As he thought about this, the statue of the African man he’d seen as a child in the Champ de Mars memorial garden flashed through his mind. He walked to the garden and viewed the statue once more. Staring at it, he had the strangest feeling he was supposed to do something to help people in Africa.
One morning back in Gunsbach, as Albert opened a window and looked out over the fruit trees, he felt moved to make God a promise. He would pursue music, philosophy, theology, and organ building for nine more years, until he was thirty. At that time, he would stop whatever he was doing and spend the rest of his life serving God in whatever form God showed him. Albert latched the window and bounded downstairs. He felt more alive than he had in a long time. His mother smiled as he sat down for breakfast. He started to tell her about his decision, then held back. This was a private decision, Albert told himself. No one else needs to know about it until it’s time for action.
Albert’s vacation was soon over, and he returned to Strasbourg, where he threw himself into his studies. He also found time to play the organ at St. William’s Church for choral concerts that Ernst Munch organized, and on Sundays he often preached at the Church of St. Nicholas. He also continued studying how to repair and preserve pipe organs.
During the second half of 1897, Albert began work on the thesis for his theology degree. It was titled “The Idea of the Last Supper in Daniel Schleiermacher, Compared with the Ideas of Luther, Zwingli and Calvin.” In early 1898, he completed the thesis, and on May 6, twenty-three-year old Albert successfully defended it, earning his doctorate degree in theology.
Soon after defending his thesis and earning his theology degree, Albert attended the wedding of Lina Haas and Willibald Conrad. The Schweitzer and Haas families had known each other for years. At the wedding, Albert sat next to a young woman who introduced herself as Hélène Bresslau. Albert recognized her as a member of St. William’s choir, though he’d never spoken to her. The two soon struck up a conversation. Albert learned that Hélène’s father, Harry, was a history professor at the university and that she was a music student at the Strasbourg Conservatory. Along with her two brothers and parents, Hélène had spent her childhood in Berlin.
By end of the wedding Hélène and Albert were getting along nicely. She belonged to a bicycle club and invited Albert to join. Albert loved riding his bicycle and thought he might enjoy taking long rides out into the countryside with the club members. He and Hélène soon discovered that they had a large circle of friends in common. Albert also met Hélène’s older brother, Ernst, who was studying medicine and zoology at the university. As they got to know each other, Albert learned that Hélène was born to Jewish parents, but her father had insisted the family convert to Lutheranism when she was seven years old in response to the growing anti-Jewish faction in Germany.
Later that year, Albert left to study philosophy at Sorbonne University in Paris, which meant he could once more take organ lessons from Charles Widor. When he wasn’t taking lessons, he was studying, often staying up all night. Albert was young, fit, and in a hurry to absorb as much knowledge as possible, in this case about Immanuel Kant. He spent hours in the library, reading volume after volume of the German philosopher’s writing and taking notes before starting to write his thesis, titled “The Religious Philosophy of Kant.” When Albert did find extra time in his hectic schedule, he visited villages whose churches had pipe organs, recommending repairs and cataloging all he saw.
Albert continued to find his lessons with Charles Widor invigorating. During the lessons, the two men had deep discussions about various composers, particularly Bach. During one such conversation, Charles commented on how strange some of Bach’s arrangements were. The music had sudden mood changes not usually found in choral preludes, and Bach would pass quickly from one musical idea to another. Albert was surprised when he learned that his teacher had been playing Bach’s music all this time yet didn’t realize that these sudden changes were where Bach had woven Lutheran hymn melodies into his compositions.
Johann Sebastian Bach was a German Lutheran, and in his compositions, he paid homage to the hymns that had shaped him in his youth. Having grown up Lutheran, Albert naturally recognized many classic Lutheran hymns in the pieces Bach wrote. Albert played some of these musical passages for Charles, explaining the hymns and their words. He chuckled to himself at the look on his teacher’s face. Charles seemed astonished at how simple the answer was. “You must write a paper about this,” he told Albert. “We French organists are Catholic. We have no idea about this aspect of Bach’s work. You must inform us.” With a smile, Albert dutifully added this to his list of things to do. But first he had to finish his thesis.
Through hard work and natural intelligence, Albert completed his thesis on Immanuel Kant and returned to Strasbourg. He successfully defended his thesis and was awarded his degree. At age twenty-four, he now held doctorate degrees in theology and philosophy. But Albert still had one more year of study ahead of him to get his licentiate in theology, which would allow him to become a licensed Lutheran pastor. He received his licentiate later that year, just in time for the start of the twentieth century.
Albert’s days of formal study were now behind him, and he began preparing to take up a position as youth pastor at St. Nicholas Church in Strasbourg, where he had occasionally preached as a student. When people asked him if he had other ambitions, Albert would just smile. He was still five years away from turning thirty, and he was confident that everything would change at that time. He just didn’t yet know how.
Chapter 7
A Peace Settled over Him
Five years rolled by quickly, and when Albert turned thirty in 1905, he was well known around Strasbourg and throughout much of France and Germany. He already had two books published. One was his thesis on Immanuel Kant. The other was J. S. Bach, Le Musicien-Poète, the result of Charles Widor’s suggestion. Albert had also finished writing two other manuscripts for publication. The first contained all he’d learned about the repair, maintenance, and care of pipe organs. The second was titled The Quest of the Historical Jesus. This manuscript had grown from Albert’s reading and study of the Synoptic Gospels in Greek during his year of conscription in the German army ten years before. He had also written numerous university papers in the fields of music, religion, and philosophy. An acclaimed organist and world authority on Bach, Albert also served as a pastor at St. Nicholas Church in Strasbourg and was now principal of the Theological College of St. Thomas.
In the seven years since meeting Hélène Bresslau, Albert had stayed in close contact with her through letters. Albert enjoyed telling Hélène all he was doing, and he was interested in learning about her accomplishments. Hélène had completed courses in medieval and modern history at the University of Strasbourg and had spent six months in Italy. This was followed by three months in England teaching English, French, and music at a girls’ school in Brighton. While in England, Hélène wrote Albert about how she was also studying the orphan-care work of Dr. Thomas Barnardo and how inspired she was by all she was learning. As a result, Hélène was now studying to become the first female inspector of orphans for the city of Strasbourg.
One morning in 1905, while sitting at his desk at the Theological College correcting student papers, Albert noticed the green cover of a magazine. Since he didn’t recall having seen it before, he reached over and picked the magazine up. It turned out to be the latest edition of the Paris Evangelical Missionary Society’s magazine. Albert smiled thinking of his childhood and the Sunday afternoons he had spent listening to his father read missionary letters printed in the magazine.
Through the years Albert had maintained an interest in Africa and had read a lot about its struggles. For a long time, inland Africa had remained a mysterious and unexplored place for Europeans, but from 1850 on, a steady march of European explorers, including Henry Stanley, Pierre de Brazza, Sir Richard Burton, and David Livingstone, made their way inland by following the navigable rivers. None of the European empires wanted to miss out on the biggest land grab in the world that could yield untold natural resources such as rubber, ivory, gold, silver, tin, hardwoods, and perhaps even diamonds. With sailing ships giving way to new steam-powered vessels, Europeans needed refueling ports of call around the coast of Africa. Albert was aware that African people were suffering great losses as the colonial powers of Belgium, Great Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Portugal, and Spain fought and bartered for land on the continent. By now, France controlled a huge swath of central and western Africa, which they called French West Africa and French Equatorial Africa. This included parts of the Congo and an area known as Gabon that was nestled on Africa’s west coast. France also controlled the island of Madagascar off the east coast of Africa. Germany controlled the area known as Togoland in western Africa, as well as Cameroon and two other colonies: German East Africa and German South-West Africa.
As he thought about Africa, Albert recalled reading how famous explorer Pierre de Brazza had recently returned to French Equatorial Africa to assess how badly things were going for the native population there. The French government had divided much of their African territory among thirty French companies, allowing each company to rule its workforce in whatever way it pleased and to take anything of value from the land. Brazza wanted to see firsthand the impact this exploitation was having on the local people.
Reading through an article in the missionary magazine on the needs of the Congo area, Albert discovered conditions there mirrored what de Brazza was reporting. Many villages in the Congo and Gabon areas had been decimated as able-bodied men were enticed to leave their homes to cut down trees and clear land for foreigners. These men were paid in rum, and many never returned to take up their traditional roles as leaders in their villages.
The article also highlighted the needs of a tiny mission station at a place called Lambaréné on the banks of the Ogowe River in Gabon. The mission station was situated forty-seven miles south of the equator and roughly one hundred miles inland from the coast. A small school was held there, but a medical clinic was desperately needed, since there was no doctor within a hundred-mile radius. The local people had nowhere to turn when their bodies were ravaged by such diseases as leprosy, sleeping sickness, malaria, and tuberculosis.
The Reverend Alfred Boegner, author of the article, ended by stating, “I hope that those on whom the Master’s eyes have already rested will answer the call . . . . There are men and women who can reply simply to the Master’s call, ‘Lord, I am coming’ . . . . Those are the people whom the Church needs.”
When he had finished reading, Albert sat quietly. A peace settled over him. He was now thirty years old, and true to his promise, he was searching for a way to serve God for the rest of his life. He remembered Jesus’s instructions to His disciples to go into all the world to preach the word, heal the sick, and cast out evil spirits. “Remember,” Jesus had admonished, “freely you have received, freely give” (Matthew 10:8). Albert was immediately struck by how much he’d been given. Was it too much for Jesus Christ to ask him to help the people he’d just read about in their need? No, he concluded, it was not. Albert was sure that God was calling him to work alongside the Paris Evangelical Missionary Society as a medical doctor in Lambaréné.
