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Few white folk penetrate 200 miles into French Equatorial Africa to the settlement of Lambarene on the sluggish River Ogowe. Such strangers as do turn up there are mightily surprised to hear, among the night sounds of the jungle, an organ crashing out one of Johann Sebastian Bach's Toccatas and Fugues. Albert Schweitzer is no more famed as a man of God than he is as a man of music. Author of a two-volume biography of Bach, he is the world's No. 1 interpreter of the great German's organ music, which he has edited in five volumes.
Born in Alsace 59 years ago, Albert Schweitzer studied music under a church organist, was later taught by the great French Organist Charles Marie Widor. Concurrently he studied theology, took degrees at the University of Strasbourg. A Protestant curate at 25, he became organist at 28 to the Societe J. S. Bach of Paris, later played tor the Orfeo Catala in Barcelona. Rapidly becoming an expert on the eschatological elements in Christ's thought, Dr. Schweitzer published in 1906 his epochal work The Quest of the Historical Jesus. But he felt satisfied neither as a man of letters nor as a man of Bach. A statue of a savage Negro turned his mind and later his feet toward Africa. After studying medicine for four years, Schweitzer obtained from a French missionary society a tract of land at Lambarene, went there in 1913. As a present from friends he took with him into the wilds a piano stoutly constructed to protect it from the climate. The same friends later gave the missionary a small organ, the case of which had been carefully ant-proofed.
In his first nine months at Lambarene, Dr. Schweitzer treated 2,000 cases—practically every imaginable disease except cancer. Some of his black patients accepted the Jesus he preached. Most of them called the doctor "Oganga," the medicine man.
Today Albert Schweitzer is big, husky, with a mop of black hair and a vast walrus mustache. Hearty and good-natured, he lives simply, drinks only wine and smokes not at all, travels always in the cheapest class. The income from his books,* his lectures and his infrequent organ recitals in Europe goes to support his village of corrugated iron buildings on the banks of the Ogowe. There "Oganga" expects to die. He explains: "Through the spirit of Jesus I became conscious that a man can be called to a place without knowing exactly just why. For years I have been preaching about Christianity. But inwardly I was longing to be practicing Christianity. . . . This I do now—or I try to do."
*He tells of his life and works in The Forest Hospital at Lambarene and Out of My Life and Thought—Henry Holt & Co. .