Dr. Albert Schweitzer is pictured just before he autographs a Goethe festival program book in July 1949.
Editor’s note: This is the second installment of a four-part Aspen Journalism series on Dr. Albert Schweitzer’s visit to Aspen, where he gave the keynote address at the Goethe Bicentennial of 1949 and launched the community on a high trajectory toward the ideals of humanism.
In Part 1 of this series, we left Dr. and Mrs. Albert Schweitzer standing before a flummoxed Elizabeth Paepcke whose agitated description of a plumbing disaster in their home was a source of amusement in which the doctor quipped, with a biblical reference: “Mrs. Schweitzer and I are just in time to witness the second flood (die zweite Weltflut).”
The flood subsided, the Paepcke home reclaimed terra firma, and the Schweitzers were introduced to Aspen via the original Music Tent where the Goethe Bicentennial was held, for which ticket prices ranged from $1.50 to $5.40 for reserved seats, and $1.20 for general admission. From “The Romance of Commerce and Culture,” James Sloan Allen noted, “The tent was designed by Finnish architect Eero Saarinen, which cost over $54,000, a considerable sum in those days. While impressively stylish, it was not so well engineered for mountain thunderstorms.”
Allen then depicted a musical interlude on the first day of the Schweitzer’s Aspen visit that dramatically channeled the mood of the mountains: “A 40-minute mountain thunderstorm had all but drowned out the Minnesota Symphony’s concert. They finally had to stop when the presumably leakproof tent began to sag at the top with great blisters loaded with water. Soon, the water began to pour down through the canvas.”
Allen wrote that the Richard Wagner program, featuring opera stars Lauritz Melchior and Helen Traubel, “played in perfect harmony with the serious yet convivial mood. The last of these concerts even played in harmony with nature. As the Denver Symphony’s conductor, Saul Caston, called up the first bars of the overture to the ‘Flying Dutchman,’ thunder roared overhead and rain began pelting the roof. Then, with the rousing ‘Ride of the Walküre,’ the storm gathered force with the music, only to subside as if in preparation for Traubel’s performance of the heartrending Vorspiel and Liebestod from ‘Tristan and Isolde.’ The dramatic accompaniment of nature continued through ‘Siegfried’s Rhine Journey’ and ‘Funeral March’ and then faded in the quiet semidarkness of evening after ‘Brunnhilde’s Immolation.’ When the music stopped, the audience rose as one, applauding the unexpected dramatic concert of nature and culture.”
Former Aspen Mayor Bill Stirling is part of a growing group of local advocates who are reflecting upon and honoring the idealism of Albert Schweitzer.
The Aspen revival
The next day, Schweitzer gave his lecture at 9 p.m. When Schweitzer ascended the podium for the keynote address, wrote Allen, “the tent was the fullest it had ever been, not with thunder and rain, but with listeners eager to hear the words of a great man who was to shed light on another great man, both of whom were Germanic and acclaimed as outstanding personages. Schweitzer’s words attained an authority that went beyond himself and beyond Goethe. They defined a way of life and a way of being worthy of emulation.”
Speaking slowly in French — with University of Chicago Chancellor Robert Maynard Hutchins presiding and Dr. Emory Ross, a personal friend of Schweitzer’s, translating — Schweitzer’s focus on spirit charged the Music Tent with a revival-like atmosphere:
“Looking with the eyes of the spirit upon nature, as it is within ourselves, we find that in us also there is matter and spirit. Searching into the phenomena of the spirit in us, we realize that we belong to the world of the spirit, and that we must let ourselves be guided by it. The whole philosophy of Goethe consists in the observation of material and spiritual phenomena outside and within ourselves. The spirit is light, which struggles with matter, which represents darkness. What happens in the world and within ourselves is the result of this encounter,” Schweitzer said.
Then came a defining description of Goethe, the ethical spiritualist: “How an individual by himself and through his own study can arrive at conviction capable of guiding him on the right road throughout his existence — that, to Goethe, is the question that matters. He feels that he cannot reach these simple and sound convictions except by starting from reality, from the knowledge he gains by observing nature and by observing himself. To be a realist in order to win through to true spirituality — this is Goethe’s keynote.”
As Schweitzer concluded, Allen reported, “Thunderous applause inflated the billows of the tent, reverberated into the cool night air, and radiated toward the starry heavens. At that moment, Aspen, in its rustic, untouched simplicity glowed with the promise of the ages. It is no wonder a dénouement followed for Elizabeth Paepcke, who had witnessed this stunning event. Decades after Schweitzer and Goethe had graced this city, Aspen was no longer left ‘untouched,’ as Elizabeth had originally described it. Still, the old mining town had once been touched by a saint, and that imprint would, for some sensitive souls, mark it indelibly.”
Schweitzer declared himself broadly optimistic regarding the future, despite difficulties and evils that beset the world. “I have great confidence in the incalculable forces of the spirit. The future depends on it. If these spiritual forces are brought into play, the world’s future will be improved. Behind materialism it is often possible to discover great spiritual forces at work. And behind spirituality an element of materialism also exists.”
In a later interview, Schweitzer said that, despite accusations of materialism, the United States had demonstrated that it is one of the greatest spiritual forces in the world today. “During these last months, with the help of America,” he said, “the situation in Europe has definitely improved, and we can now hope to master the situation. Those who know history have been very much moved by what you have done. The Marshall Plan has given us new confidence in the future.”
He added a critical caveat: “The great problem of our times is to safeguard the integrity of the individual” against the force of collectivism, as imposed by the state. “Collectivism in various forms has deprived the individual of this individuality. All the troubles of the world come from this. The task immediately before us is to safeguard the integrity of the individual within the modern state.”
At 10 a.m. the next day, Schweitzer repeated his lecture, this time in German. University of Chicago professor Giuseppi Borgese presided, while Thornton Wilder, a playwright and novelist, translated. Later that day, the Schweitzers left for Denver and then by train to Chicago.
“In Chicago,” wrote Allen, “a far larger event was held to fete Schweitzer, who received the honorary doctorate of laws from the University of Chicago at an event attended by more than 5,000 adorers. There were 2,400 inside the Rockefeller Memorial Chapel and more outside listening via a speaker system. At this event, there was nearly five times the number who had packed into the leaky canvas tent in Aspen. Adlai Stevenson, Illinois governor and U.S. senator, was among the dignitaries.”
The altitude in Chicago was far more suited to 74-year-old Schweitzer’s health and age than that of Aspen, at 8,000 feet. Now that he could breathe, Schweitzer addressed his audiences without the fear of hypoxia.
The crowd inside the Eero Saarinen-designed Music Tent, where the Goethe Bicentennial took place in 1949.
Secular messiahs
Schweitzer was a polymath whose philosophy of love was a match with the historic Jesus. This is where his personalized religiosity was contrary to traditional Christianity.
Former Aspen Mayor Bill Stirling, the son of an Episcopal minister, asserted that Schweitzer, who was also the son of a minister, was not a “Christian” in the traditional sense because he found conflict between the historical Christ and the biblical one.
“Schweitzer’s quest for the historical Jesus is a theme that’s important to me,” agreed Gregg Anderson, a former Aspen Chapel minister. “Spiritually, people have gone away from Christianity because of the mythology espoused by evangelicals, which has turned people off. Making religion real means relating to Christ, not as a super-human, but as a teacher and a human being. Albert Schweitzer made a significant contribution to that understanding through his studies and writings.”
Schweitzer scholar Lachlan Forrow explained this rift in a talk he gave last September at the Aspen Chapel at the invitation of guest minister Anderson, titled “Reverence for Life and Aspen Today”: “Schweitzer wrote that if you want to know Jesus, you need to actually go out and do what Jesus did, live as he showed and taught us all how we can live: Go out to the outcasts and suffering, connect with them as Jesus did, sharing in their suffering and tribulations, offering them your presence.”
Goethe, the author of the moralistic tragedy “Dr. Faustus,” was revered in Aspen as a secular messiah whose innate goodness could inspire a worldwide humanistic revolution. Still, said Schweitzer in his keynote speech, “Goethe took pleasure in calling himself a pagan,” not as an irreligious stance, but in reaction to Christian dogma.
“Goethe’s concept of religion,” said Schweitzer, “is well summarized in these words of his: ‘In a whisper a God speaks in our heart; very low and very clearly he lets us know what is to be chosen and what is to be shunted. … Above all virtue stands just one thing: ceaseless effort toward the heights, the struggle with ourselves, the insatiable desire to progress in purity, wisdom, goodness and love.”
Schweitzer lionized Goethe during his Aspen speech, but he also recognized his inner conflicts: “What is Goethe’s own opinion of himself? He believed that he possessed within him the total of all contradictions which human nature can gather together in itself. He felt disposed to joy as well as to melancholy, that he was both flighty and ponderous, that in him coldness was combined with a warm heart.”
Schweitzer’s own humanness was reflected by Elizabeth Paepcke in a 1966 speech at the Aspen Institute, about a year after Schweitzer’s death. His acclaim emanated from his saintly bearing, not something he put on for effect, but an authentic countenance of otherworldly nobility that marked him as the heavenly presence he exuded. Still, le bon docteur was a man, not an object:
“There are certain objective ideas that most of us recognize as fundamental,” she said, “such as the conception of courage, justice and wisdom, humility, goodness and truth. It is by these principles that we judge our fellow man. When a man possesses many or all of these virtues, we call him a saint. To many people, Albert Schweitzer was a saint. But those who see Schweitzer as a modern-day saint deny him his manhood; they take away from him his humanity, his virtues as well as his faults, and, in so doing, erase what is the significance of his achievement.”
This echoed Schweitzer’s self-assessment as a condition to his morally based life: “Pride of spirit or mind is the essence of sin and a symptom of human fallibility. Man does not gain, but loses, by exalting his own powers of body or mind, for only by submitting himself to grace can man be redeemed for his weaknesses, only in grace is there a new strength which enters the will.”
Gregg Anderson, guest minister at the Aspen Chapel, brought his friend Lachlan Forrow to Aspen for a talk on Albert Schweitzer in September 2024 that has fomented a groundswell of interest in restoring the Schweitzer ethic to Aspen.
Reverence for life
Schweitzer’s search for a self-defining ethic eluded him for years as he strove in vain to frame in his thoughts the potent impulses he felt toward life. This internal quest was shaped by a childhood awakening described by Forrow at his Aspen Chapel talk in September:
“When Albert Schweitzer was about 10 years old, a friend invited him to go out with slingshots to shoot birds,” Forrow said. “Albert was torn, but they went out with their slingshots, and just as Albert was about to shoot, the town church bell rang. That bell-ringing sparked Albert to remember vividly the commandment he had often heard proclaimed during church services: ‘Thou shalt not kill.’ He threw down his slingshot and ran back home, fighting tears of embarrassment in front of his friend and feelings of shame about what he had almost done. He suddenly realized — and never forgot — that he had this profound struggle within himself.”
In his “Philosophy of Civilization,” Schweitzer described how his deep search for a life-affirming philosophy was at last resolved by an epiphany while traveling west-central Africa’s Ogooué River on a small steamer in 1915.
Forrow described Schweitzer’s turning point: “On the river, during that long journey, while scribbling notes to try to focus himself on issues about the nature of ethics, he found himself out in nature. Then, as he stopped thinking and just experienced what was all around him, he became overwhelmed, captivated by the beauty and power around him. As the boat passed some hippopotamuses — the adult hippos with their overwhelming strength and power, and a baby hippo, with its vulnerability — suddenly a simple phrase flashed into his mind: Ehrfurcht vor dem Leben, a German phrase we translate as ‘Reverence for Life.’”
“Filling the mind with awe and wonder,” said Forrow, transformed the moment into a cosmic alignment for Schweitzer: “I’m aware of, I’m beholding, I’m experiencing the starry heavens above or the moral law within me. And the more fully I do that, the more deeply I am in awe and wonder.”
“Until now,” Schweitzer wrote of this revelation, “the great weakness in all ethical systems has been that they dealt only with the relations of man to man. In reality, however, the question is: What is our attitude toward the universe and all that it supports? A man is ethical only when life as such is sacred to him.”
As Schweitzer stood on this highest moral ground, his view of humanity was elevated, as he described in a letter to Elizabeth Paepcke shortly before his death in 1965:
“Judging by what I have learned about men and women, I am convinced that there is far more in them of idealist willpower than ever comes to the surface of the world. Just as the water of the streams we see is small in amount, compared to that which flows underground, so the idealism which becomes visible is small in amount, compared with what men and women bear locked in their hearts, unreleased or scarcely released.”
The global Schweitzer legacy
Schweitzer died at his African bush hospital, but his life left an indelible imprint, not only in Aspen, but around the world, manifested in numerous Schweitzer foundations.
The Albert Schweitzer Fellowship, founded in 1940, states: “ASF has grown far beyond its original focus on supporting the Schweitzer Hospital in Lambaréné, Gabon, West Africa. Today, ASF immerses a diverse group of graduate students in a mentored experiential learning and leadership development program designed to increase their skills and commitment to more effectively address the health needs of underserved people.”
The New Hampshire/Vermont Albert Schweitzer Fellowship, founded in 1996, “is one of 13 currently active Schweitzer program sites across the U.S. dedicated to developing a pipeline of emerging professionals who enter the workforce with the skills and commitment necessary to address unmet health needs.”
The Schweitzer Foundation of Houston “is dedicated to training the next generation of professionals to serve and empower vulnerable people to build healthier communities and live healthier lives.”
It all springs from one remarkable man whose inner knowing and strong moral fiber combined to change the world. From his “The Philosophy of Civilization,” Schweitzer extols the virtue of service, which begins with the individual:
“Open your eyes and look for a human being, or some work devoted to human welfare, which needs from someone a little time or friendliness, a little sympathy, or sociability, or labor. Well will it be with them who listen and are preserved from becoming stunted natures because they have neglected this devotion of self to others.”
