A complex man, to be sure, but his humanitarianism did affect the lives of many patients in desperate need of attention and, for the most part, he positively influenced the world in which he inhabited. 1996 - 2023 NewsHour Productions LLC. [11] Schweitzer served his one-year compulsory military service in 1894. Schweitzer regarded most native Africans as children, as primitives. 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 Date of death. He was theologian, musicologist, organ technician, physician and surgeon, missionary, philosopher of ethics, lecturer, writer and the builder and He became a welcome guest at the Wagners' home, Wahnfried. It is conceivably the only formal philosophical concept ever to spring to life amid He took the search for the good life seriously. Reverence for Life Next, Schweitzer poses the question: "Of what precise kind then is the mysticism of Paul?" It was said that he had scarcely ever talked with an adult African on adult terms. Edward Albert Heimberger (April 22, 1906 - May 26, 2005) was an American actor and activist. Albert Schweitzer 30. The latter activity resulted in several volumes over the years that made his reputation as a major, albeit somewhat controversial, theologian. In 1957 and 1958, he broadcast four speeches over Radio Oslo which were published in Peace or Atomic War. Schweitzer maintained that the life of Jesus must be interpreted in the light of Jesus' own convictions, which reflected late Jewish eschatology and apocalypticism. [89] 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. These synthetic vaccines in themselves cause cancers as other pharmaceutical products based on the chemical nature of the medicine which largely acts as a suppressor of symptoms masquerading as a cure. He received his M.D. "At times our own light goes out and is rekindled by a spark from . Never say there is nothing beautiful in the world anymore. He disagreed sharply with Aristotle's view that man's knowledge of right and wrong would surely lead him to make Albert Schweitzer. The hospital suffered from squalor and was without modern amenities, and Schweitzer had little contact with the local people. He made the Africans too lazy to pick them bare.. were quite familiar with the businesslike and sometimes grumpy and brusque Schweitzer in a solar hat who hurried along the construction of a building by gingering up the native craftsmen with a sharp: "Allez-vous OPP! 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. There is always something to make you wonder in the shape of a tree, the trembling of a leaf. Bach's "Well-Tempered Clavier" also drew Schweitzer's warmest praise. Not only did he design the station, but he also helped build it with his own hands. The soul is a burning desire to breathe in this world of light and never to lose it--to remain children of light.". There was great demand for a German edition, but, instead of translating it, he decided to rewrite it. Schweitzer considered his work as a medical missionary in Africa to be his response to Jesus' call to become "fishers of men". https://www.pbs.org/newshour/health/dr-albert-schweitzer-a-renowned-medical-missionary-with-a-complicated-history. Today, the hospital Schweitzer wrote, "True philosophy must start from the most immediate and comprehensive fact of consciousness, and this may be formulated as follows: 'I am life which wills to live, and I exist in the midst of life which wills to live. Housed originally in the grounds of a mission, he chose to leave this comparative sanctuary for the unknown and forbidding regions of the jungle nearby. They were works of devotional contemplation in which the musical design corresponded to literary ideas, conceived visually. Yet, his legacy is not without controversy. the neighboring village of Gunsbach amid the foothills of the Vosges. [44] Therefore, Schweitzer argues that Paul is the only theologian who does not claim that Christians can have an experience of "being-in-God". dispensary were complete when he departed for Europe in midsummer 1927. He not only played throughout Europe, but he also repaired church organs and kept J. S. Bach: Passacaglia in C minor, BWV 582; Prelude and Fugue in E minor, BWV 533; Prelude and Fugue in A minor, BWV 543; Prelude and Fugue in G major, BWV 541; Toccata and Fugue in D minor, BWV 565. He had pondered the meaning of the parable of Dives and Lazarus and its application to his times, and he had concluded that Schweitzer's talents that he taught him then and later without fee. Birthplace: Kaysersberg, Germany Location of death: Lambarn, Gabon Cause of death: Natural Causes Remains: Buried, Albert. Attending the University of Strasbourg, he served as curate at St. Nicholas, gave for Life. In a telegram that Mrs. Eckert sent to them from here Saturday, she said: "He is dying, inevitably and soon. Widely honored with degrees, citations, scrolls, medals, special stamps, even the Nobel Prize for Peace in 1952, he seemed oblivious to panoply. LAMBARENE, GABON, Sept. 5--Albert Schweitzer died last night in his jungle hospital here. He was German and French and is known for his charitable work including opening a hospital in Africa. "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. The history of the Albert Schweitzer Hospital (ASH) The first foundations of the ASH were laid in Andende, a district of Gabon's provincial capital of Lambarn, located on the right bank of the Ogoou opposite the current site of the ASH. He and his wife (they were German citizens) were interned as prisoners of war for four months, then released to continue the work of the hospital. bare.". Schweitzer saw many operas of Richard Wagner in Strasbourg (under Otto Lohse) and in 1896 he managed to afford a visit to the Bayreuth Festival to see Wagner's Der Ring des Nibelungen and Parsifal, both of which impressed him. Paul's imminent eschatology (from his background in Jewish eschatology) causes him to believe that the kingdom of God has not yet come and that Christians are now living in the time of Christ. His 1931 autobiography, Out of My Life and Thought, describing much of his work in Africa, was an international best-selling book. Many of his basic ideas have been adopted without having his name connected with them. You must give some time to your fellow man. 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. Albert Schweitzer's Death - Cause and Date Born (Birthday) Jan 14, 1875 Death Date September 4, 1965 Age of Death 90 years Cause of Death Natural Causes Profession Doctor The doctor Albert Schweitzer died at the age of 90. He was the son of Louis Schweitzer and Adle Schillinger. Schweitzer's view that "simple people need simple healing methods," however it might have outraged medical sophisticates, won for Lambarene a tremendous measure of native confidence. it.". Description and criticism] (published in English in 1948 as The Psychiatric Study of Jesus. [92], Recordings of Schweitzer playing the music of Bach are available on CD. [41] Primitive mysticism "has not yet risen to a conception of the universal, and is still confined to naive views of earthly and super-earthly, temporal and eternal". It was a search that had haunted him, driven him, since childhood. had a profound influence on contemporary religious thinking. He planned to spread the Gospel by the example of his Christian labour of healing, rather than through the verbal process of preaching, and believed that this service should be acceptable within any branch of Christian teaching. 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 Schweitzer was nonetheless still sometimes accused of being paternalistic in his attitude towards Africans. ", "Let me give you a definition of ethics," he wrote on another occasion. years to science and art and then devote himself to the service of suffering humanity. Dr. Howard Markel [65] For instance, he thought that Gabonese independence came too early, without adequate education or accommodation to local circumstances. ~ Albert Schweitzer. He commands. Rachel Carson, 1963 Speech in Rachel Carson: Silent Spring & Other Writings on the Environment; Few authors in modern times can be said to have redirected the course of an entire field of study. Schweitzer concluded his treatment of Jesus with what has been called the most famous words of twentieth-century theology: "He comes to us as One unknown, without a name, as of old, by the lake-side, He came to those men who knew him not. Every man has to seek in his own way to realize his true worth. Even in his study of medicine, and through his clinical course, Schweitzer pursued the ideal of the philosopher-scientist. disease (leprosy), dysentery, elephantiasis, sleeping sickness, malaria, yellow fever and animal wounds. Albert Schweitzer was a revered French-German humanitarian, writer, theologian, medical missionary, organist, physician, and philosopher. He and his wife are buried on the Hospital grounds in Lambarn. In 1952, he won the Nobel Peace Prize. 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 had originally conducted trials for recordings for HMV on the organ of the old Queen's Hall in London. In 1957, Schweitzer was one of the founders of The Committee for a Sane Nuclear Policy. This decision, protested vigorously by his friends, was, like so many others in his life, the product of religious meditation. He progressed to studying for his Ph.D. in theology in 1899 at the Sorbonne, where he focused on the religious philosophy of Immanuel Kant. (78rpm Columbia ROX 146152), cf. designed by rationalism, endowed with life by liberalism and clothed by modern theology in an historical garb.". His death, political upheavals leading to Gabon's independence in 1960, decreasing foreign . In 1923, the family moved to Knigsfeld im Schwarzwald, Baden-Wrttemberg, where he was building a house for the family. In this time and the succeeding months [91], The prize was first awarded on 29 May 2011 to Eugen Drewermann and the physician couple Rolf and Raphaela Maibach in Knigsfeld im Schwarzwald, where Schweitzer's former residence now houses the Albert Schweitzer Museum. Albert Schweitzer was born on January 14, 1875, in Kaysersberg, near Strasbourg, Elsass-Lothringen, Germany (now in Alsace, France). 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. 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 . 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. The natives have all the usual diseases, plus Hansen's It's you, of yourself, of whom you must ask a lot. Schweitzer's accomplishments are recognized even by his most caustic critics. "[66] Schweitzer believed dignity and respect must be extended to blacks, while also sometimes characterizing them as children. The society, wary of Schweitzer's unorthodox religious views, had award rationale. Additionally, Schweitzer explains how the experience of "being-in-Christ" is not a "static partaking in the spiritual being of Christ, but as the real co-experiencing of His dying and rising again". 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 When the But after a century spent healing the sick, the hospital has spent the past . Dr. So far as we know, this is for the first time clearly expressed by Jainism. His brother, Dr. Paul Schweitzer, 83, was not able to be with him. Drug advances for sleeping sickness included Germanin and tryparsamide[de; fi; it]. for the life of a physician in French Equatorial Africa. [12] In 1899, Schweitzer spent the summer semester at the University of Berlin and eventually obtained his theology degree at the University of Strasbourg. His name and legacy continue to live on around the world. [26] This provided the basis for the International Regulations for Organ Building. The living conditions, too, were horrid with makeshift huts for shelter and medical care, hot, steamy tropical days, cold nights, and huge gusts of wind and rainfall. Schweitzer based his interpretation on his profound knowledge of personality, education, religious and social life of Bach. RM E0MKEE - Oct. 10, 1955 - Dr. Albert Schweitzer plays the festival hall organ. Dr. Schweitzer became especially famous for giving benefit concerts and lectures in Europe as a means of fundraising for his hospital back in Africa. He died at 11:30 P.M. (6:30 P.M. New York time). His co-workers At this time Schweitzer, born a German citizen, had his parents' former (pre-1871) French citizenship reinstated and became a French citizen. 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. " Albert Schweitzer 31. he started to write the two-volume "The Philosophy of Civilization," his masterwork in ethics that was published in 1923. Albert Schweitzer was born at Kaystersberg, Haute Alsace (now Haut-Rhin), Jan. 14, 1875, just two months after Germany had annexed the province from war-prostrate France. By the 1950s, 3 unpaid physicians, 7 nurses and 13 volunteer aides staffed the Schweitzer Hospital. Having circulated a questionnaire among players and organ-builders in several European countries, he produced a very considered report. Albert entered the Kaiser Wilhelm University of Strasbourg at age 18. This new form of activity I could not represent to myself as talking 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. yet he was a foe to materialism and to the century's criteria for personal success. As a music scholar and organist, he studied the music of German composer Johann Sebastian Bach and influenced the Organ Reform Movement (Orgelbewegung). He is suffering from a heart ailment. Albert Schweitzer. Schweitzer developed a technique for recording the performances of Bach's music. On Good Friday of 1913, the couple set sail, at their own expense, from Bordeaux to Africa. "Constant kindness can accomplish much. Fugue in A minor (Peters, Vol 2, 8); Fantasia and Fugue in G minor (Great) (Vol 2, 4); Toccata, Adagio and Fugue in C major (Vol 3, 8). Edward Albert Heimberger, famously known by his stage name Eddie Albert, was one actor and activist who . With the new hospital built and the medical team established, Schweitzer returned to Europe in 1927, this time leaving a functioning hospital at work. 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. Actually, Schweitzer preferred (and planned) it in this fashion on the ground that the natives would shun an elaborate, shiny and impersonal institution. "The Teaching of Reverence for Life". the United States and lectured on Goethe at a conference in Aspen, Colo. His Interpreters," published in English in 1912. He was known especially for founding the Schweitzer Hospital, which provided unprecedented medical care for the natives of Lambarn in Gabon. [85][86][87] Schweitzer was not a vegetarian in his earlier life. Schweitzer presents Bach as a religious mystic, as cosmic as the forces of nature. Footnote 126 Her devotion to Schweitzer's cause was manifested in a variety of ways and never in . 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. it less unruly); age seamed his face, shrunk his frame, made him appear bandy-legged; time softened his eyes and made them less severe. [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. 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. [63] Schweitzer eventually emended and complicated this notion with his later statement that "The time for speaking of older and younger brothers has passed". The grave, on the banks of the Ogooue River, is marked by a cross he made himself. In 1909, he addressed the Third Congress of the International Society of Music at Vienna on the subject. Hailed as an outstanding world figure, Schweitzer was. Exposition and Criticism[52]). The answer came in a flash of mystic illumination in September, 1915, as he was steaming up the Ogooue River in Africa. He was also appointed organist for the Bach Concerts of the Orfo Catal at Barcelona, Spain, and often travelled there for that purpose. for the good of fellow men who need the help of a fellow man." full expression in the 18th century.". about the religion of love, but only as an actual putting it into practice.". 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. Online Kentucky Death Indexes, Death Certificates and Vital Records Indexes. Learn more about Friends of the NewsHour. 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? Its climate is among the world's worst, with fiercely hot days, clammy nights and seasonal torrents of rain. You must not expect anything from others. [48] He explains, "only the man who is elected thereto can enter into relation with God". He is the author or editor of 10 books, including Quarantine! [18], The exposition of these ideas, encouraged by Widor and Munch, became Schweitzer's last task, and appeared in the masterly study J. S. Bach: Le Musicien-Pote, written in French and published in 1905. On Oct. 13, 1905, he posted letters from Paris to his parents and friends saying that at the start of the winter term he would become a medical student to prepare himself 3 in A minor. His cousin Anne-Marie Schweitzer Sartre was the mother of Jean-Paul Sartre. These chapters started a chain The maladies the Schweitzers treated were both horrific and deadly. A famous charitable institution in Africa, the Albert Schweitzer hospital in Gabon, is nearing its hundredth birthday. He was there again from 1929 to 1932. READ MORE: The story behind Alfred Nobels spirit of discovery. This compromise arose after the Protestant Reformation and the Thirty Years' War. His philosophy, he often stated, was built upon the principle of a reverence for life and the religious and ethical imperatives of helping others. life. [73], Such was the theory which Schweitzer sought to put into practice in his own life. They need very elementary schools run along the old missionary plan, with the Africans going 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. [68], American journalist John Gunther visited Lambarn in the 1950s and reported Schweitzer's patronizing attitude towards Africans. Dr. Howard Markel. [41], On the other hand, a more developed form of mysticism can be found in the Greek mystery-cults that were popular in first-century A.D. society. To a marked degree, Schweitzer was an eclectic. Prelude in C major (Vol 4, 1); Prelude in D major (Vol 4, 3); Canzona in D minor (Vol 4, 10) (with Mendelssohn, Sonata in D minor op 65.6). Medical mistakes claim about 400,000 people every year in U.S. The on-axis microphone is often a large diaphragm condenser. Although thousands of Africans called him "le grand docteur," others plastered his village with signs, "Schweitzer, Go Home!