Albert Schweitzer

Ludwig Philipp Albert Schweitzer (14 January 1875 – 4 September 1965) was an Alsatian polymath.

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

A Lutheran minister, Schweitzer challenged both the secular view of the historical Jesus as depicted by the historical-critical method current at this time, as well as the traditional Christian view.

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.

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.

He was the son of Adèle (née Schillinger) and Louis Théophile Schweitzer.

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.

The tiny village would become home to the Association Internationale Albert Schweitzer (AIAS).

The medieval parish church of Gunsbach was shared by the Protestant and Catholic congregations, which held their prayers in different areas at different times on Sundays.

This compromise arose after the Protestant Reformation and the Thirty Years' War.

Schweitzer, the pastor's son, grew up in this exceptional environment of religious tolerance, and developed the belief that true Christianity should always work towards a unity of faith and purpose.

Schweitzer's first language was the Alsatian dialect of German.

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

At the Mulhouse gymnasium he received his "Abitur" (the certificate at the end of secondary education) in 1893.

In 1893, he played for the French organist Charles-Marie Widor (at Saint-Sulpice, Paris), for whom Johann Sebastian Bach's organ music contained a mystic sense of the eternal.

Widor, deeply impressed, agreed to teach Schweitzer without fee, and a great and influential friendship thus began.

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

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.

Schweitzer served his one-year compulsory military service in 1894.

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.

In 1898, he returned to Paris to write a PhD dissertation on The Religious Philosophy of Kant at the Sorbonne, and to study in earnest with Widor.

Here he often met with the elderly Aristide Cavaillé-Coll.

He also studied piano at that time with Marie Jaëll.

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

He published his PhD thesis at the University of Tübingen in 1899.

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.

They were works of devotional contemplation in which the musical design corresponded to literary ideas, conceived visually.

Widor had not grown up with knowledge of the old Lutheran hymns.

In 1905, Schweitzer began his study of medicine at the University of Strasbourg, culminating in the degree of M.D. in 1913.

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

With theological insight, he interpreted the use of pictorial and symbolical representation in J. S. Bach's religious music.

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-Poète, written in French and published in 1905.

There was great demand for a German edition, but, instead of translating it, he decided to rewrite it.

The result was two volumes (J. S. Bach), which were published in 1908 and translated into English by Ernest Newman in 1911.

Ernst Cassirer, a contemporaneous German philosopher, called it "one of the best interpretations" of Bach.

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.

Schweitzer's interpretative approach greatly influenced the modern understanding of Bach's music.

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

His philosophy was expressed in many ways, but most famously in founding and sustaining the Hôpital Albert Schweitzer in Lambaréné, French Equatorial Africa (now Gabon).

As a music scholar and organist, he studied the music of German composer Johann Sebastian Bach and influenced the Organ Reform Movement (Orgelbewegung).