Ovi Magazine Issue #24: Nationalism - Published: 2013-01-31

Article
Rene Wadlow
Albert Schweitzer:
Reverence for Life
January 14th was the anniversary of the birth of
Albert Schweitzer and a special day at the hospital
that he founded at Lambaréné. Alsatian wine would
be served at lunch, and conversations over lunch
would last linger than usual before everyone had to
return to his tasks. In 1963, when I was working
for the Ministry of Education of Gabon and spending
time at the Protestant secondary school some 500
yards down river from the hospital, I was invited
to lunch for the birthday celebration. As the only
non-hospital person there, I was placed next to Dr
Schweitzer, and we continued our discussions both
on the events that had taken place along the Ogowe
River and his more philosophical concerns.
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I was interviewing Gabonese staying at the hospital
on what they thought of schools, of school teachers, of
their hopes for their children. When Schweitzer was
not busy writing, I would go sit with him and discuss.
Since many of the people who came from Europe or
the USA to visit him would always say “Yes, Doctor,
I agree”, he had relatively little time for them. But
since I would say, “But no, you also have to take this
into account…”, he was stimulated and we had long
talks. On his basic position of reverence for life, I
was in agreement, and I have always appreciated the
time spent on the river’s edge.
As Norman Cousins has noted “the main point
about Schweitzer is that he helped make it possible
for twentieth-century man to unblock his moral
vision. There is a tendency in a relativistic age for
man to pursue all sides of a question as an end in
itself, finding relief and even refuge in the difficulty of
defining good and evil. The result is a clogging of the
moral sense, a certain feeling of self-consciousness or
even discomfort when questions with ethical content
are raised. Schweitzer furnished the nourishing
evidence that nothing is more natural in life than
a moral response, which exists independently of
precise definition, its use leading not to exhaustion
but to new energy.”
The moral response for Schweitzer was “reverence
for life”. Schweitzer had come to Lambaréné in
April 1913, already well known for his theological
reflections on the eschatological background of Jesus’
thought as well as his study of Bach. As an Alsatian he
was concerned with the lack of mutual understanding,
the endless succession of hatred and fear, between
France and Germany that led to war a year later.
Since Alsace was part of Germany at the time,
Schweitzer was considered an enemy alien in the
French colony of Gabon. When war broke out he was
first restricted to the missionary station where he had
started his hospital and later was deported and interned
in France. He returned to Gabon after the First World
War, even more convinced of the need to infuse