Albert Schweitzer, theologian, philosopher, organist, authority on Bach, physician, and missionary, was born in 1875, son of a Lutheran pastor, in Alsace, then German but now French. (Alsace and Lorraine are two provinces lying between France and Germany, and for centuries they have belonged to whoever won the last war.) He studied at Strasbourg and at Paris, and around 1900 he became a doctor of philosophy and a doctor of theology, and was ordained to the Lutheran ministry and became a preacher and a lecturer in philosophy.

He became an outstanding organist, and in 1905 published a study of Johann Sebastian Bach. He simultaneously wrote a book called The Quest of the Historical Jesus, in which he argued that, of all the sayings attributed to Jesus in the Gospels, the ones that are most certainly His are the ones that give the impression that the end of the world is at hand. (Interestingly, the well-known group called the Jesus Seminar, which likewise sets out to rate the sayings attributed to Jesus with different degrees of certainty, has drawn the opposite conclusion, and rejects all the so-called apocalyptic sayings of Jesus as unauthentic.) Schweitzer himself drew the conclusion that Jesus believed in the imminent end of the world, that he was wrong, and that therefore he was not infallible or inspired or divine.

In 1905 he announced his intention of becoming a missionary doctor, and resigned his positions, giving up a brilliant career, to go to medical school. In 1913 he and his wife set out for Lambarene in Gabon (then part of French Equatorial Africa), where they built a hospital. His work there was interrupted by World War I. Since he was a German citizen, he was interned by the French as an enemy alien, and spent his prison time writing. He published his Philosophy of Civilization, in which he urged "reverence for life," a philosophy of compassion for all living things. (A visitor to Lambarene saw a mosquito on his arm and was about to swat it. Schweitzer saw it and said: "Think twice. Remember that you are a guest in its country.") After the war, Schweitzer returned to Lambarene and rebuilt his hospital, adding a leper colony. His autobiography, Out of My Life and Thought, was published in 1933. In 1952 he received the Nobel Peace Prize. He died 4 September 1965.