Albert Schweitzer

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Albert Schweitzer, Etching by Arthur William Heintzelman

Dr. Albert Schweitzer, M.D., OM, (January 14, 1875 – September 4, 1965) was a German theologian, musician, philosopher, and physician. He was born in Kaysersberg, Alsace-Lorraine, Germany (now found in Haut-Rhin, Alsace, France). He received the 1952 Nobel Peace Prize for founding the Lambaréné Hospital in Gabon, a nation of west central Africa and for his reverence for life philosophy. During the first half of the 20th century, Schweitzer was a house-hold name and an inspirational figure similar too Mother Teresa of Calcutta in the latter aort of the 20th century. After making a seminal contribution to Biblical scholarship, and having gained a reputation as a musician, he felt called to become a missionary in Africa. He entered medical school at the age of 31. He was the principal of a theological college and famous for his book The Quest for the Historical Jesus. Abandoning a distinguished and promising career to serve others in Africa was regarded as insane by many of his friends. He had been skeptical about man's ability to know much about Jesus but Schweitzer developed the theme of Jesus' sacrifice on the Cross as an elevated love of others into a univeral ethic. He studied all other religions with sympathy, convinced that not only is all life sacred but that dogmas and narrowly defined views of salvation are wrong. He expressed thought that once freed of the idea that had so dominated Jesus' teaching, that the End of the World was imminent, Christians could build the kingdom of God on Earth, here and now. Although he remained an ordained minister, and preached regularly, he expressed that traditional Christianity had made many mistakes, and that true Christianity, springing from the Spirit of Jesus had yet to be developed. His missionary work concentrated on service, as opposed to conversion. His missionary work in Africa inspired conservative Christians, as well as to those who find the kindgom-building rather than soul-winning task more attractive. It was his organ-playing concerts to raise funds for his mission, as well as his writing that gained him international applause. From a God-believing perspective, it is indeed God who raises up and uses such talented, self-less and extraordinary individuals. Albert Schweitzer lived for the sake of others.

Biography

Schweitzer's father was a reformed Calvinist pastor, and a great influence on his life. His interest in others dates from his childhood experiences, when he noticed that he seemed to wear smarter and better clothes than other children. His initial career choice was music. At the age of 18, he studied under several renowned masters both in Alsace and Paris, before deciding to become a pastor like his father. He switched to theological study, attending Strasbourg University from 1893. A brilliant student, he earned doctorates in philosophy (1899) and in theology (1890), publishing works on Johann Sebastian Bach and also pastoring a reformed congregation at St. Nicholas church. While there he blessed the wedding of Theodor Heuss, who became the first President of the Federal Republic of Germany.

In 1901, he became Principal of the Theological Seminary at Strassbourg following the publication of his book, The Secret of the Messiahship and the Passion: A Sketch of the Life of Jesus. In 1906, he published his seminal work, The Quest of the Historical Jesus, which alone would have secured him an academic reputation sufficent to ensure a very respectable career. However, a year earlier he had made up his mind to become a missionary in Africa, convinced that wealthy Europeans should share their resources with those who were less-fortunate. Believing that he could do more good as a medical doctor than as a pastor, he enrolled in medical school, spending the next six years there. He later wrote that the parable of Dives and Lazarus had spoken to him. Europeans were 'Dives, Africans were 'Lazarus'; Dives had medical knowledge which he took for granted, while Lazarus 'suffers from illness and pain' but has no doctors to help him (1998b: 11). Accepted by the Paris Missionary Society on the condition that he did not confuse Africans with his liberal ideas (they turned him down at first), he traveled in 1913 to the Gabon, where he built his own hospital at Lambaréné, having raised his own funds.

He married Helene Bresslau in 1912. Reportedly, she was the one friend who understood his desire to go Africa. During World War I, he and his wife were held as prisoners of war in France, having returned to Europe due to ill health. In 1924 they returned to Lambaréné. Their daughter, Rhena Schweitzer Miller was born on her father's birthday in 1919. Schweitzer had a 'special concern and fondness for children throughout his life' (1998: 146). Schweitzer made regular trips back to Europe, to raise funds, to promote his philosophy, and to receive the honorary doctorates but the heart of his work was in Lambaréné, where he was still working there when he died at the age of 90. With the $33,000 Nobel prize money, he started the leprosarium at Lambaréné. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace (1953). He was at Lambaréné from 1929-32 visiting Europe again in 1932-33 speaking and giving fund-raising organ recitals. In 1933-34 he was back in Africa, then during 1934 and 1935 he presented the prestigious Hibbert and Gifford Lectures in the United Kingdom. He returned to Lambaréné for the fifth time in February 1935. In 1935-37 he gave a second round of Gifford Lectures in the United Kingdom and recorded musical records for the Columbia (record label). The years 1937-39 saw his sixth stay at the hospital. He traveled to Europe in 1939 but immediately returned to Lambaréné to avoid a repetition of his internment during the first World War. From 1939-1948 he stayed in Lambaréné, unable to go back to a Europe in war. Three years after the end of World War II, in 1948, he returned to Europe and kept traveling. He made one trip to the United States of America where he was awarded an honorary doctorate from the University of Chicago and continued travelling back and forth to Lambaréné as long as he could until his death in 1965.

In 1954, he accepted the 1952 Nobel Prize in Oslo, Norway. After World War II he used his reputation to campaign against nuclear arms. He was deeply shocked by the 1945 atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. In 1957, he launched a global appeal called A Declaration of Conscience and was a co-founder of SANE–The Committee for a Sane Nuclear Policy. He collaborated with such eminent peace-activists as Bertrand Russell and Albert Einstein working for a test-ban treaty. His fame continuously grew and more and more celebrities flocked to see him at Lambaréné much as later genrations would travel to see Mother Teresa of Calcutta (1910-1997), winner of the 1979 Nobel Peace Prize and, fittingly, of the first Albert Schweitzer International Peace Prize in 1975. However, as Anderson (1966) shows, he remained somewhat shy and diffident and did not much like to be photographed. "My trouble," she complained, "is that Schweitzer is really very camera shy, always stiffening up and posing…. I wonder if I'll ever get him on film as he really is" (75). He may not been as aware of his celebrity status as some suggest; "I don't think he's aware of his own importance," said Anderson's financial backer, Jerome Hill (1905-1972, the distinguished artist, filmaker and composer(118). One critic, Gerald McKnight, yet remaked:

The first meeting is unforgettable…. Nobody can meet Schweitzer without liking him, without responding to some instinctive respect and regard for this great individual. His power to disarm remains immense (1964: 47).

After her father died, Rhena Schweitzer Miller continued to run the hospital he had founded.

He made his fourteenth and final trip to his beloved Lambaréné in 1959, staying until his death. His wife, due to ill health, did not accompany him on all his sojourns at Lambaréné and they kept a house at Gunsbach, where his father had been pastor for 50 years.

Theology

As a young theologian his first major work, by which he gained a great reputation, was The Quest of the Historical Jesus (1906), in which he interpreted the life of Jesus in the light of Jesus' own eschatological convictions. He continued to build up his reputation as a New Testament scholar with other theological studies including his medical degree dissertation, The Psychiatric Study of Jesus (1911), and The Mysticism of Paul the Apostle (1930). In his study of Paul he examined the eschatological beliefs of Paul and through this the message of the New Testament. Schweitzer argued, following Johannes Weiss (1863-1914) that while the Jesus of the nineteenth century liberals, who had taught timeless truths and a spiritual kingdom, was attractive this could not be derived from what Jesus had really taught. What the liberals had done was to dress Jesus in their own clothes. Jesus was an apocalyptic prophet, who anticipated the End of the World and who had no interest in establishing either an earthly Kingdom of peace and justice or in a spiritual after-life. He expected the End of history as we know it. In fact, said Schweitzer, Jesus willingly went to the Cross not to expiate human sin but to usher in the kingdom. This did not happen, and Jesus was actually wrong. Jesus remains an exotic, apocalyptic figure who is alien to our own age, when the End is not expected to happen soon. Yet Schweitzer was, existentially, able to rescue an ethic of love and of sacrifice from Jesus' willingness to die on the cross. Yes, he retreats from us when we think we understand him yet we can still hear his voice, across the centuries, calling us to 'follow him'. The final paragraph of Schweitzer's Quest is well worth citing here, as few academic works of theology conclude with such hauntingly beautiful and challenging words:

He comes to us as One unknown, without a name, as of old, by the lakeside, he came to those who knew Him not. He speaks to us the same word: 'Follow thou me' and sets us to the tasks 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 (403).

Music

As an exponent of Bach, Schweitzer developed a simple style of performance, which he thought to be closer to Bach's original intent. He based his interpretation mainly on his reassessment of Bach's religious intentions. Through the book Johann Sebastian Bach , the final version of which he completed in 1908, he advocated this new style, which has had great influence in the way Bach's music is now being treated. Albert Schweitzer was also a famous organ constructor. Recordings of Schweitzer playing the music of Bach are available on CDs.

Philosophy

Schweitzer's worldview was based on his idea of reverence for life, which he believed to be his greatest single contribution to humankind. His view was that Western civilization was in decay because of gradually abandoning its ethical foundations - those of affirmation of life.

It was his firm conviction that the respect for life is the highest principle. In a similar kind of exaltation of life to that of Friedrich Nietzsche, a recently influential philosopher of the time, Schweitzer admittedly followed the same line as that of the Russian Leo Tolstoy. Some people in his days compared his philosophy with that of Francis of Assisi, a comparison he did not object to. In his book Philosophy of Civilisation (all quotes in this section from chapter 26), he wrote:

True philosophy must start from the most immediate and comprehensive fact of consciousness: 'I am life that wants to live, in the midst of life that wants to live'.

Life and love in his view are based on, and follow out of the same principle: respect for every manifestation of Life, and a personal, spiritual relationship towards the universe. Ethics, according to Schweitzer, consists in the compulsion to show to the will-to-live of each and every being the same reverence as one does to one's own. In circumstances where we apparently fail to satisfy this compulsion should not lead us to defeatism, since the will-to-live renews itself again and again, as an outcome of an evolutionary necessity and a phenomenon with a spiritual dimension.

However, as Schweitzer himself pointed out, it is neither impossible nor difficult to spend a life of not following it: the history of world philosophies and religions clearly shows many instances of denial of the principle of reverence for life. He points to the prevailing philosophy in the European middle ages, and the Indian Brahmanic philosophy. Nevertheless, this kind of attitude lacks in genuineness. Nonetheless, Schweitzer saw similarities between the ethic that he derived from Jesus, and that in all religions that professes the ethic of love. Reverence for life was universally true. Speaking to students of mission at the Selly Oak Colleges, Birmingham, on world religions in 1923, he described Christianity as the 'deepest expression of the religious mind' but said that if missionaries could show people of other faiths 'what it means to be apprehended by the living, ethical God', then they would know 'something of the truth of Jesus' for themselves (1923: 92-3).


Schweitzer advocated the concept of reverence for life widely throughout his entire life, though he first formulated the phrase in 1915. The historical Enlightenment waned and corrupted itself, Schweitzer held, because it has not been well enough grounded in thought, but compulsively followed the ethical will-to live. Hence, he looked forward to a renewed and more profound Renaissance and Enlightenment of humanity (a view he expressed in the epilogue of his autobiography, Out of My Life and Thought). Albert Schweitzer nourished hope in a humankind that is more profoundly aware of its position in the Universe. His optimism was based in belief in truth . The spirit generated by [conceiving of] truth is greater than the force of circumstances. He persistently emphasized the necessity to think, rather than merely acting on basis of passing impulses or by following the most widespread opinions.

Never for a moment do we lay aside our mistrust of the ideals established by society, and of the convictions which are kept by it in circulation. We always know that society is full of folly and will deceive us in the matter of humanity. [...] humanity meaning consideration for the existence and the happiness of individual human beings.

(From the 'Philosophy of Civilization', chapter 25 at [1].)

Respect for life, resulting from contemplation on one's own conscious will to live, leads the individual to live in the service of other people and of every living creature. Schweitzer was much respected for putting his theory into practice in his own life. He loved animals, and many pets and wild creatures roamed the grounds of his hospital. He appears to have had a rapport with the; ‘the moment Schweitzer is out of the door, animals and birds come swarming to him in every direction - cats, dogs, chickens, goats, and duncks’ (Anderson, 1966: 40) which cannot but evoke a comparison with Francis of Assisi, who also left a life of comfort for one of servicei. Critics say that his ‘ban on flushing toilets’ and on use of insecticides took his philosophy to the extremity of ridiculousness (see Allen, 1998: 239). To know life we need to know how our lives relate with other living forms in the Universe. Then, we can achieve harmony between and within the universe of beings. In 1963 he supported a US Senare Bill to limit aninimal experimentation.

Stance on racial relations

Schweitzer considered his work as a medical missionary in Africa to be his response to Jesus' call to become fishers of men but also as a small recompense for the historic guilt of European colonizers: 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. (1998b: 127).

Schweitzer was sometimes accused of being paternalistic or colonialist in his attitude towards Africans. For instance, he thought Gabonese independence came too early, without adequate education or accommodation to local circumstances. Edgar Berman quotes Schweitzer speaking these lines 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. (1986: 139). Chinua Achebe has quoted Schweitzer as saying The African is indeed my brother but my junior brother. [2], which Achebe criticized him for. Others point out how Schweitzer was, enlightened though he was, still a creature of his time, and that he shared the attitude that Africans needed a guardian. On the other hand, he was tolerant of many African practices, such as allowing whole famiies to stay in the hospital, as well as their animals.

Medicine

Albert Schweitzer spent roughly 42 years of his life in Lambaréné in what is now Gabon, spending fourteen periods there (1913-1917; 1924-27; 1929-1932; 1933-34; 1935; 1937-39; 1939-49; 1949-51; 1951-52; 1952-54; 1954-55; 1955-57; 1957-59 and finally from 1959 until his death). He treated and operated on literally thousands of people. He took care of hundreds of Leprosy and treated many victims of the African sleeping sickness. Over the years he was joined by other doctors in the hospital. Critics say that he was not a very good doctor yet insisted on performing operations himself, instead of allowing more skilled colleagues to do so. They also claim that he failed to move with the times, rather liking his quaint mission hospital in the jungle. Perhaps such critics merely set out to destroy the romance of the image of a man who was an all-round genius, a theologian, musician and a doctor who left a successful career in Europe to be a missionary in Africa. However, Erica Anderson (1966) who visited Schweitzer many times in Africa and also accompanied him on a European trip, describes how the hundreds of patients, for whom he was the Grand Docteur and who flocked daily to the hospital greatly appreciated Schweitzer’s medical care, thus ‘the hospital is jammed with patients of all ages, awaiting their trunto be examined’ (37). She stresses how hard he worked; ‘every day, Schweitzer is the first one up, the last to bed. On the construction site, in the hospital, at his desk, on the scaffolding of the new building, he is untiringly at work’ (116). She pictures him watching on whole Dr Emeric Percy performs an operation (opposite 40).

She also describes modernization of the hospital. Anderson’s documentary on Schweitzer won the 1958 Academy Award for best non-fiction.

Bennett (2001) comments that he suspects that ‘the services of a not-too-brilliant physician may be preferable to lack of any medical care’ (122). Schweitzer, unlike other missionaries, does not appear to have regarded his mission as one of civilizing the ‘natives’, of imparting to them a superior culture. Rather, he saw himself as serving them, and respected their culture, commenting that they were more interested than he expected them to be in ‘elemental questions about the meaning of life and the nature of good and evil’ (cited in Allen, 1998 p 141).

Legacy

Schweitzer's 1906 Quest remains a standard text for Jesus' studies, even though recently the trend has moved towards a non-apocalyptic Jesus (see Miller, 2001). His book generated a genre of literature, that is, surveys of the search for the Jesus of History (see Allen, 1998 and Bennett, 2001 for examples). Schweitzer remains an inspirational figure for many people. Some critics think that he exaggerated his remoteness from Europe, returing a total of 13 times. Others point out that even if he did visit Europe fairly often, and enjoyed some comforts at his mission station, life was still not as easy there as it would have been in Europe. he did several long stretches (5 years 1913-17; 10 years 39-49 and finally six between 1959 and his death). Perhaps the value of his legacy was summed in the presentation speech in Sweden, when he was awarded the Nobel Prize: ‘Albert Schweitzer will never belong to any one nation. His whole life and all of his work are a message addressed to all men regardless of nationality or race ‘ (http://nobelprize.org/peace/laureates/1952/press.html). What is undeniable is that he could have lived an easier life, but chose not to. It was his desire to live for the sake of others that compelled him to study medicine at the age of 31, to go to Africa six years later and apart from some interuptions, to stay there until his death at age 90. Albert Einstein is reported to have said of Schweitzer that he:

did not preach and did not warn and did not dream that his example would be an ideal and comfort to innumerable people. He simply acted out of inner necessity (cited at [3].

In the forword to the 1998 edition of Schweitzer's autobiography, Jimmy Carter wrote: 'despite a isolation that is hard to fathom in our world of easy communciations, Dr Schweitzer stayed current on the affairs of the world and provided commentary on ethics, war, nuclear weapons, and environmental degradation. His eclectic interests benefited not only Africa but the entire world' (ix-x). In the preface to the same volume, Schweitzer's daugter wrote: 'His life and thought, nurtured by German and French culture and by the philosophies of East and West, and forged by human service in Europe and Africa, can point the way towards a global society' (xv-xvi).

Schweitzer's 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. His cousin Anne-Marie Schweitzer Sartre was the mother of Jean-Paul Sartre.

He was chevalier of the Military and Hospitaller Order of Saint Lazarus of Jerusalem, and a Member of the British Order of Merit (1955). He was awarded honorary doctorates from Zurich (1920), Edinburgh (1929), Oxford and St Andrews (1932), Chicago (1949), Marburg (1952), Kapstadt (1953), Cambridge (1955),Munster and Tubingen (1958).

Schweitzer died on September 4, 1965 in Lambaréné, Gabon.

Selected bibliography

By Schweitzer

  • The Quest Of The Historical Jesus; A Critical Study Of Its Progress From Reimarus To Wrede, Minneapolis, MN: Augsburg Fortress Publishers, 2001 edition (original 1906)ISBN 0800632885
  • The Psychiatric Study of Jesus: Exposition and Criticism, Gloucester, Massachusetts: Peter Smith Publisher, 1948 (original 1911), ISBN 0844628948
  • The Mystery of the Kingdom of God: The Secret of Jesus' Messiahship and Passion, (1914), Buffalo, NY: Prometheus Books, 1985, ISBN 0879752947
  • The Decay and the Restoration of Civilization and Civilization and Ethics (1923) combined in one volume, Buffalo, NY: Prometheus Books, 1987, ISBN 0879754036
  • The Philosophy of Civilization, Buffalo: Prometheus, 1987 ISBN 0879754036
  • The Mysticism of Paul the Apostle, Baltimore, NJ: Johns Hopkins University Press, (original 1930) 1998 ISBN 0801860989
  • Out of My Life and Thought: An Autobiography Baltimore, NJ Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998 (origanal 1933)with forward by Jimmy Carter ISBN 0801860970
  • Indian Thought and Its Development, London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1936
  • Peace or Atomic War 1958
  • The Kingdom of God and Primitive Christianity, NY: Seabury Press, 1966
  • Christianity and The Religions of the World, NY: George H Doran & Co, 1923
  • On the Edge of the Primeval Forrest, NY: Macmillan, 1956; reprinted Baltimore, NJ: John Hopkins University Press, 1998 ISBN 0801859581 (referenced as 1998b).

About Schweitzer

  • Anderson, Erica Albert Schweitzer's Gift of Friendship, London: Robert Hale, 1966
  • McKnight, Gerald Verdict on Schweitzer, London: Frederick Miller, 1964
  • Miller, Robert J (ed) The Apocalyptic Jesus: A Debate, Santa Rosa, CA: Polebridge Press, 2001 ISBN 0944344895

References
ISBN links support NWE through referral fees

  • Allen, Charlotte The Human Christ: The Search for the Historical Jesus, NY: The Free Press, 1998 ISBN 0745942350
  • Bennett, Clinton In Search of Jesus, NY: Continuum, 2001 ISBN 0826449166
  • Berman, Edgar In Africa With Schweitzer, Far Hills, NJ: New Horizon Press, 1986 ISBN 0882820257
  • Miller, Robert J (ed) The Apocalyptic Jesus: A Debate, Santa Rosa, CA: Polebridge Press, 2001 ISBN 0944344895
  • Weiss, Johannes Jesus' Proclamation of the Kingdom of God, Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1971 (1st published in German, 1892).

Timeline

  • 1893 - Studied Philosophy and Theology at the Universities of Strassburg, Berlin and Paris
  • 1900 - Pastor of the Church of St. Nicolas in Strassburg
  • 1901 - Principal of the Theological Seminary in Strassburg
  • 1905-1913 Studied medicine and surgery
  • 1912 - Married Helene Bresslau
  • 1913 - Physician in Lambaréné, Africa
  • 1915 - Developed his ethic Reverence for life
  • 1917 - Interned in France
  • 1918 - Medical assistant and assistant-pastor in Strassburg
  • 1919 - First major speech about Reverence for life at the University of Uppsala, Sweden
  • 1919 - Birth of daughter, Rhena
  • 1924 - Return to Lambaréné as physician; frequent visits to Europe for speaking engagements
  • 1939-1948 Lambaréné
  • 1949 - Visit to the USA
  • 1948-1965 - Lambaréné and Europe.
  • 1953 - Nobel Peace Prize for the year 1952
  • 1957 - 1958 - Four speeches against nuclear armament and tests


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