Albert Schweitzer

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For the film, see Albert Schweitzer (film). For

the American artist, see Albert Schweitzer
(artist).

Ludwig Philipp Albert Schweitzer OM

(German: [ˈalbɛʁt ˈʃvaɪ̯t͡ sɐ] ⓘ; 14 January

1875 – 4 September 1965) was an Alsatian

polymath. He was a theologian, organist,
musicologist, writer, humanitarian,
philosopher, and physician. A Lutheran
minister, Schweitzer challenged both the
secular view of 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.

The Reverend

Albert Schweitzer
OM

Schweitzer in 1955

Born 14 January 1875

Kaysersberg, Alsace–
Lorraine,
German Empire

Died 4 September 1965

(aged 90)
Lambaréné, Gabon

Citizenship Germany (until 1919)

France (from 1919)

Alma mater University of

Strasbourg

Known for Quest for the

historical Jesus
Reverence for Life
Consistent
"thorough-going"
eschatology
(posthumously)

Spouse Helene Bresslau

(m. 1912; died 1957)

Awards Goethe Prize (1928)

Nobel Peace Prize
(1952)
James Cook Medal
(1959)

Scientific career

Fields Medicine ·
musicology ·
philosophy · theology

Doctoral advisor Theobald Ziegler

Heinrich Julius
Holtzmann
Robert
Wollenberg [de]

He received the 1952 Nobel Peace Prize for

his philosophy of "Reverence for Life",[1]
becoming the eighth Frenchman to be
awarded that prize. 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

Music

Theology

Medicine

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 ...

Paternalism

Schweitzer was nonetheless still sometimes

accused of being paternalistic in his attitude
towards Africans.[64] 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."[65] Schweitzer
believed dignity and respect must be
extended to blacks, while also sometimes
characterizing them as children.[66] 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.'"[66] 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".[67]

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.[68] 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.[69] After three
decades in Africa, Schweitzer still depended
on Europe for nurses.[70]

Reverence for life

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.[77]

Albert Schweitzer's house at

Gunsbach, now a museum and
archive

Albert Schweitzer Memorial and

Museum in Weimar (1984)

From 1939 to 1948, he stayed in Lambaréné,

unable to go back 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 make
use of the family house, which after his death
became an archive and museum to 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).

Albert Schweitzer
Monument in Wagga
Wagga, Australia

Schweitzer was awarded the Nobel Peace

Prize of 1952,[78] accepting the prize with
the speech, "The Problem of Peace".[79] 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."[80]

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.[81]

In 1955, he was made an honorary member

of the Order of Merit (OM) by Queen
Elizabeth II.[82] 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.[83][better source needed]

Schweitzer is often cited in vegetarian

literature as being an advocate of
vegetarianism in his later years.[84][85][86]
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".[87] 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".[88] 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.[89]
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.[89]

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". Today 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.[90]

Schweitzer eponyms

Schweitzer's writings and life are often

quoted,[91] 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'.[91]
This eponym is used in medical education to
highlight the relationship between lived
experience/example and medical students'
opinions on professional behaviours.[92]

International Albert
Schweitzer Prize

Sound recordings

Portrayals

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

Further reading

External links

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