disease (leprosy), dysentery, elephantiasis, sleeping sickness, malaria, yellow fever and animal wounds. 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. The tourists got the point and he returned to his meal. He was genuinely proud of his medical and missionary station at Lambarene. [44] Therefore, Schweitzer argues that Paul is the only theologian who does not claim that Christians can have an experience of "being-in-God". Having circulated a questionnaire among players and organ-builders in several European countries, he produced a very considered report. 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. Schweitzer also wrote the book, The Animal World of Albert Schweitzer, a collection of Schweitzer's writings about the application of ethics to the animal kingdom. Albert Schweitzer. sermons as well as to his scalpel, for he believed that the good shepherd saves not only the animal but also his soul. The Remarkable Life of Albert Schweitzer Albert Schweitzer was a complex, astonishing, and multifaceted man. Photo by Rolls Press/Popperfoto/Getty Images. He now had salvarsan for treating syphilitic ulcers and framboesia. That is the beginning and the foundation of all ethics. 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. 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. [76][77] 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. But after a century spent healing the sick, the hospital has spent the past . In 1899, Schweitzer became a deacon at the church of Saint Nicholas in Strasbourg. Through concerts and other fund-raising, he was ready to equip a small hospital. There is always something to make you wonder in the shape of a tree, the trembling of a leaf. 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. [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. Yet, he has achieved more than seemed possible under adverse conditions. . Nearly 150 of these Schweitzer Fellows have served at the Hospital in Lambarn, for three-month periods during their last year of medical school. at the drop of a cause. Birthplace: Kaysersberg, Germany Location of death: Lambarn, Gabon Cause of death: Natural Causes Remains: Buried, Albert. Kentucky Vital Records Indexes at Ancestry (these require payment) Kentucky Death Certificates and Records, 1852-1965 (coverage before 1911 varies by county) includes digitized Kentucky death certificates from 1911-1965, plus earlier records for some counties ; Kentucky Death Index, 1911-2000 full expression in the 18th century.". 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." "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. ~ Albert Einstein. 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. that the work of Bach owes its greatness.". The increase in heart disease deaths from the early 20th century . "The Teaching of Reverence for Life". Babies, even in the leper enclave, dropped toys into the dust of the unpaved streets and then popped them into their mouths. 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. " Albert Schweitzer 31. own, is understandable when one considers the enormous achievement he has attained in his own lifetime. Today marks the 141st birthday of Dr. Albert Schweitzer (1875-1965). In recent years, many have taken him to task for decidedly paternalistic and racist descriptions of his African patients that would offend many a 21st century observer. If you love what you are doing, you will be successful. He took to playing the organ as soon as he was big enough to reach the pedals and amazed all who listened to him. "Anyone can rescue his human life," he once said, "who seizes every opportunity of being a man by means of personal action, however unpretending, RM E0MKEE - Oct. 10, 1955 - Dr. Albert Schweitzer plays the festival hall organ. The list, alas, goes on and his prejudices are difficult, if not impossible, to ignore. A man of peace and non-violence, Albert Schweitzer is the total antithesis of those who sought to remake the world via war, violent revolution, genocide, terrorism, and the killing fields. Albert Schweitzer born The theologian, musician, philosopher and Nobel Prize-winning physician Albert Schweitzer is born on January 14, 1875 in Upper-Alsace, Germany (now Haut-Rhin, France).. Albert Schweitzer made notable organ recordings of Bach's music in the 1940s and 1950s. His death, political upheavals leading to Gabon's independence in 1960, decreasing foreign . Schweitzer also studied piano under Isidor Philipp, head of the piano department at the Paris Conservatory. This compromise arose after the Protestant Reformation and the Thirty Years' War. 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. OPP!". Albert Schweitzer - At times our own light goes out and is. 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". 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. Albert Schweitzer, OM (14 January 1875 - 4 September 1965) was a French-German theologian, organist, writer, humanitarian, philosopher, and physician. Ever the autodidact, during this period Albert also served as curate for the church Saint-Nicolas in Strasbourg. Bartolf, Christian; Gericke, Marion; Miething, Dominique (2020): This page was last edited on 28 February 2023, at 08:10. which the chorale itself came. There is always something to make you wonder in the shape of a tree, the trembling of a leaf.". Ludwig Philipp Albert Schweitzer OM (German: [albt vats] (listen); 14 January 1875 4 September 1965) was an Alsatian polymath. Here he often met with the elderly Aristide Cavaill-Coll. 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. 1996 - 2023 NewsHour Productions LLC. 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. Albert Schweitzer (1875-1965) was a brilliant philosopher, physician, musician, clergyman and theological scholar. [22] Schweitzer's interpretative approach greatly influenced the modern understanding of Bach's music. barred him from preaching at the station, but agreed to accept his medical skills. [49] 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. 17 Copy quote. 1. 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".[42]. He was twice nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor; the first nomination came in 1954 for his performance in Roman Holiday, and the second in 1973 for The Heartbreak Kid. Albert Schweitzer 30. Albert Schweitzer. [12] In 1899, Schweitzer spent the summer semester at the University of Berlin and eventually obtained his theology degree at the University of Strasbourg. Strasbourg as a student in theology, philosophy and musical theory. The family and close friends were prepared for the end. Such comments were, at the very least, a contradiction of his worldview of showing reverence for all human life in both deeds and words. Albert founded Albert Schweitzer Hospital located in Gabon. Bach, he said, was chiefly a church composer. Albert Schweitzer, OM (14 January 1875 - 4 September 1965) was a French-German theologian, organist, philosopher, and physician.He was born in the German province of Alsace-Lorraine and although that region had been reintegrated into the German Empire four years earlier, and remained a German province until 1918, he considered himself French and wrote mostly in French. "You must give some time to your fellow man," Schweitzer counseled in paraphrase. over into experience.". Jesus, Schweitzer contended, believed himself the Messiah who would rule in a new kingdom of God when He was popular for being a Doctor. Albert Schweitzer suffered a stroke on 28 August 1965 and died from it on 4 September 1965 in Lambarn., at the age of 90. 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"). As such, and as a Lutheran, "it is precisely to the chorale 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. '"[72] In nature one form of life must always prey upon another. He was known especially for founding the Schweitzer Hospital, which provided unprecedented medical care for the natives of Lambarn in Gabon. In 1955, he was made an honorary member of the Order of Merit (OM) by Queen Elizabeth II. 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. [84][bettersourceneeded], Schweitzer is often cited in vegetarian literature as being an advocate of vegetarianism in his later years. 1952. prize money. 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 Gradually his opinions and concepts became acknowledged, not only in Europe, but worldwide. Known as the "Schweitzer Technique", it is a slight improvement on what is commonly known as mid-side. Hupp, upp. In their first nine months in Africa, they treated more than 2,000 patients. Once in Lambarn, he established a small hospital at a station set up by the Paris Missionary Society. [4][5] 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. He became a welcome guest at the Wagners' home, Wahnfried. He is suffering from a heart ailment. 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. Everything was heavily decayed, and building and doctoring progressed together for months. His brother, Dr. Paul Schweitzer, 83, was not able to be with him. Mankind had to choose to create the moral structures of civilization: the world-view must derive from the life-view, not vice versa. 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. 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. 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. he started to write the two-volume "The Philosophy of Civilization," his masterwork in ethics that was published in 1923. Dr. Howard Markel Muntz and Friedman, both Holocaust survivors, to record his work and daily life at the hospital. She Schweitzer considered his work as a medical missionary in Africa to be his response to Jesus' call to become "fishers of men". 4 September 1965. a herd of hippopotamuses. A jungle saint he may not have been; a jungle pioneer he surely was. At the same time he gave organ concerts, delivered lectures and wrote books about theology. [65] For instance, he thought that Gabonese independence came too early, without adequate education or accommodation to local circumstances. Indeed, he was a true polymath. 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 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). Schweitzer's accomplishments are recognized even by his most caustic critics. He returned to Africa alone in 1925, his wife and daughter, Rhena, who was born in 1919, remaining in Europe. 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. Until he extends his circle of compassion to include all living things, man will not himself find peace. [13][16], Schweitzer rapidly gained prominence as a musical scholar and organist, dedicated also to the rescue, restoration and study of historic pipe organs. 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 commands. 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 191214. (78rpm Columbia ROX 146152), cf. Each of us has cause to think with deep gratitude of those who have lighted the flame within us. Now I had my way to the idea in which world [affirmation] and life-affirmation and ethics are contained Humanitarian and theologian. To the end, his one frustration was that he had not succeeded in convincing the world to abolish nuclear weapons. (Revelation 22:20). Schweitzer's talents that he taught him then and later without fee. Schweitzer's recordings of organ-music, and his innovative recording technique, are described below. Instead, he conceives of sonship to God as "mediated and effected by means of the mystical union with Christ". These recordings were made in the course of a fortnight in October 1936.[94]. When Schweitzer was in residence at Lambarene, virtually nothing was done without consulting him. Though he took theology at university, studying at the Kaiser-Wilhelm-Universitt in Strasbourg and at the Sorbonne in Paris before publishing his PhD thesis - on The Religious Philosophy of Kant - at the University of Tbingen in 1899, he first found acclaim as a scholar of music. [21] 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. "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 ", "At this stage," Schweitzer said in 1963, "Africans have little need for advanced training. Lambarene, on the Ogooue River a few miles from the Equator, is in the steaming jungle. 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]. [62], The poor conditions of the hospital in Lambarn 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.' to the church to play Bach. His autocracy was more noticeable as his years advanced and [39][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" (St. Mark), and states that it will happen but it has not: "This generation shall not pass, till all these things be fulfilled" (St. Matthew, 24:34) or, "have taken place" (Luke 21:32). 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 Noisome animals wandered in and Widely honored with degrees, citations, scrolls, medals, special stamps, even the Nobel Prize for Peace in 1952, he seemed oblivious to panoply. His Interpreters," published in English in 1912. The Albert Schweitzer Institute conducts programs that link education, ethics and voluntarism for the sake of creating a more peaceful and sustainable world. A judge ordered his release Tuesday after hours of expert testimony on new evidence showing Schweitzer wasn't responsible for the death of Ireland, 23, a tourist from Virginia.