Albert Schweitzer

Polymath

Date of Birth	:	14 Jan, 1875
Date of Death	:	04 Oct, 1965
Place of Birth	:	Kaysersberg-Vignoble, France
Profession	:	Polymath, Organist, Musicologist
Nationality	:	Garman

Dr. Albert Schweitzer, M.D. (January 14, 1875 – September 4, 1965), was a German theologian, musician, philosopher, and physician, renowned in the twentieth century as a humanitarian and advocate of peace. Schweitzer received the 1952 Nobel Peace Prize for founding the Lambaréné Hospital in west Africa and for serving as its physician, and for his “reverence for life” philosophy.

Schweitzer was the principal of a theological college and author of a seminal work of biblical scholarship, The Quest for the Historical Jesus, which analyzed and effectively brought to a conclusion earlier studies of the Jesus of history. Schweitzer concluded that, rather than to atone for sin, Jesus sought to usher in the Kingdom of God and the end of history through his sacrifice on the cross. Schweitzer also gained a reputation as a prominent organist and musical theorist who scholarship and performances of Johann Sebastian Bach have made a lasting contribution

Biography

Albert Schweitzer was born in Kaysersberg, Alsace-Lorraine, Germany (now part of Haut-Rhin, Alsace, France). He spent his childhood in the village of Gunsbach, Alsace, where his father was pastor of the reformed liberal protestant Alsace Free Church, (later absorbed by the German Lutheran Church in 1871). The Gunsbach parish church was an unusual Protestant-Catholic church found particularly in Alsace, shared by the two congregations, which held their prayers at different times on Sundays. Schweitzer, the pastor's son, grew up in this exceptional environment of religious tolerance and developed the belief that true Christianity should always work toward a unity of faith and purpose. Schweitzer was deeply influenced by his father, who in addition to a broad-minded perspective of faith taught his son how to play music.

When Schweitzer was 10 years old, he attended the well-regarded local school in Mulhouse and lived with his elderly relatives, from whom he acquired a stern ethical code and rigorous scholarly habits. Schweitzer's 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). Schweitzer particularly studied the thought of Friedrich Nietzsche and Leo Tolstoy, rejecting on one hand Nietzsche's doctrine of the "overman" who could transcend moral laws, while attracted to Tolstoy's doctrine of love and compassion. Schweitzer's most important interest, however, was the life of Jesus, to which he devoted years of research and reflection.

Schweitzer later served as pastor to a reformed congregation at St. Nicholas church, where he blessed the wedding of Theodor Heuss, who became the first president of the Federal Republic of Germany. In 1901, following the publication of his book, The Secret of the Messiahship and the Passion: A Sketch of the Life of Jesus, he was appointed Principal of the Theological Seminary at Strassbourg. In 1905, Schweitzer published a biography of Johann Sebastian Bach and in 1906, published what would prove to be his seminal work, The Quest of the Historical Jesus. The book surveyed the scholarly attempts from the seventeenth century to critically examine the life of Jesus and alone would have secured him an academic reputation sufficient to ensure a respectable career.

Calling as a medical missionary

One morning in 1905 Schweitzer, then a charismatic and successful writer, cleric, musician, and lecturer with brilliant future prospects, experienced a profound religious revelation calling him to renounce worldly success and devote himself to the betterment of humankind. At age 30, Schweitzer answered the call of The Society Of The Evangelist Missions of Paris, who were looking for a medical doctor. He later wrote that the parable of Dives [rich man] and Lazarus had spoken to him. Europeans were "Dives," Africans were "Lazarus;" Dives had medical knowledge which he took for granted, while Lazarus suffered from illness and pain but has no doctors to help him. He planned to spread the Gospel by the example of his Christian labor of healing, instead of through the evangelical process of preaching, and believed that this service should be acceptable within any branch of Christian teaching.

However, the committee of this (Roman Catholic) French Missionary Society was not ready to accept his offer, considering that his Lutheran theology was "incorrect". 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 his post and re-entered the University as a student in a punishing seven-year course towards the degree of a Doctorate in Medicine, a subject in which he had little knowledge or previous aptitude. In 1911 he married Helene Bresslau, a professor's daughter who had studied nursing in order to work at his side in Africa, and earned his medical degree in 1912. He traveled in 1913 to central Africa, where he built his own hospital at Lambaréné in what is now Gabon, having raised his own funds.

Schweitzer spent roughly 42 years of his life in Lambaréné, 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 thousands of people. He took care of hundreds of lepers and treated many victims of the African sleeping sickness. Over the years other doctors joined him.

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:The Schweitzer house and Museum at Königsfeld in the Black Forest.

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.

Many accounts, such as Schweitzer chronicler and filmmaker Erica Anderson's (1966), attest to Schweitzer’s amazing work ethic and untiring passion for his work. She observed that “every day, Schweitzer is the first one up, the last to bed…he is untiringly at work” (116). Anderson’s documentary film on Schweitzer won the 1958 Academy Award for best non-fiction film.

During World War I, Schweitzer and his wife returned to Europe due to ill health and were held as prisoners of war in France. In 1924 they returned to Lambaréné, where their daughter, Rhena, was born on her father's birthday in 1919. He returned to Lambaréné from 1929-32, visiting Europe again in 1932-33 for speaking engagements and fund-raising organ recitals. In 1933 and 1934, he was back in Africa, then during 1934 and 1935, he presented the prestigious Hibbert and Gifford Lectures in the United Kingdom.

Schweitzer returned to Lambaréné in February 1935. From 1935 to 1937 he gave a second round of Gifford Lectures in the United Kingdom and recorded organ performances for Columbia Records. The years 1937-1939 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 to 1948 he stayed in Lambaréné, unable to go back to a Europe during the war. In 1948, Schweitzer returned to Europe, and made one trip to the United States, where he was awarded an honorary doctorate from the University of Chicago.

International recognition

After World War II Schweitzer used his reputation to campaign against nuclear arms. He was deeply shocked by the 1945 atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and in 1957 launched a global appeal called A Declaration of Conscience. Schweitzer was a co-founder of The Committee for a Sane Nuclear Policy. He collaborated with such eminent peace-activists as Bertrand Russell and Albert Einstein in working for a test-ban treaty. His fame continuously grew, and celebrities flocked to see him at Lambaréné much as later generations would travel to see Mo