Altstadt Heidelberg, Thursday 21 February 2013: Prof. Dr. med. Gerd Auffarth gave a lively talk to a packed audience in a church hall here on the Mythos Albert Schweitzer, not only talking about Schweitzer, the man, but of Prof. Auffarth’s memories of his own challenging experiences in the 1990s while working as a young surgeon at the Albert Schweitzer Hospital in Lambaréné, Gabon.
The Legend
Albert Schweitzer (1875 – 1965) was multi-talented: a theologian, a doctor of medicine, a church organist, a philosopher, a pacifist and a philanthropist. Prof. Auffarth told of how, while still in high school, he had read about the great man and was fascinated by how Schweitzer had built a hospital in the jungle in West Africa and how Schweitzer had treated malaria patients and lepers. Schweitzer committed his life to this work. Schweitzer received the 1952 Nobel Peace Prize for his contribution to philosophy. He did not retire to Europe but died at the hospital aged 90, and he is buried there.
Schweitzer’s philosophy of Ehrfurcht vor dem Leben (“Reverence for Life ”) boiled down to what he himself wrote, “I am life which wills to live, and I exist in the midst of life which wills to live.’“ In nature, one form of life must always prey upon another. However, human consciousness holds an awareness of and sympathy for other beings’ will to live. An ethical human strives to escape from this contradiction as far as possible.
Regarding Schweizer’s view of how we should live, Auffarth considered that the best example is from Schweitzer’s own life - how he built and maintained his hospital in Lambaréné. “We remember these ideals as we practice medicine and surgery and build and develop research at the David Apple Laboratory in Heidelberg.”
Further Reading
Albert Schweitzer entry in Wikipedia
Crossing an Ocean – the laboratory that moved