Albert told no one about his new plan except Hélène. He knew she would understand his need to put Christian words into action. With little fanfare, Albert set about preparing to go back to university once more—this time to study medicine for six years. He wrote a long letter to Alfred Boegner, author of the article and director of the Paris Evangelical Missionary Society, offering his services as soon as he finished his medical training. He concluded by saying,
I have grown increasingly simpler, and more and more childlike, and have come to realize more and more clearly that the sole truth and sole happiness consist in serving our Lord Jesus Christ wherever he needs us. I have mulled it over hundreds of times; I have meditated. Absorbed in my thoughts about Jesus, I have asked myself whether I could live without scholarship, without art, without the intellectual environment in which I now exist—and all my reflections have always ended with a joyous “Yes.”
During this time, as Albert shifted his thinking toward becoming a missionary doctor and began counting the cost, Pierre de Brazza died in Africa of either dysentery or poisoning. His body was shipped to Paris, where he received a state funeral. In the aftermath of the explorer’s death, it seemed to Albert that every newspaper in France carried articles examining the difficulties Europeans faced trying to survive the harsh environment of Equatorial Africa. Nine months after the death of Brazza, newspaper headlines announced the death of George Grenfell, a famous Cornish missionary and explorer who had lived in the Congo and succumbed to blackwater fever. Yet while these prominent deaths in Equatorial Africa deterred some, they spurred Albert on.
One year after making the decision to go to Africa as a medical missionary, Albert decided it was time to tell everyone the news. By now he had enrolled in medical school at Strasbourg University, where he would begin his course of study in the fall. On Saturday, October 13, 1906, while staying with his uncle and aunt in Paris, Albert sat down and wrote letters to his family, close friends, and employer. Albert then walked to the postbox on Avenue de le Grande Armée. As he dropped in the letters, he realized it was one thing to write them but quite another to actually mail them. He thought about the consequences of what he’d just done. He was sure that most of those who opened their letter would be shocked and unable to comprehend his decision. He hoped that a few would stand with him in his decision, as Hélène was doing.
Responses to the letters were swift, and harsher than Albert expected. The letters offered a variety of advice: “Stay where your roots are.” “If you don’t think you are receiving enough recognition for your work, be patient, it will come!” “You can do more good by staying here, lecturing, and playing the organ—you could do charity concerts and send the proceeds to the mission in Africa. You don’t have to go there yourself.” One letter contained the dire warning, “You will be dead within five years if you go to live on the equator!”
Some responses stung more than others. Organist Charles Widor was appalled that Albert would consider such a move. “You are like a general who exposes himself like a common soldier on the front line,” he wrote.
Albert was most shocked, however, by his parents’ response when he saw them in person a week later. He explained to his father that while he loved being a teacher of theology and a preacher, he now felt it was time to stop talking about his faith and put it into action on the mission field. Louis Schweitzer begged his son to reconsider, reminding him that French Equatorial Africa was one of the deadliest places in the world for a white person to live. Albert found his father’s attitude hard to reconcile with the sermons he preached about missions many Sunday afternoons at church. He hoped his father would come to understand.
Back in Strasbourg, Albert settled into student life at the same university at which he’d been a professor and principal of the theological college. It seemed a little odd at first, especially since his fellow students had come straight from high school, and Albert knew they thought of him as an old man. As he began studying chemistry, bacteriology, and pharmacology at medical school, Albert realized his memory wasn’t as good as it had been in his early twenties. It would take a lot of work to keep up with the class.
Albert had some savings set aside, and he accepted a few organ recital bookings in Paris and Munich to help him keep afloat financially. In addition, the university asked him to stay on as a lecturer for several months while a suitable replacement was found for him. Albert happily obliged.
Albert’s friendship with Hélène continued, though the two didn’t spend a lot of time together. On one occasion Hélène made a trip to London, where she heard a lecture by Dr. Henry Grattan Guinness, a British missionary trainer. He spoke about the terrible human rights abuses taking place in the Belgian Congo. When she returned to Strasbourg, she began relating to Albert the many horrible things Dr. Guinness had spoken of. As Albert listened quietly, the more certain he became that he was called to do something practical about the human suffering European empire building was inflicting upon the African people.
Albert was used to a busy life and now drove himself as never before. On top of his medical studies and continuing to give theology lectures, he preached almost every Sunday at St. Nicholas Church and played the organ at the Bach Society concert in Paris every winter as well as at other concerts in France, Spain, and Germany.
While Albert kept busy, Hélène and her friend Elly Knapp opened a new home for unwed mothers and their babies in Strasbourg. The first of its kind in Germany, it was modeled after the work of Dr. Thomas Barnardo in England. Albert helped out whenever he could.
As his studies progressed, Albert was faced with the question of whether to go to Africa as a single missionary or marry Hélène and go as a couple. The decision was made more difficult every time he read a newsletter from the Paris Evangelical Missionary Society. Missionaries in Africa were dying from blackwater fever and malaria. In just two years the mission had experienced the deaths of two male and three female missionaries. It was sobering to think of asking Hélène to marry him and follow him to such a dangerous area. Yet as he prayed about it, Albert felt it was the right thing to do. He would ask and then rely on her to decide whether or not it was her calling. On the train back to Strasbourg after a visit to Gunsbach, Albert asked Hélène to marry him. To his surprise she quickly agreed, though they both decided to keep their engagement secret until after Albert finished medical school and his residency in early 1913.
Now that they were engaged, Hélène talked to Albert about how she could prepare for a life of service in Equatorial Africa. In the end she decided to return to school to become a nurse. In this way Hélène could assist Albert in surgeries and take on many of the responsibilities of running a clinic or hospital. Leaving her job supervising orphans in Strasbourg, Hélène moved to Frankfurt and enrolled in a rigorous one-year nursing program.
In September 1910, Hélène graduated from the nurses training school, but she was not well. Albert was alarmed to learn she had a small, painful tumor on her spine. After leaving the training school, Hélène headed for a sanatorium in the Black Forest to rest. She returned to Strasbourg in early 1911 feeling much better.
In June 1911, Albert attended the wedding of his brother Paul to Emma Munch at St. William’s Church. Albert was delighted. Emma was the daughter of Ernst Munch and the niece of Eugène Munch, Albert’s old music teacher in Mulhouse. At the wedding, Albert tried to avoid talking about politics, despite some troubling developments. The Germans had just dispatched a gunboat, the SMS Panther, to the Moroccan port of Agadir to challenge French troops fighting a rebellion there against the ruling sultan. Many Germans felt that France was gaining too much influence in Europe and North Africa and that their government should be as equally aggressive. Albert wasn’t sure where all this would end, but he didn’t like the direction in which things were going.
Meanwhile, Albert learned that the board of the Paris Evangelical Missionary Society had met several times to discuss his proposal to join them. They had not reached a decision, and more meetings were planned. Their concerns had to do with the fact that Albert was a German wanting to join a French organization at a time of rising political tension between the two countries.
At Christmas in 1911, Albert and Hélène officially announced their engagement. Six months later, on June 18, 1912, wedding bells rang out over Guns-bach as Albert and Hélène were married. Albert was thirty-seven years old, and Hélène was thirty-three. They had already become a strong and determined team, and everyone at the wedding knew they had set their sights on serving as missionaries at Lambaréné in French Equatorial Africa. But before any of that could happen, Albert still had to complete his medical degree and convince the Paris Evangelical Missionary Society to accept him.
Chapter 8
Setting Foot in Africa
Following a short honeymoon, Albert returned to his medical studies to fulfill the final requirements for his degree. He traveled to Paris and studied tropical diseases. While there he met individually with board members of the Paris Evangelical Missionary Society. Some meetings went better than others. A number of the society’s board members were suspicious of Albert’s motives. They asked if he wanted to confuse Africans with the deep theological principles laid out in his books, particularly The Quest of the Historical Jesus, instead of sticking to basic Bible teachings on sin and salvation. Albert assured them he had no intention of confusing anyone, going so far as promising not to preach at all in Africa, confining himself solely to practicing medicine.
At last Albert and the board reached an agreement. He would not preach in Africa, he would use his book royalties to support himself and Hélène while there, and he would take full responsibility for raising funds to equip and run the hospital. Albert estimated the equipment would cost around 25,000 French francs, plus another 1,500 francs a month to keep the hospital running. In return, the Paris Evangelical Missionary Society would allot Albert land, build a simple corrugated ironclad hospital at Lambaréné, provide him and Hélène a house to live in, and promote his work in the mission society’s magazine.
Once the agreement had been reached, Albert and Hélène set to work collecting equipment, medicines, and everything else they would need to outfit the new hospital at Lambaréné. At first Albert found this a tedious chore, but as he and Hélène tackled the challenge together, he began to appreciate checking items off his long list as they came in. One by one they packed items into old tea chests and stenciled on the side of them the monogram “ASB” for Albert Schweitzer Bresslau.
Albert and Hélène tried to visit Gunsbach as often as they could, but Albert’s mother couldn’t adjust to the idea of his giving up everything to go to Africa, where she believed he would most likely die. She would sit tight-lipped whenever he talked about the future.
Thankfully Albert had many things to do that diverted him from his mother’s gloomy predictions. He crisscrossed Germany and France, describing his vision for a hospital in Africa and collecting money and other donations for it. He also gave many pipe organ recitals to raise money.
To Albert’s delight, one of his professors donated most of the medical equipment needed. Albert was particularly grateful for this, since the professor was a German donating to a French mission undertaking. Albert also packed over one hundred of his books, hoping to find time in Africa to continue studying and writing.
