66 Facts About Albert Schweitzer

Ludwig Philipp Albert Schweitzer was an Alsatian polymath.

Albert Schweitzer was a theologian, organist, musicologist, writer, humanitarian, philosopher, and physician.

Albert Schweitzer received the 1952 Nobel Peace Prize for his philosophy of "Reverence for Life", becoming the eighth Frenchman to be awarded that prize.

Albert Schweitzer's philosophy was expressed in many ways, but most famously in founding and sustaining the Hopital Albert Schweitzer in Lambarene, French Equatorial Africa.

Albert 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.

Albert Schweitzer was the son of Louis Schweitzer and Adele Schillinger.

Albert Schweitzer spent his childhood in Gunsbach, in Alsace, where his father, the local Lutheran-Evangelical pastor of the EPCAAL, taught him how to play music.

Albert Schweitzer studied organ in Mulhouse from 1885 to 1893 with Eugene Munch, organist at the Protestant cathedral, who inspired Schweitzer with his enthusiasm for the music of German composer Richard Wagner.

From 1893 Albert Schweitzer studied Protestant theology at the Kaiser Wilhelm University in Strasbourg.

Albert Schweitzer saw many operas of Richard Wagner in Strasbourg 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.

Albert Schweitzer studied piano at that time with Marie Jaell.

In 1899, Albert Schweitzer spent the summer semester at the University of Berlin and eventually obtained his theology degree at the University of Strasbourg.

Albert Schweitzer published his PhD thesis at the University of Tubingen in 1899.

Albert Schweitzer rapidly gained prominence as a musical scholar and organist, dedicated to the rescue, restoration and study of historic pipe organs.

Albert Schweitzer became a welcome guest at the Wagners' home, Wahnfried.

Albert Schweitzer corresponded with composer Clara Faisst, who became a good friend.

Albert Schweitzer 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 to access distinct voices in fugue or counterpoint capable of combination without loss of distinctness: different voices singing the same music together.

Albert Schweitzer studied piano under Isidor Philipp, head of the piano department at the Paris Conservatory.

Bach's music, for whose concerts Albert Schweitzer took the organ part regularly until 1913.

Albert Schweitzer was appointed organist for the Bach Concerts of the Orfeo Catala at Barcelona, Spain, and often travelled there for that purpose.

Three more, to contain the Chorale Preludes with Albert 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.

In 1899, Albert Schweitzer became a deacon at the church of Saint Nicholas in Strasbourg.

Albert Schweitzer maintained that the life of Jesus must be interpreted in the light of Jesus' own convictions, which reflected late Jewish eschatology and apocalypticism.

Albert Schweitzer is a figure designed by rationalism, endowed with life by liberalism, and clothed by modern theology in a historical garb.

Albert Schweitzer cross-referenced the many New Testament verses declaring imminent fulfilment of the promise of the World's ending within the lifetime of Jesus's original followers.

Albert Schweitzer concluded his treatment of Jesus with what has been called the most famous words of twentieth-century theology:.

Albert Schweitzer speaks to us the same word: 'Follow thou me' and sets us to the task which Albert Schweitzer has to fulfill for our time.

Albert Schweitzer summarizes Pauline mysticism as "being in Christ" rather than "being in God".

Therefore, Albert Schweitzer argues that Paul is the only theologian who does not claim that Christians can have an experience of "being-in-God".

Additionally, Albert 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".

Rather than reading justification by faith as the main topic of Pauline thought, which has been the most popular argument set forward by Martin Luther, Albert Schweitzer argues that Paul's emphasis was on the mystical union with God by "being in Christ".

Albert 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.

Albert Schweitzer unabashedly emphasizes the fact that "Paul's thought follows predestinarian lines".

Albert Schweitzer explains, "only the man who is elected thereto can enter into relation with God".

At the age of 30, in 1905, Albert Schweitzer answered the call of The Society of the Evangelist Missions of Paris, which was looking for a physician.

Albert Schweitzer 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.

In 1912, now armed with a medical degree, Albert Schweitzer made a definite proposal to go as a physician to work at his own expense in the Paris Missionary Society's mission at Lambarene on the Ogooue river, in what is Gabon, in Africa.

Albert Schweitzer refused to attend a committee to inquire into his doctrine, but met each committee member personally and was at last accepted.

In 1924, Albert Schweitzer returned to Africa without his wife, but with an Oxford undergraduate, Noel Gillespie, as his assistant.

Albert Schweitzer now had salvarsan for treating syphilitic ulcers and framboesia.

The hospital suffered from squalor and was without modern amenities, and Albert Schweitzer had little contact with the local people.

Albert Schweitzer considered his work as a medical missionary in Africa to be his response to Jesus' call to become "fishers of men".

Albert Schweitzer was nonetheless still sometimes accused of being paternalistic in his attitude towards Africans.

Albert Schweitzer eventually emended and complicated this notion with his later statement that "The time for speaking of older and younger brothers has passed".

American journalist John Gunther visited Lambarene in the 1950s and reported Albert Schweitzer's patronizing attitude towards Africans.

Albert Schweitzer noted the lack of Africans trained to be skilled workers.

Albert Schweitzer thought that Western civilization was decaying because it had abandoned affirmation of life as its ethical foundation.

Such was the theory which Albert Schweitzer sought to put into practice in his own life.

Albert Schweitzer noted the contribution of Indian influence in his book Indian Thought and Its Development:.

Albert 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.

Albert Schweitzer inspired actor Hugh O'Brian when O'Brian visited in Africa.

Albert Schweitzer was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize of 1952, accepting the prize with the speech, "The Problem of Peace".

In 1957, Albert Schweitzer was one of the founders of The Committee for a Sane Nuclear Policy.

On 23 April 1957, Albert Schweitzer made his "Declaration of Conscience" speech; it was broadcast to the world over Radio Oslo, pleading for the abolition of nuclear weapons.

The film The Legacy of Albert Schweitzer, narrated by Henry Fonda, was produced by Warner Brothers and aired once.

Albert Schweitzer was a chevalier of the Military and Hospitaller Order of Saint Lazarus of Jerusalem.

Albert Schweitzer died on 4 September 1965 at his beloved hospital in Lambarene, now in independent Gabon.

Albert Schweitzer is often cited in vegetarian literature as being an advocate of vegetarianism in his later years.

For example, in 1950, biographer Magnus C Ratter commented that Schweitzer never "commit[ted] himself to the anti-vivisection, vegetarian, or pacifist positions, though his thought leads in this direction".

Biographer James Bentley has written that Albert Schweitzer became a vegetarian after his wife's death in 1957 and he was "living almost entirely on lentil soup".

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.

Stamos noted that Albert Schweitzer held the view that evolution ingrained humans with an instinct for meat so it was useless in trying to deny it.

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 Lambarene Hospital today.

Recordings of Albert Schweitzer playing the music of Bach are available on CD.

Albert Schweitzer had originally conducted trials for recordings for HMV on the organ of the old Queen's Hall in London.

Albert Schweitzer developed a technique for recording the performances of Bach's music.