924, p. 130
  68.  Quoted by Forrow, Lachlan (2002). "Foreword". In Russell, C.E.B. (ed.). African Notebook. Albert Schweitzer library. Syracuse University Press. p. xiii. ISBN 978-0-8156-0743-4.
  69.  Inside Africa. New York: Harper. 1955.
  70.  Amagezi Agokuzalisa. London: Sheldon Press.
  71.  Paget, James Carleton (2012). "Albert Schweitzer and Africa". Journal of Religion in Africa. 24 (3): 277–316. doi:10.1163/15700666-12341230. JSTOR 41725476.
  72.  "The Legacy of Albert Schweitzer | Commonweal Magazine". www.commonwealmagazine.org. 14 February 2023. Retrieved 31 August 2025.
  73.  Civilization and Ethics, Chapter 21, p. 253: reprinted as A. Schweitzer, The Philosophy of Civilization (Prometheus Books, Buffalo 1987), Chapter 26.
  74.  Civilization and Ethics, Preface and Chapter II, "The Problem of the Optimistic World-View".
  75.  Ara Paul Barsam (2002) "Albert Schweitzer, Jainism and reverence for life", in: Reverence for life: the ethics of Albert Schweitzer for the twenty-first century, Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, ISBN 978-0-8156-2977-1 pp. 207–208
  76.  Albert Schweitzer and Charles Rhind Joy (1947) Albert Schweitzer: an anthology Beacon Press
  77.  S. Maharajan (2017). Tiruvalluvar (2 ed.). New Delhi: Sahitya Akademi. pp. 100–102. ISBN 978-81-260-5321-6.
  78.  Schweitzer, Albert (2013). Indian Thoughts and Its Development. Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada: Read Books. pp. 200–205. ISBN 978-14-7338-900-7.
  79.  Schweitzer museum
  80.  "The Nobel Peace Prize 1952". The Nobel Foundation. 21 May 2014. Retrieved 18 August 2017.
  81.  Schweitzer 1954.
  82.  Declaration of Conscience speech Archived 16 October 2007 at the Wayback Machine – at Tennessee Players
  83.  "Albert Schweitzer and Henry Fonda's Lost Special". Culturedarm. 20 January 2015.
  84.  "List of Members of the Order of Merit, past and present". British Monarchy. Retrieved 2 December 2008.
  85.  "Louis Théophile Schweitzer". Roglo.eu. Retrieved 18 October 2011.[self-published source]
  86.  Barkas, Janet L. (1975). The Vegetable Passion. Scribner. p. 131. ISBN 9780684139258
  87.  Gregerson, Jon. (1994). Vegetarianism: A History. Jain Publishing Company. p. 104. ISBN 9780875730301
  88.  "History of Vegetarianism – Dr Albert Schweitzer (1875–1965)". Ivu.org. 4 September 1965. Archived from the original on 21 May 2011.
  89.  Ratter, Magnus C. (1950). Albert Schweitzer: Life and Message. Beacon Press. p. 179
  90.  Brentley, James. (1992). Albert Schweitzer: The Enigma. HarperCollins. p. 200. ISBN 9780060163648
  91.  Stamos, David N. (2008). Evolution and the Big Questions: Sex, Race, Religion, and Other Matters. Wiley. p. 175. ISBN 9781405149020
  92.  "The Albert Schweitzer Fellowship". Schweitzerfellowship.org. 23 June 2011. Archived from the original on 16 July 2011.
  93.  See quotations. Byers, J.Q., 1996. Brothers in Spirit: the Correspondence of Albert Schweitzer and William Larimer Mellon, Jr. (New York, Syracuse University Press).
  94.  McGurgan, Paul; Calvert, Katrina; Celenza, Antonio; Nathan, Elizabeth A.; Jorm, Christine (2023). "The Schweitzer effect: The fundamental relationship between experience and medical students' opinions on professional behaviours". Medical Teacher. 46 (6): 782–791. doi:10.1080/0142159X.2023.2284660. PMID 38048408.
  95.  "Königsfeld feiert ?Schweitzer-Erben? | Südkurier Online". Südkurier. 30 May 2011.
  96.  "The Schweitzer Institute". schweitzer.institute. The Schweitzer Institute. Retrieved 20 February 2026.
  97.  United Nations Civil Society Participation. "Albert Schweitzer Institute, The". esango.un.org. NGO Branch, United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs. Retrieved 20 February 2026.
  98.  Organizations. "Albert Schweitzer Institute". Bobcat Central. qu.campuslabs.com. Retrieved 20 February 2026.
  99.  Centers and Institutes. "Albert Schweitzer Institute". qu.edu. Quinnipiac University. Retrieved 20 February 2026.
  100.  Special Collections - Arnold Bernhard Library. "Albert Schweitzer Collections". libraryguides.quinnipiac.edu. Quinnipiac University. Retrieved 20 February 2026.
  101.  "About". asofhartford.org. Albert Schweitzer Organ Festival Hartford. Retrieved 20 February 2026.
  102.  Charity Commission for England and Wales. "The Schweitzer Foundation UK". register-of-charities.charitycommission.gov.uk. Register of Charities. Retrieved 20 February 2026.
  103.  This 1909 Harrison and Harrison organ was destroyed in the war (cf W. Kent, The Lost Treasures of London (Phoenix House 1947), 94–95) and rebuilt in 1957, see "Harrison & Harrison organ catalogue by name London". Archived from the original on 5 July 2008. Retrieved 6 May 2008..
  104.  Seaver 1951, p. 139–152.
  105.  Goodin, David K. (2019). An Agnostic in the Fellowship of Christ: The Ethical Mysticism of Albert Schweitzer. Rowman & Littlefield. ISBN 9781978701571. Retrieved 21 May 2025.
  106.  Davies, J.Q. (2023). Creatures of the Air: Music, Atlantic Spirits, Breath, 1817–1913. University of Chicago Press. p. 197. ISBN 9780226826141. Retrieved 21 May 2025.
  107.  (78 rpm HMV C 1532 and C 1543), cf. R.D. Darrell, The Gramophone Shop Encyclopedia of Recorded Music (New York 1936).
  108.  (78 rpm Columbia ROX 146–152), cf. Darrell 1936.
  109.  Joy 1953, pp. 226–230. The 78s were issued in albums, with a specially designed record label (Columbia ROX 8020–8023, 8032–8035, etc.). Ste Aurélie recordings appeared also on LP as Columbia 33CX1249
  110.  E.M.I., A Complete List of EMI, Columbia, Parlophone and MGM Long Playing Records issued up to and including June 1955 (London 1955) for this and discographical details following.
  111.  Columbia LP 33CX1074
  112.  Columbia LP 33CX1084
  113.  Columbia LP 33CX1081
  114.  E.M.G., The Art of Record Buying (London 1960), pp. 12–13. Philips ABL 3092, issued March 1956.
  115.  E.M.G., op. cit., Philips ABL 3134, issued September 1956. Other selections are on Philips GBL 5509.
  116.  Philips ABL 3221.

Sources

Further reading

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September 6, 1965
OBITUARY

Albert Schweitzer, 90, Dies at His Hospital

By REUTERS

LAMBARENE, GABON, Sept. 5--Albert Schweitzer died last night in his jungle hospital here. He was 90 years old.

Schweitzer's death was kept secret through the night because of a request he had made to give his daughter time to send telegrams to relatives. He died at 11:30 P.M. (6:30 P.M. New York time).

His death was attributed to circulatory trouble brought on by his advanced age.

He was buried in a brief and simple ceremony early this afternoon next to an urn containing the ashes of his wife, Helene, who died in Europe in 1957. The grave, on the banks of the Ogooue River, is marked by a cross he made himself.

Hospital workers, lepers, cripples and other patients gathered in the jungle heat as the body of the noted physician, scholar, philosopher and musician was lowered into the ground.

Director of the Lambarene hospital has been handed over to Schweitzer's assistant, Dr. Walter Munz. Schweitzer's only daughter, Mrs. Rhena Eckert, will be its administrator.

Lambarene was where Schweitzer chose to die. "I feel at home here. I belong to you until my dying breath," he told co-workers at the sprawling hospital on his 90th birthday Jan. 14.

He fell ill from exhaustion on Aug. 28 and his condition worsened steadily.

The family and close friends were prepared for the end. In a telegram that Mrs. Eckert sent to them from here Saturday, she said: "He is dying, inevitably and soon. He goes quietly, in peace and dignity.

His brother, Dr. Paul Schweitzer, 83, was not able to be with him. He is suffering from a heart ailment.

Reverence for Life

Man's ultimate redemption through beneficent activity--the theme of Part II of Goethe's "Faust," a metaphysical poem much admired by Albert Schweitzer--threads through this extraordinary man's long, complex and sometimes curious life. With Faust himself he could join in saying:


...This sphere of earthly soil
Astounding plans e'en now are brewing:
Still gives us room for lofty doing.
I feel new strength for bolder toil...
The Deed is everything, the Glory naught.

"You must give some time to your fellow man," Schweitzer counseled in paraphrase. "Even if it's a little thing, do something for those who have need of a man's help, something for which you get no pay but the privilege of doing it."

Also like Goethe, on whose life and works he was expert, Schweitzer came near to being a comprehensive man. He was theologian, musicologist, organ technician, physician and surgeon, missionary, philosopher of ethics, lecturer, writer and the builder and chief force of the famous hospital at Lambarene, in Gabon, the former French Equatorial Africa.

To a marked degree, Schweitzer was an eclectic. Franco-German yet cosmopolitan in culture, he drew deeply from the music and philosophy of the 18th century, especially Bach, Goethe and Kant. At the same time, he was a child of the 19th century, accepting its creature comforts yet rejecting its complacent attitudes toward progress. In line with the 20th century he sought to put religion on a rational footing and to accept the advances of science; yet he was a foe to materialism and to the century's criteria for personal success.

As a person, Schweitzer was a curious mixture. Widely honored with degrees, citations, scrolls, medals, special stamps, even the Nobel Prize for Peace in 1952, he seemed oblivious to panoply. He did not preen himself, nor did he utter cosmic statements at the drop of a cause. Instead, he seemed to many observers to be a simple, almost rustic man, who dressed in rumpled clothing, suffered fools gladly, stated fundamental verities patiently and paternally and worked unobtrusively. In this respect, he was undoubtedly made more of by cultists than he was willing to make of himself, although he was by no means a man with a weak ego.

Some of his more ardent admirers insisted that he was a jungle saint, even a modern Christ. But Schweitzer rejected such adulation; he held that his own spiritual life was its own reward and that works redeemed him.

In World and In God

He took the search for the good life seriously. For him it had profound religious implications. "Anyone can rescue his human life," he once said, "who seizes every opportunity of being a man by means of personal action, however unpretending, for the good of fellow men who need the help of a fellow man." He sought to exemplify the idea that man, through good works, can be in the world and in God at one and the same time.

For all his self-abnegation, Schweitzer had a bristly character, at least in his later years, a formidable sense of his own importance to Lambarene and a do-good paternalism toward Africans that smacked more of the 19th than the 20th century.

For example, John Gunther got a dressing-down from Schweitzer for writing that he resembled Buffalo Bill and also, perhaps, for implying that he did not know what was going on in nationalist Africa.

If Schweitzer was thin-skinned to criticism from irreverent journalists, he heard little of it at Lambarene, where his proprietorship was unquestioned. Not only did he design the station, but he also helped build it with his own hands. His co-workers were quite familiar with the businesslike and sometimes grumpy and brusque Schweitzer in a solar hat who hurried along the construction of a building by gingering up the native craftsmen with a sharp:

"Allez-vous OPP! Allez-vous, OPP-opp. Hupp, upp. OPP!"

When Schweitzer was in residence at Lambarene, virtually nothing was done without consulting him. Once, for instance, he all but halted the station's work when he received a letter from a Norwegian child seeking a feather from Parsifal, his pet pelican. He insisted on seeing personally that the youngster got a prompt and touching reply from his own pen before work was permitted to resume. His autocracy was more noticeable as his years advanced and as his medical assistants grew less awesome of him.

Schweitzer regarded most native Africans as children, as primitives. It was said that he had scarcely ever talked with an adult African on adult terms. He had little but contempt for the nationalist movement, for his attitudes were firmly grounded in 19th-century benevolence. Although thousands of Africans called him "le grand docteur," others plastered his village with signs, "Schweitzer, Go Home!"

Needs Held Elementary

"At this stage," Schweitzer said in 1963, "Africans have little need for advanced training. They need very elementary schools run along the old missionary plan, with the Africans going to school for a few hours every day and then going back to the fields. Agriculture, not science or industrialization, is their greatest need."

His attitude was sharply expressed in a story he liked to tell of his orange trees. "I let the Africans pick all the fruit they want," he said. "You see, the good Lord has protected the trees. He made the Africans too lazy to pick them bare."

Although Schweitzer's views on Africa were out of date, he did what no man had done before him--he healed thousands and he welded world attention on Africa's many plights. A jungle saint he may not have been; a jungle pioneer he surely was.

Whatever Schweitzer's idiosyncrasies, he constructed a profound and enduring ethical system expressed in the principle Ehrfurcht vor dem Leben or Reverence of Life. It is conceivably the only formal philosophical concept ever to spring to life amid a herd of hippopotamuses.

As Schweitzer recounted this climactic incident, he had been baffled in getting an answer to the question: Is it at all possible to find a real and permanent foundation in thought for a theory of the universe that shall be both ethical and affirmative of the world and life? The answer came in a flash of mystic illumination in September, 1915, as he was steaming up the Ogooue River in Africa.

Late in the third day of his journey he was on deck thinking and writing. "At the very moment when, at sunset, we were making our way through a herd of hippopotamuses, there flashed upon my mind, unforeseen and unsought, the phrase 'Reverence for Life.'"

"The iron door has yielded," he went on, "the path in the thicket had become visible. Now I had my way to the idea in which world [affirmation] and life-affirmation and ethics are contained side by side! Now I knew that the world-view of ethical world-and- life-affirmation, together with its ideal of civilization, is founded in thought."

Schweitzer's ethical system, elucidated at length in "The Philosophy of Civilization," is boundless in its domain and in its demands. He summarized it once by saying:

"A man is ethical only when life, as such, is sacred to him, that of plants and animals as that of his fellow men, and when he devotes himself helpfully to all life that is in need of help."

"Let me give you a definition of ethics," he wrote on another occasion. "It is good to maintain and further life; it is bad to damage and destroy life. And this ethic, profound, universal, has the significance of a religion. It is religion."

Called upon to be specific about Reverence for Life, he explained that the concept "does not allow the scholar to live for science alone, even if he is very useful to the community in so doing."

"It does not permit the artist," he continued, "to exist only for his art; even if it gives the inspiration to many by its means. It refuses to let the businessman imagine that he fulfills all legitimate demands in the course of his business activity. It demands from all that they should sacrifice a portion of their own lives for others."

A Guide to Action

Schweitzer earnestly sought to live his philosophy, which for him was a creedal guide to action. He was genuinely proud of his medical and missionary station at Lambarene. He had scratched it out from the jungle beginning in 1913; he had designed it; he had worked as an artisan in constructing many of its buildings; and, although the station was many times beset by adversities that would have discouraged a less dedicated man, it had grown at his death to more than 70 buildings, 350 beds and a leper village of 200.

The compound was staffed by 3 unpaid physicians, 7 nurses and 13 volunteer helpers. Visitors who equated cleanliness, tidiness and medicine were horrified by the station, for every patient was encouraged to bring one or two members of his family to cook for him in the ditches beside the wards. Babies, even in the leper enclave, dropped toys into the dust of the unpaved streets and then popped them into their mouths. Noisome animals wandered in and out, including Schweitzer's pet parrot (which was not taught to talk because that would lower its dignity) and a hippopotamus that once invaded the vegetable garden.

Lambarene resembled not so much a hospital as a native village where physicians cared for the sick. Actually, Schweitzer preferred (and planned) it in this fashion on the ground that the natives would shun an elaborate, shiny and impersonal institution.

The compound even lacked electricity, except for the operating and dental rooms, and members of the staff read by kerosene lamp. Of course, it had no telephone, radio or airstrip.

Schweitzer's view that "simple people need simple healing methods," however it might have outraged medical sophisticates, won for Lambarene a tremendous measure of native confidence. Thousands flocked there, and thousands responded to Schweitzer's sermons as well as to his scalpel, for he believed that the good shepherd saves not only the animal but also his soul.

Lambarene was suffused with Reverence for Life to what some critics thought was an exaggerated degree. Mosquitoes were not swatted, nor pests and insects doused with chemicals; they were left alone, and humans put up with them. Indeed, building was often brought to a halt lest nests of ants be killed or disturbed. On the other hand, patients received splendid medical care and few seemed to suffer greatly from the compound's lack of polish.

Critic's Accolade

Schweitzer's accomplishments are recognized even by his most caustic critics. One of them, Gerald McKnight, wrote in his book "Verdiot on Schweitzer":

"The temptation for Schweitzer to see Lambarene as a place cut off from the world, in which he can preserve "its original forms and so reject any theory of treatment or life other than his own, is understandable when one considers the enormous achievement he has attained in his own lifetime. He came to the Ogooue in 1913 when horses drew the buses of London and leprosy was considered an incurable scourge. Housed originally in the grounds of a mission, he chose to leave this comparative sanctuary for the unknown and forbidding regions of the jungle nearby.

"No doubt a wish to have absolute dominion over his hospital drove him to this course, linked with the inner purpose which had brought him to Africa, but it was nonetheless heroic. Today, the hospital has grown, entirely under his hand and direction, into a sizable colony where between 500 and 600 people live in reasonable comfort. No greater tribute to his abilities as a conqueror of jungle need be cited than the fact--regarded locally as something of a miracle--of his own survival."

Schweitzer came to French Equatorial Africa as a tall, handsome, broadly powerful young man with a shock of rich, black hair, an enormous mustache and a look of piercing determination in his bold eyes. The years thinned and grayed his hair (without making it less unruly); age seamed his face, shrunk his frame, made him appear bandy-legged; time softened his eyes and made them less severe. But determination to make his life an "argument" for his ethical creed was as firm at 90 as it was on his 30th birthday, the day he decided to devote the rest of his life to the natives of Africa as a physician.

Schweitzer's arrival at this decision was calculated, a step in a quest for a faith to live by. It was a search that had haunted him, driven him, since childhood.

Albert Schweitzer was born at Kaystersberg, Haute Alsace (now Haut-Rhin), Jan. 14, 1875, just two months after Germany had annexed the province from war-prostrate France. During that year, his father, a Lutheran pastor, moved his wife and eldest son to the neighboring village of Gunsbach amid the foothills of the Vosges. It was to this picture-book Franco-German village and its vineyards that Schweitzer was invariably to return between periods of self-imposed exile in Africa.

A Musical Prodigy

As a child, he was frail and an indifferent student in everything but music, for which he showed the interest of a prodigy. He began to play the church organ at 8, when his feet barely reached the pedals. At the age of 18 he entered the University of Strasbourg as a student in theology, philosophy and musical theory. But this time he had also studied the organ briefly in Paris under the legendary Charles Marie Widor, who was so impressed with Schweitzer's talents that he taught him then and later without fee. Indeed, Schweitzer became a notable organist, especially in the works of Bach.

Schweitzer's university life was interrupted by a year of compulsory military service in 1894, a period that proved crucial to his religious thinking and to his life's vocation. The moment of awakening came as he was reading Matthew x and xi in Greek, chapters that contain Jesus' injunctions to His apostles, among them the one that commands, "Heal the sick, cleanse the lepers, raise the dead, cast out devils: freely ye have received, "freely give"; and the verse that urges men, "Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am meek and lowly in heart; and ye shall find rest unto your souls."

Why Jesus Cried Out

Schweitzer was not only struck by the application of these verses to himself, but even more by the over-all content of the two chapters as expressed in Jesus' assertion that "the kingdom of heaven is at hand." These chapters started a chain of thought that resulted in "The Quest for the Historical Jesus." Published in 1910, it at once established Schweitzer as an eminent, if controversial, theologian whose explosive ideas had a profound influence on contemporary religious thinking.

Schweitzer depicted Jesus as a child of his times who shared the eschatological ideas of late Judaism and who looked for an immediate end of the world. Jesus, Schweitzer contended, believed himself the Messiah who would rule in a new kingdom of God when the end came; at first Jesus believed that his Messianic reign would begin before his disciples returned from the teaching mission commanded of them in the Gospel according to St. Matthew. When the world's end did not occur, according to Schweitzer's view, Jesus decided that He must undergo an atoning sacrifice, and that the great transformation would take place on the cross. This, too, failed, Schweitzer argued, hence the despairing cry, "My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?"

"The Jesus of Nazareth . . . who founded the kingdom of Heaven upon earth, and died to give his work the final consecration, never had any existence," Schweitzer wrote. "He is a figure designed by rationalism, endowed with life by liberalism and clothed by modern theology in an historical garb."

Schweitzer maintained, nonetheless, that Jesus' concepts were eternal. "In reality, that which is eternal in the words of Jesus is due to the very fact that they are based on an eschatological world-view, and contain the expression of a mind for which the contemporary world with its historical and social circumstances no longer had any existence.

"They are appropriate, therefore, to any world for in every world they raise the man who dares to meet their challenge, and does not turn them and twist them into meaninglessness, above his world and time, making him inwardly free, so that he is fitted to be, in his own world and in his own time, a simple channel of the power of Jesus."

Meantime, as these beliefs were maturing in Schweitzer's mind, he continued his student life at Strasbourg and fixed with great precision the course of his future. In 1896, at the age of 21, he pledged himself that he would give the following nine years to science and art and then devote himself to the service of suffering humanity.

Wrote on Kant

In those years he completed his doctoral thesis in philosophy, a study of Imanuel Kant's views on religion; studied the organ, again with Widor in Paris; won his doctorate in theology; was ordained a curate; taught theology and became principal of the faculty at Strasbourg; wrote "The Mystery of the Kingdom of God"; and, at Widor's urging, completed a study of the life and art of Johann Sebastian Bach.

The English version, "J. S. Bach," is a two-volume translation of the German text, itself an entire reworking of the first version written in French. It approaches Bach as a musician-poet and concentrates on his chorales; cantatas and Passion music. Schweitzer presents Bach as a religious mystic, as cosmic as the forces of nature. Bach, he said, was chiefly a church composer. As such, and as a Lutheran, "it is precisely to the chorale that the work of Bach owes its greatness."

"The chorale not only puts in his possession the treasury of Protestant music," Schweitzer wrote, "but also opens to him the riches of the Middle Ages and of the sacred Latin music from which the chorale itself came.

"From whatever direction he is considered, Bach is, then, the last word in an artistic evolution which was prepared in the Middle Ages, freed and activated by the Reformation and arrives at its full expression in the 18th century."

Turning to Bach's nonchurch music, Schweitzer said:

"The Brandenburg concertos are the purest product of Bach's polyphonic style. We really seem to see before us what the philosophy of all ages conceives as the fundamental mystery of things--that of self-unfolding of the idea in which it creates its own opposite in order to overcome it, and so on and on until it finally returns to itself, having meanwhile traversed the whole of existence."

Bach's "Well-Tempered Clavier" also drew Schweitzer's warmest praise.

Schweitzer's probing conception of Bach created a sensation in its time, and it still remains a classic study, not only for the detailed instructions it provides for the playing of Bach but also for its challenging esthetic.

True to his pledge, Schweitzer turned from music and theology to service to others. On Oct. 13, 1905, he posted letters from Paris to his parents and friends saying that at the start of the winter term he would become a medical student to prepare himself for the life of a physician in French Equatorial Africa.

This decision, protested vigorously by his friends, was, like so many others in his life, the product of religious meditation. He had pondered the meaning of the parable of Dives and Lazarus and its application to his times, and he had concluded that Dives represented opulent Europe, and Lazarus, with his open sores, the sick and helpless of Africa.

Explaining his decision later in more mundane terms, Schweitzer said:

"I wanted to be a doctor that I might be able to work without having to talk. For years I had been giving myself out in words. This new form of activity I could not represent to myself as talking about the religion of love, but only as an actual putting it into practice."

Studied Medicine 7 Years

For seven years, from 1906 until he received his M.D. degree in February, 1913, Schweitzer studied medicine, but he did not entirely cut himself off from his other worlds. Attending the University of Strasbourg, he served as curate at St. Nicholas, gave concerts on the organ, conducted a heavy correspondence and examined Pauline ideas, especially that of dying and being born again "in Jesus Christ." It resulted in a book, "Paul and His Interpreters," published in English in 1912.

That same year he resigned his curateship and his posts at the university and married Helene Bresslau, the daughter of a well-known Strasbourg historian. A scholar herself, she became a trained nurse in order to share her husband's life in Africa.

On Good Friday, 1913, the couple set sail from Bordeaux for Africa, where Schweitzer established a hospital on the grounds of the Lambarene station of the Paris Missionary Society. The society, wary of Schweitzer's unorthodox religious views, had barred him from preaching at the station, but agreed to accept his medical skills.

Lambarene, on the Ogooue River a few miles from the Equator, is in the steaming jungle. Its climate is among the world's worst, with fiercely hot days, clammy nights and seasonal torrents of rain. The natives have all the usual diseases, plus Hansen's disease (leprosy), dysentery, elephantiasis, sleeping sickness, malaria, yellow fever and animal wounds.

From the first, when Schweitzer's hospital was a broken-down hen coop, natives flocked by foot, by improvised stretcher, by dugout canoe to Lambarene for medical attention.

He had barely started to clear the jungle when World War I broke out. He and his wife (they were German citizens) were interned as prisoners of war for four months, then released to continue the work of the hospital. In this time and the succeeding months he started to write the two-volume "The Philosophy of Civilization," his masterwork in ethics that was published in 1923. It is a historical review of ethical thought leading to his own original contribution of Reverence for Life as an effective basis for a civilized world.

Schweitzer's book (and other writings as well) disputed the theory that human progress toward civilization was inevitable. He disagreed sharply with Aristotle's view that man's knowledge of right and wrong would surely lead him to make the right choices. He maintained, instead, that man must rationally formulate an ethical creed and then strive to put it into practice. In Reverence for Life, he concluded, "knowledge passes over into experience."

In 1917, the Schweitzers were returned to France and later to Alsace. To support himself and to carry on the work at Lambarene, Schweitzer joined the medical staff of the Strasbourg Hospital, preached, gave lectures and organ recitals, traveled and wrote. He returned to Africa alone in 1925, his wife and daughter, Rhena, who was born in 1919, remaining in Europe.

In the almost eight years of his absence, the jungle had reclaimed the hospital grounds, and the buildings had to be rebuilt. This was no sooner under way than Schweitzer fell ill, an epidemic of dysentery broke out and a famine set in. The epidemic promoted Schweitzer to move his hospital to a larger site two miles up the Ogooue, where expansion was possible and where gardens and orchards could be planted.

Two physicians had arrived from Europe, and to them and to two nurses he turned over all medical responsibilities for a year and a half while he supervised (and helped) to fell trees, clear ground and construct buildings. The main hospital room and the dispensary were complete when he departed for Europe in midsummer 1927.

He returned to Lambarene in 1929 and remained for two years, establishing a pattern of work in Africa and sojourns in Europe during which he lectured, wrote and concertized to raise funds for his hospital. On one of these occasions, in 1949, he visited the United States and lectured on Goethe at a conference in Aspen, Colo.

Le Mot Juste

Hundreds flocked to hear him and to importune him. On one occasion a group of tourists pulled him away from the dinner table to get an explanation of his ethics. He responded with remarkable courtesy for about 20 minutes until one questioner prodded him for a specific application of Reverence for Life. "Reverence for Life," Schweitzer replied, "means my answering your kind inquiries; it also means your reverence for my dinner hour." The tourists got the point and he returned to his meal.

On his trip to Europe, Schweitzer invariably made his headquarters at his home in Gunsbach, which was expanded until it was also a leave and rest center for the hospital staff. On an afternoon, Schweitzer could often be seen leaving his home to slip over to the church to play Bach. (He played Bach at Lambarene, too, on pianos especially lined with zinc to prevent rot.) He not only played throughout Europe, but he also repaired church organs and kept up a ceaseless study of music.

Schweitzer received many honorary degrees and recognition from a number of governments and learned societies. He was made an honorary member of the British Order of Merit in 1955. He was elected to the French Academy in 1951.

After his wife died in 1957, Schweitzer was almost continuously in Lambarene. He celebrated his 90th birthday there as hundreds of Africans, Europeans and Americans gathered to wish him well. Among the messages he received was one from President Johnson. "In your commitment to truth and service," the President cabled, "you have touched and deepened the live of millions you have never met."


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