The University of Tubingen published the dissertation that resulted in 1899. Rhena Schweitzer Miller, the only child of Nobel Prize-winning humanitarian Dr. Albert Schweitzer, who carried on his medical missionary work in Africa after his death in 1965, died Sunday. 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. 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. "[76][77], After the birth of their daughter (Rhena Schweitzer Miller), Albert's wife, Helene Schweitzer was no longer able to live in Lambarn due to her health. On Good Friday of 1913, the couple set sail, at their own expense, from Bordeaux to Africa. Everything was heavily decayed, and building and doctoring progressed together for months. He was known especially for founding the Schweitzer Hospital, which provided unprecedented medical care for the natives of Lambarn in Gabon. A scholar herself, she became a trained nurse in order to share her husband's life in Africa. newsletter for analysis you wont find anywhereelse. [90], 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 Lambarn Hospital today. about the religion of love, but only as an actual putting it into practice.". Albert Schweitzer - At times our own light goes out and is. Albert Schweitzer 30. Christ-mysticism holds the field until God-mysticism becomes possible, which is in the near future. "Reverence for Life," Schweitzer replied, "means my answering your kind inquiries; it also means your reverence for my dinner hour." Photo by Rolls Press/Popperfoto/Getty Images. To the end, his one frustration was that he had not succeeded in convincing the world to abolish nuclear weapons. Albert founded Albert Schweitzer Hospital located in Gabon. Life and love are rooted in this same principle, in a personal spiritual relationship to the universe. In the early 1950s, as the horrors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki finally settled into the worlds conscience, he joined forces with Albert Einstein, Otto Hahn, Bertrand Russell, and others to urge social responsibility and a ban on the use of nuclear weapons. Albert was born in 1875 in Kaysersberg (Alsace-Lorraine), Germany, (now Haut-Rhin, France), only two months after Germany annexed that province from France, as a result of winning the Franco-Prussian war. In 1905, he published a study of Bach in French . has grown, entirely under his hand and direction, into a sizable colony where between 500 and 600 people live in reasonable comfort. Indeed, building was often This decision, protested vigorously by his friends, was, like so many others in his life, the product of religious meditation. it.". Schweitzer's death was kept secret through the night because of a request he had. 4 September 1965. She Among his many charitable works, Dr. Schweitzer founded a hospital in Lambarn, which was situated in what was then known as French Equatorial Africa, and is today the capital of the province of Moyen-Ogoou in the nation of Gabon. [61] 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 expos. The epidemic promoted Widely honored with degrees, citations, scrolls, medals, special stamps, even the Nobel Prize for Peace in 1952, he seemed oblivious to panoply. Dr. Albert Schweitzer found no cancers in Africa at all as a doctor there from 1913 to 1930, and then found the chemicalized, European processed . 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. [70] After three decades in Africa, Schweitzer still depended on Europe for nurses.[71]. 1996 - 2023 NewsHour Productions LLC. You must give some time to your fellow man. (He played Bach at Lambarene, too, on pianos especially lined with zinc to prevent rot.) The latter activity resulted in several volumes over the years that made his reputation as a major, albeit somewhat controversial, theologian. " Albert Schweitzer 32. January 24, 2023 Causes of Wrongful Conviction: False testimony, false confession, ineffective assistance of counsel ALBERT IAN SCHWEITZER On the afternoon of Christmas Eve, 1991, a young woman named Dana Ireland was struck by a vehicle while she was riding a bicycle down a red cinder road on the island of Hawai'i. The family and close friends were prepared for the end. Widor, deeply impressed, agreed to teach Schweitzer without fee, and a great and influential friendship thus began. . Among children 1-59 months of age, ALRI was present in 51% of the deaths, and enteric diseases in 30%. Although several attempts have been made to restore and re-air the film, all access has been denied.[82]. Inspired by medical missionary and Nobel Peace Prize winner Dr. Albert Schweitzer, an American couple, Dr. Larry and Mrs. Gwen Grant Mellon, founded HAS in 1956. He had scratched it out from the jungle beginning in 1913; he had designed it; to the church to play Bach. 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. All Rights Reserved. Albert Schweitzer made notable organ recordings of Bach's music in the 1940s and 1950s. To a marked degree, Schweitzer was an eclectic. He will end by destroying the earth. [12] In 1899, Schweitzer spent the summer semester at the University of Berlin and eventually obtained his theology degree at the University of Strasbourg. Mosquitoes were not swatted, nor pests and insects doused with chemicals; they were left alone, and humans put up with them. His death, political upheavals leading to Gabon's independence in 1960, decreasing foreign . He fell ill from exhaustion on Aug. 28 and his condition worsened steadily. [22] Schweitzer's interpretative approach greatly influenced the modern understanding of Bach's music. . 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. Altogether his early Columbia discs included 25 records of Bach and eight of Csar Franck. "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. '"[72] In nature one form of life must always prey upon another. music. full expression in the 18th century.". Even in his study of medicine, and through his clinical course, Schweitzer pursued the ideal of the philosopher-scientist. The Deed is everything, the Glory naught. (Revelation 22:20). He established a hospital and treated the natives there. They ranged from leprosy, dysentery, elephantiasis, sleeping sickness, malaria, yellow fever, to wounds incurred by encounters with wild animals and many common health problems to which the human body is subject. 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.[27]. be cited than the fact--regarded locally as something of a miracle--of his own survival.". Albert Schweitzer was born in a small town in France in 1875 and he passed away in Gabon, Africa in 1965 after a rich and illustrious career. He also noted the lack of Africans trained to be skilled workers. Date of birth. 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.". And the Christianity of our states is blasphemed and made a mockery before those poor people. "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 the United States and lectured on Goethe at a conference in Aspen, Colo. 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. There was a further period of work in 1935. His Interpreters," published in English in 1912. 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. . The society, wary of Schweitzer's unorthodox religious views, had As recognition for his many years of humanitarian work he was awarded the Nobel Peace Price in 1952 and in 1955, Queen Elizabeth II conferred on him Great Britain's highest civilian award, the Order of Merit. He is a figure designed by rationalism, endowed with life by liberalism, and clothed by modern theology in a historical garb. Today, the hospital 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 ". [88] 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". 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. It's you, of yourself, of whom you must ask a lot. However, human consciousness holds an awareness of, and sympathy for, the will of other beings to live. The Schweitzers had their own bungalow and employed as their assistant Joseph, a French-speaking Galoa[clarification needed] (Mpongwe), who first came to Lambarn as a patient.[57][58]. Nobel Peace Prize. [74] Albert Schweitzer noted the contribution of Indian influence in his book Indian Thought and Its Development:[75]. 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. But no such meaning was found, and the rational, life-affirming optimism of the Age of Enlightenment began to evaporate. Albert Schweitzer. For him it had profound religious implications. He was German and French and is known for his charitable work including opening a hospital in Africa. 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. Hundreds flocked to hear him and to importune him. Through concerts and other fund-raising, he was ready to equip a small hospital. But how are we of the post-colonial age to understand a man who was born in 1875 and saw the world very differently from the way we do? After peaking in the mid-1960s, the number of heart disease deaths began a marked decline that has persisted to the present. Schweitzer continued to work tirelessly to promote a life-affirming society until his death in 1965, at the age of 90. In 1952, he won the Nobel Peace Prize. 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. This new form of activity I could not represent to myself as talking He also studied piano at that time with Marie Jall. [46] After baptism, Christians are continually renewed throughout their lifetimes due to participation in the dying and rising with Christ (most notably through the Sacraments). 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. [93] Then at his suggestion the sessions were transferred to the church of Ste Aurlie 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 Frdric Hrpfer shortly before the First World War. Much of the building work was carried out with the help of local people and patients. // Famous Nobel Peace Prize Emily Greene Balch In January 1937, he returned again to Lambarn and continued working there throughout World War II. In 1896, at the age of 21, he pledged himself that he would give the following nine 14 January 1875. During his compulsory military service in 1894, Schweitzer had an epiphany of sorts while reading the Book of Matthew, Chapters 10 and 11 (in Greek, no less). Exposition and Criticism[52]). The Remarkable Life of Albert Schweitzer Albert Schweitzer was a complex, astonishing, and multifaceted man. He now had salvarsan for treating syphilitic ulcers and framboesia. He was there again from 1929 to 1932. 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. His name and legacy continue to live on around the world. Everyone can have their own Lambarn". On departure for Lambarn in 1913, he was presented with a pedal piano, a piano with pedal attachments to operate like an organ pedal-keyboard. The compound even lacked electricity, except for the operating and dental rooms, and members of the staff read by kerosene lamp. Ethics themselves proceed from the need to respect the wish of other beings to exist as one does towards oneself. Turning to Bach's nonchurch music, Schweitzer said: "The Brandenburg concertos are the purest product of Bach's polyphonic style. 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 Darrell. "[40], In The Mysticism of Paul the Apostle, Schweitzer first distinguishes between two categories of mysticism: primitive and developed. He was 90 years old. Now, without context, it seems that Albert Schweitzer rejects the whole project of historical Jesus research. He was made an honorary member of the British Order of Merit in 1955. During 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. Schweitzer considered his ethic of Reverence for Life, not his hospital, his most important legacy, saying that his Lambarn Hospital was just "my own improvisation on the theme of Reverence for Life. But after a century spent healing the sick, the hospital has spent the past . At this time Schweitzer, born a German citizen, had his parents' former (pre-1871) French citizenship reinstated and became a French citizen. 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. | Sdkurier Online", "Harrison & Harrison organ catalogue by name London", Dr. Albert Schweitzer: "My Address to the People" Commitment against Nuclear War, John D. Regester Collection on Albert Schweitzer, Newspaper clippings about Albert Schweitzer, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Albert_Schweitzer&oldid=1142059300. The compound was staffed by 3 unpaid physicians, 7 nurses and 13 volunteer helpers. Albert Schweitzer, OM (14 January 1875 - 4 September 1965) was a French-German theologian, organist, writer, humanitarian, philosopher, and physician. The soul is a burning desire to breathe in this world of light and never to lose it--to remain children of light.". [68], American journalist John Gunther visited Lambarn in the 1950s and reported Schweitzer's patronizing attitude towards Africans. [13][14][15][16] He published his PhD thesis at the University of Tbingen in 1899. Albert Schweitzer earned doctorates in philosophy and theology, had a reputation as one of Europe's finest organists, and came to international fame with his 1906 best seller . For 158 years now, it has continued to be the well-worn and widely accepted conclusion that Albert, Prince Consort to Queen Victoria, died an untimely death by typhoid fever on 14 December 1861.Without recourse to detailed research or the challenging of past conclusions, this cause of death has been repeated from one source to the next as a given. An ethical human strives to escape from this contradiction so far as possible. Preface: Albert Schweitzer, a European scholar and musician, dedicated fifty years of his life to the hospital he had built to ease the suffering of an, at that time, primitive African people. Seek always to do some good, somewhere. Never say there is nothing beautiful in the world anymore. It resides in their vault today in deteriorating condition. He is the director of the Center for the History of Medicine and the George E. Wantz Distinguished Professor of the History of Medicine at the University of Michigan and the author ofThe Secret of Life: Rosalind Franklin, James Watson, Francis Crick and the Discovery of DNAs Double Helix (W.W. Norton, September 21). He returned to Africa alone in 1925, his wife and daughter, Rhena, who was born in 1919, remaining in Europe. Then, working as medical assistant and assistant-pastor in Strasbourg, he advanced his project on the philosophy of civilization, which had occupied his mind since 1900. 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 . which the chorale itself came. [84][bettersourceneeded], Schweitzer is often cited in vegetarian literature as being an advocate of vegetarianism in his later years. original contribution of Reverence for Life as an effective basis for a civilized world. In the almost eight years of his absence, the jungle had reclaimed the hospital grounds, and the buildings had to be rebuilt. I can do no other than be reverent before everything that is called life. Schweitzer was born 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 after being French for more than two centuries; he later became a citizen of France after World War I, when Alsace became French territory again. His philosophy, he often stated, was built upon the principle of a reverence for life and the religious and ethical imperatives of helping others. for the life of a physician in French Equatorial Africa. Happiness is the key to success. Ludwig Philipp Albert Schweitzer OM (German: [albt vats] (); 14 January 1875 - 4 September 1965) was an Alsatian polymath.He was a theologian, organist, musicologist, writer, humanitarian, philosopher, and physician. Lambarene resembled not so much a hospital as a native village where physicians cared for the sick. "Anyone can rescue his human life," he once said, "who seizes every opportunity of being a man by means of personal action, however unpretending, E.M.G., op. 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. Throughout his lifetime, he was presented various accolades, including The Nobel Peace Prize and the Goethe Prize. Widor had not grown up with knowledge of the old Lutheran hymns. 8 Department of Cardiology II -Electrophysiology; University of Mnster, Albert-Schweitzer-Campus 1, Gebude A1, D-48149 Mnster, Germany. Dr. Schweitzer became especially famous for giving benefit concerts and lectures in Europe as a means of fundraising for his hospital back in Africa. Philosopher and musician Dr. Albert Schweitzer, sitting at his desk in a London restaurant, around 1955. " Man has lost the capacity to foresee and to forestall. The signal from the figure-8 is mult-ed, panned hard left and right, one of the signals being flipped out of polarity. At the time of Dr. Schweitzers death, at age 90 in 1965, the compound comprised 70 buildings, 350 beds and a leper colony for 200. At the age of 18 he entered the University of Scholfield found a time of 11:06am (no source given) in "In aller Welt . It was to this picture-book Franco-German village and its vineyards that Schweitzer was invariably to return between periods Also Known As: Ludwig Philipp Albert Schweitzer Died At Age: 90 Family: Spouse/Ex-: Helene Bresslau father: Louis Thophile siblings: Emma Schweitzer, Louisa Schweitzer, Lulie Adele Schweitzer, Marguerit Schweitzer, Paul Schweitzer children: Rhena Schweitzer Miller Born Country: France Quotes By Albert Schweitzer Nobel Peace Prize In the years that followed, the hospital grew by leaps and bounds, not only in terms of bricks and mortar but also in its delivery of comprehensive and modern health care. 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. His 1931 autobiography, Out of My Life and Thought, describing much of his work in Africa, was an international best-selling book. 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 The Albert Schweitzer Institute conducts programs that link education, ethics and voluntarism for the sake of creating a more peaceful and sustainable world. designed by rationalism, endowed with life by liberalism and clothed by modern theology in an historical garb.". Schweitzer and his wife did the best they could. [6] The tiny village would become home to the Association Internationale Albert Schweitzer (AIAS). With theological insight, he interpreted the use of pictorial and symbolical representation in J. S. Bach's religious music. 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. 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. . 19th-century benevolence. Albert Schweitzer and Max Gerson become lifelong friends after Dr. Gerson's therapy cured Schweitzer of his Type II diabetes, cured Albert's daughter of a chronic skin condition, and saved the life of Albert's wife, suffering from tuberculosis of the lung, which had not responded to conventional treatment. "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 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.