Memoirs of Childhhood and Youth - Albert Schweitzer

413-3 (3) 92 Schweitzer Memoirs of childhocx and youth 1331367 $1,75
Books
will
be issued only on presentation
of
proper
for two weeks.
be retained otherwise, books may marked, deBorrowers finding books to report sarne at faced or mutilated are expected be held the last borrower will library desk; otherwise all ^perfections discovered responsible for for all books drawn The card holder is responsible
nkssbele
cost of over-due books 2c a day plus

3 reof residence must be o st cards and change
ported promptly.
Public Library
Kansas City, Mo.
OCT
19
15
iwwaagm
FEB211969
DEC
*ff%f%f|
MEMOIRS
OF CHILDHOOD AND YOUTH
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY

NEW YORK
DALLAS
BOSTON - CHICAGO ATLANTA * SAN FBANCISOO
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY OF CANADA, LIMITED

TORONTO
MEMOIRS
OF CHILDHOOD
AND YOUTH
ALBERT SCHWEITZER
DR. THEOL., DR. MED., DR. PHIL.,
OF STRASSBURG
TRANSLATED BY
C. T.
CAMPION, M.A.
[ORIEL COLLEGE, OXFORD]
FIRST AMERICAN EDITION
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
NEW
YORK; 1949
AH
rights reserved
Second Printing
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
CONTENTS
ONE:
EARLIEST RECOLLECTIONS
TWO; HOME AND HOLIDAYS
18
THREE:
EDUCATION: SECOND STAGE
32
FOUR;
LATER EDUCATION
51
FIVE;
RETROSPECT AND REFLECTIONS
65
CHAPTER ONE
was born in the
little
town
of Kaysersberg, in
Upper
Alsace, on January 14, 1875, in the small house with the turret, which you see on the left as you leave the upper end of the town. My father lived there as pastor, and
evangelical congregation, for the majority of the inhabitants were Catholics. Since Alsace became French there has been no pastor, and our little
teacher of the
little
home with
second
year.
It
the turret
now
houses the police.
was the
child, following a sister
who was my
elder
by a
was from Kaysersberg
that a famous mediaeval
preacher took his surname,
viz.
Geiler von Kaysersberg
(1445-1510) who used

dral
He was
to preach in Strassburg- Catheborn at Schaffhausen, in Switzerland, but
was brought up in Kaysersberg by his grandfather, and when a boy I used to pride myself not a little on having been born in the town where Geiler von Kaysersberg had lived, and in a famous wineyear, for the season of 1875 was an extraordinarily good one for the vines.
after his father's death
MEMOIRS OF CHILDHOOD AND YOUTH
When
was
six
months old
my
father left Kaysers-
berg and
settled at Giinsbaeh, in the Miinstertal, as
pastor. This
was
my mother's home-district, for
she was
the daughter of Pastor Schillinger, of Miihlbach, higher up the valley.
was a very sickly child when we moved to Giinsbach. On the occasion of my father's induction my mother had decked me out as finely as she could in a white frock with
I
coloured ribbons, but not one of the pastors* wives that had come to the ceremony ventured to compliment her on her thin and yellow-faced baby, and none of them went beyond embarrassed commonplaces. So at last my mother she has often told me about it could restrain herself no longer: she fled with me in her arms to her bedroom, and there wept hot tears over me. On one occasion they actually thought I was dead,
but the milk from neighbour Leopold's cow, together with the excellent Giinsbach air, worked wonders for
me; from my second year onwards I improved marvellously, and became a strong and healthy boy, and in the
manse
at Giinsbach I passed a delightful childhood with
the companionship of three sisters and one brother. A sixth child, a daughter named Emma, was lost to my
parents by a premature death.
My first recollection is of seeing the

I
was three
or four years old, I
devil! As soon was allowed to go
as
to
church every Sunday, and I used to look forward to this the whole week through. I can still feel on my lips our servant-girl's cotton glove, which she used to hold over
my mouth when
yawned
or sang too loud.
And now
RECOLLECTIONS
every Sunday I noticed in a bright frame by the side of the organ a shaggy face which was continually turning
about and looking down into the church. So long as the organ was playing and the singing going on it was visible,
but as soon
my father was praying at the altar it disappeared. When the playing and singing began again it reappeared, but as soon as my father began his sermon
as
was again lost to sight, to show itself once more for the closing hymn and voluntary. "This is the devil that <c is looking down into the church/' I said to myself, but
it
as soon as father begins with God's Word, he has to make himself scarce!" This weekly dose of visible theology
gave quite a distinctive tone
to
my
was only much

long time, that
later, when
had been
childish piety. It at school a fairly
I understood that the face which came and disappeared so strangely was that of Daddy Htis, the organist, and was created by the mirror which was fastened up near the organ so as to let the player see when my father was at the altar and when he went up
into the pulpit.
There was another incident of my earliest childhood which I remember as the first occasion on which I consciously, and on account of my own conduct, felt ashamed of myself. I was still in petticoats, and was in the yard while my father was busy sitting on a stool
about the beehives. Suddenly a pretty little creature settled on my hand, and I watched it with delight as it crawled about. Then all at once I began to shriek. The
pretty little creature was a bee, which had a good right to be angry when the pastor was robbing him of the

honey-filled combs in his hive, and to sting the robber's little son in cries brought the whole houserevenge!
My
hold round me, and everyone pitied me. The servantgirl took me in her arms and tried to comfort me with
kisses,
while
my
mother reproached
my
first
father for
putting me beginning to work at the hives without in a place of safety. My misfortune having made me so interesting an object, I went on crying with much satisfaction,
till
were
still
suddenly noticed that, although the tears pouring down, the pain had disappeared. My
I
conscience told
me to stop, but in order to be interesting
a bit longer I went on with my lamentations, so getting a lot more comforting than I really needed. However,
this
made me feel such a little rogue that I was miserable over it all the rest of the day. How often in after life, when
assailed
temptation, has this experience warned me against exaggerating, or making too much of, whatever
by
has happened to me!
THE SACRISTAN
The
terror of
my
childhood was the sacristan and
grave-digger, Jagle. Every Sunday morning, when he had rung the bells and came to the manse to learn the
numbers
of the
hymns
the things needed for
were to be sung and to get baptisms, he would make a grab at

that
my
forehead, and say, "Yes, the horns are growing!" These horns were rny bugbear. I had, as a matter of fact,
two rather prominent lumps on my forehead, and these had filled ine with most unpleasant thoughts ever since
I
had seen
How
in the Bible a picture of the sacristan had learnt about
Moses with horns. my worry I do not
know, but he knew of it and fanned its flame. When he was at the door on Sundays, wiping his feet before he rang the bell, I longed to run away, but he had me in
his
power, as a snake has the fascinated rabbit. I simply could do nothing but to go to meet him, feel his hand
and listen submissively to the fatal But when I had carried this worry about with me for something like a year, I drew my father's attention to the passage about the horns of Moses, and learnt from him that Moses was the only man who had ever had horns, so after that I had nothing more to be
on
my
forehead,
declaration.
afraid of.
the sacristan found that I had escaped his invented a new trick, and began to tell me he power, about soldiering, "Now we belong to Prussia," * he said, "and in Prussia everybody has to be a soldier, and soldiers wear clothes made of iron. In a couple of years youTl have to go up the street to the blacksmith, and let him measure you for a suit of these iron clothes." After that
I
When
took every opportunity
could of waiting about in
front of the blacksmith's shop to see whether any soldiers ever came to be measured for these iron clothes, but none
ever came; there were only horses and donkeys
who
wanted shoeing. Somewhat later, when my mother and I were standing one day before the picture of a cuirass-Alsace
1871,
by the Treaty
and Lorraine had become part of Germany in February, of Frankfort, which ended the Franco-Prussian
War.

sier, I
asked her what was the real truth about the soldiers
and their iron suits, and was much comforted by learning that common soldiers wore cloth uniforms, and that I
should be a
common soldier.
was an old
soldier
The
sacristan
who had
served in
the Crimea, and
belonged to the class of dry humourists,

has never from time immemorial
a specimen of
whom
been
lacking in Giinsbach.
He
tried to educate
me
into
understanding humour, but his school was rather too hard a one for me. As sacristan and grave-digger he was
extremely dignified, and he walked about the church with a perfectly majestic gait. Moreover, he had made
a name for himself as an oddity. One morning during die hay-making time he was just going off to the fields with
his rake
dead, and
to report that his father was a plot for his grave, and Jagle re<c ceived him with the words; Why, anybody might come
when
man came
to secure
was dead!" One Sunday evening, in the middle of summer, as we were passing his house, he came to rny father, almost with tears in his eyes, and poured out to him the story of his calf. He had reared a beautiful calf, he said, which would follow him about like a dog. At the beginning of summer he had sent it up to the hill pastures, and that very day he had gone up to visit it. But the calf knew him no more! He was for it merely a man, just like any other man, and the ingratitude had wounded him severely; the calf should never come back into Ms shippon. He did, in fact, sell it
and say
his father
not long afterwards.
[
GOING TO SCHOOL ]
I
did not look forward to going to school. When on a fine October day my father for the first time put a slate
under
and led me away to the school-mistress, I cried the whole way there, for I suspected that an end had now come to my dreams and my glorious freedom. In later life, too, my expectations have never got blinded by the rosy hue in which the New often presents itself: it has always been without illusions that I have entered on
my arm
the
Unknown.
great impression was made on me by the first visit of the inspector, and that not because the mistress's
hands shook with excitement when she handed him the

lesson-book, and
Daddy
Iltis,
who
usually looked so
stern, kept bowing and smiling the whole time. No, what impressed me was the fact for the first time I was actually setting eyes on a man who had written a bookl It was Steinert which was on the title-page of the his name middle standard's green reading-book and of the upper standard's yellow one, and now I had in bodily presence before me the author of these two books, which to me were lower in rank than the Bible alone. His exterior, indeed, was not imposing; he was small, bald-headed, red-nosed, had a big stomach, and was enveloped in a grey suit, but to my eyes he had a halo round him, for he was a man who had written a book! It was to me incomprehensible that the master and the mistress could be talking with him just as they would be with any
ordinary mortal.

meeting with an author, there followed a second and greater experience. A Jew from a
this,
On
my
first
neighbouring village, Mausche by name, who dealt in land and cattle, used to come occasionally through Giinsbach with his donkey-cart. As there was at that
time no Jew living in the village, this was always something of an event for the boys; they used to run after him
day, in order to announce to the world that I was beginning to feel myself grown up, I
jeer at him.
and
One
could not help joining them, although I did not really understand what it all meant, so I ran along with the rest
behind him and
his donkey-cart, shouting:
"Mausche,
to fold the
Mausche!" The most daring of them used
corner of their shirt or jacket to look like a pig's ear, and spring with that as close to him as they could. In this way
we
on
followed him out of the village as far as the bridge, but Mausche, with his freckles and his grey beard, drove
unperturbed as his donkey, except that he several times turned round and looked at us with an embarrassed
as
but good-natured smile. This smile overpowered me.
From Mausche it was

silent
that I
first
learnt
what
it
means to
under persecution, and he thus gave me a keep most valuable lesson. From that day forward I used to
greet him politely, and later, when I was in the secondary school (the Gymnasium) I made it my practice to shake
hands and walk a little way along with him, though he never learnt what he really was to me. He had the reputation of being a usurer and a property-jobber, but I
never tried to find out whether this was true or not.
To
me he has always been just "Mausche" with the tolerant

8
smile, the smile
patient
when
which even to-day compels should like to rage and storm.
me
to
be
[WITH THE VILLAGE BOYS]

I never looked for trouble by being aggressive, but liked measuring my bodily strength with that of others in a friendly tussle. One day on the way home from I
school I had a wrestle with George Nitschelm
underground to be stronger, under me, he jerked
he is now than was and was who I, bigger supposed but I got him down. While he was lying
out, "Yes,
if I
got broth to eat twice
a week, as you do, I should be as strong as you are!" I staggered home, overcome by this finish to our play.
what
George Nitschelm had, with cruel plainness, declared I had already been obliged to feel on other occasions: the village
selves. I
was
to
them one who was
boys did not accept me as one of thembetter off than they
were, the parson's son, a sprig of the gentry. The certainty of this caused me much suffering, for I wanted to
be exactly
like
them, and not a bit better

to
off. it
The broth
steaming
became nauseous
me; whenever
saw
on the table I could hear George Nitschelm's voice. So I now watched most carefully to see that I did not make myself in any way different from the others. For winter wear I had been given an overcoat made out of an old one of my father's. But no village-boy wore an overcoat, and when the tailor was fitting it on and said, "By
9

Jove, Albert,
now you're a regular gentleman!" it cost me
it
a big effort to keep back the tears. The day I was to wear it was for church on a Sunday for the first time
I
morning
pleasant scene. that did no good.
refused point-blank, and there was an unMy father gave me a box on the ear, but
They had to take me to church without the overcoat, and every time I was expected to wear it, it was the same tale over again. What a number of times
got the stick over this new garment! But I stood firm. That same winter my mother took me to Strassburg to visit an elderly relative, and she wished to use the
I
visit as
an opportunity
big shop they tried and the shopwoinan agreed on a handsome sailor's cap which I was to take for my own. But they had reckoned
buying me a cap. In a fine several on me, and at last my mother

for
without their host. The cap displeased me altogether, because no village boy wore a sailor's cap. When they
went on pressing me
to take this one or that one
among
all
those they
sort of
had
tried
on me,
from got into such a
passion that everybody in the shop ran

"Well,
what
up to us. cap do you want, you stupid lad?"

"I won't
the
shopwoman shouted at me.
have one of your
new-fashioned ones; 111 have one like what the village boys wear." So a shop-girl was sent out, and she brought me from the unsaleable stock a brown cap that one could
ears. Beaming with joy, I put it on, had to put up with some cutting mother my poor remarks and some contemptuous glances on account of
pull
down over one's
while
her young duffer. It hurt me that she had been put to shame before the townspeople on my account, but she
10
did not scold me; it seemed as if slie suspected that there was some real reason behind it all.
This stern contest lasted
all
the time I
was
at the vil-
lage school, and poisoned not only my life but that of my father too. I would only wear fingerless gloves, because the village boys wore no others, and on weekdays
would go out only in wooden clogs, because the village boys wore their leather boots only on Sundays. Every time a visitor came the contest was started afresh, for it was rny duty to present myself dressed "suitably to
I
my
station in life." Indoors, indeed, I yielded in every way, but when it was a case of going out to pay a visit
dressed as a "sprig of the gentry/'

erable creature
was again the
intol-
who provoked his father, and the courageous hero who put up with boxes on the ear and let himself be shut up in the cellar. And it was a real grief
to
me
to
be
so perverse with
my
parents.
My
sister
I, had some underLouise, standing of what my ideas really were, and she was quite
who was
a year older than
sympathetic.
The village boys never knew what I went through on their account; they accepted without emotion all efforts not to be in any way different from them, and
my
us,
then,
whenever the
slightest dispute arose
between
they stabbed
me
with the dreadful word, "sprig of the
gentry"
11
MEMOIRS OP CHILDHOOD AND YOUTH
[AT THE VILLAGE SCHOOL]

had to go through one of the hardest experiences which the school of life provides for us: a friend betrayed me. It happened in this way. When I heard the word "cripple" for the first time, I did not know exactly what to understand by it, but it seemed to me well suited for giving expression to some specially strong dissatisfaction, and as such I stored it up for future use. A new teacher, Fraulein Goguel, had
Very early
in
my
school
life
not yet
so I mentally applied to her this Then one day when I was acting as word. mysterious cowherd with my dearest friend, I confided to him with
won my favour,
an
mystery the secret that "Fraulein Goguel is a cripple, but don't you tell anyone/' And he promised not
air of
to.
Not long after this he and I had a dispute on the way and on the steps he whispered to me: "Good! now 111 tell Fraulein that you have called her a cripple."
to school,
did not take the threat seriously, because I thought such treachery was hardly possible, but during the break
I
he did actually go up to the desk with the announcement:

"Fraulein, Albert has called
you a
came
of
it,
as the teacher did
cripple!" Nothing not understand what the
dreadful assertion meant, but I could not grasp the horror of what had happened. This first experience of treachery shattered to atoms all that I had thought or
it was weeks before I recovered from the But now I knew something of life; I carried about on me now that smarting wound which it inflicts on us
expected of life;
shock.
12
all, and which new blows are continually reopening. Of the blows that I have received since then, many have been harder, but there has not been one so painful.
Before I went to school

to teach
my father had already begun
But
did not play
me some music by means of an old square piano. much from notes: my delight was to
improvise, and to reproduce songs and hymn-tunes with an accompaniment of my own invention. So now when
in the singing-lesson the teacher continually played the
hymn-tune with one finger and no accompaniment, found it far from pleasing, and during the interval
asked her
I
I
why
harmony. Then monium and played

head, but
a
she did not play it properly with the in my enthusiasm I sat down at the harit
straight away to her out of with harmony in several parts. Then she be-
my
came very friendly with me, and used to look at me in new and unusual way, but went on herself always picking out the tunes with one finger only. Then it occurred
to me that I could do something which she could not, and I was ashamed of having made a show before her of my
ability,
which
had
till
then taken as something which
dreamy scholar, who no little trouble to learn to read and write. One more incident comes back to me out of my first year at school Before I began going there my father had told me many of the Bible stories, among them that of the Flood. As that summer happened to be a very wet one, I surprised him with the remark; "Why, it must have been raining here now for nearly forty days and forty 13
found
it
possessed as a matter of course. But for the rest I was a quiet and

nights, but the water has not yet got up to the houses, much less to the tops of the mountains!" "Yes, well at
replied, "at the beginning o the world it didn't rain just in drops, but like pouring water out
that time,"
he
ideas, So when of buckets." This explanation cleared the of the Flood, I in us told school our teacher story
my
waited patiently as far as the point where she ought to mention the difference between the rain then and the
rain
now, but she passed this over altogether. Then I could restrain myself no longer. "Teacher," I called out from my place, "you must tell the story correctly," and
tell
without giving her time to
me
to
keep
quiet, I con-
tinued: "You must say that in those days it didn't rain in drops, but like pouring water out of buckets."
When I was eight my father, at my own request, gave me a New Testament, which I read eagerly. Among the stories which interested me most was that of the Three Wise Men from the East. What did the parents of Jesus
and other valuables which they got from these men? How could they have been poor after that? And that the Wise Men should never have troubled themselves again about the Child Jesus was to me incomprehensible. The absence, too, of any record of the shepherds of Bethlehem becoming
do, I asked myself, with the gold
disciples,
gave
me a severe shock.
[FEELING FOR MUSIC]

In my second school year we used to have twice a week
a lesson in penmanship from the master,
who just before
14
that gave a singing-lesson to the big boys. Now it happened one day that we had come over from the infant
school too early, so that

class-room,
we had to wait outside the
other
the mill
by
and when they began the vocal duet, "In the stream below there I was sitting in quiet
thought," followed by "Beautiful forest, who planted you there?" I had to hold on to the wall to prevent inyself
from
falling.
The charm
the songs thrilled me my similarly the first time I heard brass instruments playing together I almost fainted from excess of pleasure. Violin
of the two-part harmony of all over, to very marrow, and
music, however, with
its
did not find beautiful, and

ally.
different quality of tone, I I only got to like it gradu-
BICYCLES ]
While
I
at the village school I witnessed the first had several times heard introduction of the bicycle.
was
We
how carters and waggon-drivers were up in arms against people who rushed about on high wheels and frightened the horses. But one morning, while we were playing in
the school-yard during the break, the news came that one of these "racers" had dismounted at the inn in our
village street. School
and everything
else forgotten,
we
raced there, and stood gaping at the high wheel which was standing outside. There were a good many grownups there too, who waited with us till the traveller had finished his glass of wine. Out he came at last, and every-
body burst out laughing on seeing a grown-up man 16
in
MJSMOIKS OF CHILDHOOD
knickerbockers.
AND YOUTH
seated on
Then in a moment lie was

off.
Ms
wheel and rode
Not long
after the high-wheelers,
about the middle of
the 'eighties,
called "kangaroo" type,

"safety"
came the smaller-wheeled ones, the soand soon after them the first The first riders, however, who apbicycles.
last
peared on these
to
were jeered at for not having cour-
mount the high wheels. age enough In my penultimate year at the Gymnasium I obtained what I had long been yearning for a bicycle of my own. The purchase-money I had earned in the course of the previous eighteen months by giving mathematical lessons to backward scholars. It was a second-hand machine, and cost me 230 marks ( & 11 10s. ) At that time it was not considered proper for parsons' sons to ride a bicycle, but my father was fortunately above yielding
.
to such a prejudice. There were not wanting, however, voices to find fault with this "uppish" behaviour of his
son.
The well-known
Orientalist
and theologian, Edward
Reuss, of Strassburg, would not allow his theological students to bicycle, and when in 1893 I rode into the
S.
son,
Thomas's Institute on my bicycle, the Director, Erichremarked that he could only allow this because ProReuss was dead.
fessor
Young people of to-day can hardly imagine what the introduction of the bicycle meant for us. It opened to us possibilities, undreamt of hitherto, of getting into
touch with nature, and
light.
used them freely and with de-
16
EARLIEST mCOLLECTIONS
Besides the
tomatoes. I
remember, too, the first must have been about six years old wlien
first
bicycles I
neighbour Leopold brought us, as a great novelty, some of these red things which he had grown in his garden.
The present was a somewhat embarrassing one for my mother as she did not know at all how to cook them. When the red sauce came to table, it found so little acceptance that most of it was consigned to the swill-tub. It was not till the end of the 'eighties that tomatoes found themselves really at home in Alsace.
17
CHAPTER TWO
HOME AND HOLIDAYS

[
CHRISTMAS PRESENTS
My
and
father's study was a most uncomfortable place, I never set foot inside it unless I was absolutely com-
pelled to. The smell of books which pervaded it took my breath away, and that my father should always be at
the table studying and writing seemed to me something terribly unnatural. I could not understand how he en-
and I vowed that I would never become a student and writer like him. I felt a little more sympathy with his spells of sitting and writing when I was scholar enough to feel the charm of his Village Tales, which appeared in print in the Kirchbote ( the Church Messenger ) and in calendars. His literary model was Jeremiah Gotthelf, the Swiss pastor, so well known as an author, but he was more cautious than Gotthelf. He carefully avoided describing the people who had been his models
dured
it,
for the different characters so exactly that they could
be recognized.
year, however, I was obliged to see the inside of the study; that was between Christmas and
Once a
New
Year's Day.
day came on which 18
after breakfast father
HOME AND HOLIDAYS

made
the announcement: "To-day well get the letters written. You accept the Christmas presents, but when it
comes
faces!"
to writing letters of thanks for them,
you are too
lazy. Set to
work, then, and don't
let
me
see any sulky
Oh, those hours when I sat with my sisters in the study.,

breathing the book-laden air, listening to my father's pen scratching the paper, but away in spirit with my
schoolboy friends,
who were whizzing down

their sledges, while I
the road
to indite
behind the church on
had
letters to uncles, aunts, godparents,
and other
givers of
Christmas presents! And what letters! Never in all my life since then have I had to face such a task for my pen!
All the letters had, of course, the
same content, and
fell
naturally into three sections: (1) thanks for the present received from that particular addressee, with the assurance that I liked it more than all the rest; ( 2 ) a list of all
the presents received; (3) good wishes for the New Year. Yet with just this same content each letter had to be
different
from the
others, while in every
one of them the
appalling difficulty reared its head of finding a neat transition from the list of presents to the good wishes. Of the need of bringing in at the end of each the com-
plimentary remark which best fitted that particular recipient of that I will say nothing!
first
There had to be
which was shown

it,
to father.
a rough copy of each letter, Then came the improving of
it
or perhaps the re-writing, and finally the copying of on a proper sheet of paper without either mistake or blot. Dinner-time often came before I had thrown off
19

even one of the
six or
For years
used
to salt
seven that had to be composed! with my tears the meals between
Christmas and the
New Year, and once I began to cry on
Christmas Day itself, directly after the distribution of the presents, at the thought of the inevitable letters which
would have
each
to
be written!
at finding for each the list to the good wishes.
My sister, Louisa, was much quicker than I at getting

letter written differently,
and
one a
new
transition
from
Never has anyone
so roused
me
to admiration of his or
her epistolary cleverness as she did! This horror of studies, and letter-writing, which I ac-
quired in childhood through having to write these letters of thanks lasted for years. Meanwhile circumstances
have brought me into a position in which I have to maintain an unusually extensive correspondence, but I have
not yet learnt how to compose letters in which one has at the end to make a neat transition to good wishes for
the
New Year.
Therefore,
whenever
have, as uncle or
a Christmas present, I always forbid the recipients to write and thank me; they shall not, between Christmas and the New Year, salt their soup
godfather, to
make
with their tears as

comfortable in
I did!
Even to-day
do not
feel quite
my
father's study.
Christmas was the only time when father was strict with us; at other times he left us as much
But the week

as
is
after
freedom
preciate his to him for it. In the
good for children, and we knew how to apkindness to us, and we are deeply grateful
us two or three
summer holidays he used to go with times a week to spend a whole day on 20
HOME AND HOLIDAYS

and thus we grew up like a bunch of wild roses. In my third year at school I went up into the "big school" under Daddy Iltis. He was a good teacher, and without exerting myself I learnt a good deal with him. All my life I have been glad that I began in the village school. It was a good thing for me that in the process of learning I had to measure myself with the village boys, and thus make it quite clear to myself that they had at least as much in their heads as I had in mine. I was never a victim of that ignorance which afflicts so many of the boys who go straight to a Gymnasium, and there tell each other that the children of the educated classes have more in them than the lads who go to school in darned stockings and wooden clogs. Even to-day if I meet any of my old schoolfellows in the village or on a farm, I at once remember vividly the points in which I did not reach their level. One was better at mental arithmetic;
the
hills,
mistakes in his dictation; a third never forgot a date; another was always top in geography; another I mean you, Fritz Schoppeler wrote
another
made fewer
almost better than the school-master. Even to-day they still stand in my mind for the subjects in which they were at that time superior to me.
[LOVE OF NATURE]
When nine years
(a "modern
old I began going to the Realschule side" school in which no Greek is taught)
21

at Minister,
and had every morning and evening a walk of nearly two miles over the hills. This walk it was my
delight to take
by myself, without any

with these walks
I
of the other boys
who
also
went
to school at Miinster, so as to indulge
my
thoughts.
How
winter, spring, and summer! When the holidays in 1885 that I should go to the
at Miilhausen, in
did enjoy autumn, it was decided during
Gymnasium
Upper
Alsace, I cried over

if
my
lot in
secret for hours together. I felt as
were being torn

the beauties of
away from Nature.
To
the enthusiasm roused in

I
me by
nature as
learnt to
know them on my walks to and from
Minister, I tried to give expression in poetry, but I never got further than the first two or three rimes. Once or
twice, too, I tried to sketch the hill with the old castle
on
it
too,
which rose on the other side of the valley, but that, was a failure. After that I devoted myself to the
enjoyment of beauty simply through the eyes without trying to reproduce it in any way, and since then I have
never again tried either to draw it or to poetize about it. Only in musical improvisation have I ever felt myself
as I
do
still
to
have any creative
ability.
[CHARACTER]
religious instruction in the Realschule was given Pastor Schaffler, an outstanding religious personality, by and, in his own way, an orator quite above the average.
The
He
and
could
I still
the Bible stories with entrancing effect, remember how he wept as he sat at the desk,
tell
22
HOME AND HOLIDAYS

and how we on the forms sobbed, over Joseph's making himself known to his brethren. He fastened on me the nickname "Isaac," which means "the Laugher." I suffered, in truth, from the peculiarity of being very easily made to laugh, a weakness which my schoolfellows exploited mercilessly during the lessons. How often there appeared in the register the words:
"Schweitzer
merry
is laughing!" And yet I was by no means a character; I was, on the contrary, shy and reserved.
my mother; we did not possess the faculty of expressing in words the affection we had for each other, and I can count on my fingers
This reserve I had inherited from
the hours in which
to heart.
we really talked to each other heart But we understood each other without using
also inherited a terribly passionate
words.
From my mother I
temper, which she again had inherited from her father, who was a very good man but very quick-tempered. My
disposition showed itself in games; I played every game with terrible earnestness, and got angry if anyone else did not enter into it with all his might. When I was nine
sister Adela, because she or ten years old I struck was a very slack opponent in a game, and through her indifference let me win a very easy victory. From that
my
time onwards
for play,
began to feel anxious about my passion and gradually gave up all games. I have never ventured to touch a playing-card. I also, on January 1, 1899, when I was a student, gave up for ever the use of
I
tobacco.
I have
had
to struggle very hard against this passion-
28

ate temper. During and since my childhood I have done many things the memory of which humiliates me, and
keeps
me watchful in the fight.
[MY MATERNAL GRANDFATHER]
My grandfather Schillinger, whom I never knew,

been an
enthusiast for enlightenment;
had
he was
filled
with
the spirit of the eighteenth century. After service he used to tell the people, who waited for him in the street, the
and also make them acquainted with the political news, latest discoveries of the human mind. If there was anything special to be seen in the sky, he would in the evening set up his telescope in front of the house and let
anyone who liked look through it. As the Catholic vicar was also under the influence of the spirit of the eighteenth century, and its tolerance,
the two ministers lived in their respective residences in brotherly union. If one had more visitors than he could
take
in,
he found a bed
for a holiday,
for
it
one in the other house.
If
one
went
off
followed that the other visited
members of his congregation in order that they be left without any spiritual ministrations. not might When on Easter morning the Catholic vicar had finished
the sick
Masses and went home for a good Easter meal, my grandfather would open his window and wish him joy at having reached the end of his fast.
his
night there was a big fire in the village. As the evangelical rnanse seemed threatened, they brought its
contents out and housed
One
them
in the vicarage,
whereby
24
HOME AND HOLIDAYS

it
happened that my grandmother's crinolines got set up in the Catholic vicar's bedroom, and were brought from there back into the manse the next morning.
My grandfather prepared his sermons with the utmost

Saturday there had to be absolute quiet in the house; no visitor was admitted that day, and his son, when he was a student, had to arrange that he never
care. All
came home for a holiday on a Saturday. He seems to have been of a somewhat imperious nature, this Pastor Schillinger,
him with respect.

at the
hat.
and he made people treat It was an unheard-of thing that anyone

tall
who wanted an interview with the pastor should appear

manse without having on a black coat and a
Numerous anecdotes are current about him valley, two of them being connected with the
in the
"Tort/*
the traditional Miinstertal meat-pasty, which he had to cut up at wedding breakfasts or baptismal parties, occasions
on which the pastor always presided. On one ocis said to have asked whether it made any difference where he made the first cut, and when the
casion he
reply
came that it did, to have remarked, "Then 111 make

cut at home/'
the
first
On
another occasion he cut by
mistake one piece too few. When the plate came back without a piece of the pasty being left for him, he said, "Well, I'm npt, in truth, so very fond of it," though every-
one knew how much he always enjoyed
it.
These and
other anecdotes about Pastor Schillinger are still retailed at similar festivals in the valley, and, as politeness de-
mands, are
still
laughed
at.
25
The manse in which he lived and the church in which he preached exist no longer; bombs have overturned them or shot them to pieces. A big trench was driven
right through the church, but the old pastor's grave, which is close against the church wall, has by a sort of
miracle remained undamaged.
[MY UNCLE ALBERT]

When
what was
I
was
still
said to
young that I hardly understood me, my mother told me that I had been
so
given the name o Albert in memory of her dead brother. This brother or rather half-brother, a child of my
grandfather's first marriage had been pastor at the church of S. Nicholas, in Strassburg. In 1870, after the
battle of Weissenburg, he had been sent to Paris to obtain a supply of drugs and similar things in view of the
expected siege of the town. There instead of getting the things that were so urgently demanded by the medical
men of Strassburg, he found himself sent from one office

to another,
for
for,
home with
and when at last he was able to make a start a mere fraction of what had been asked die fortress was completely invested. General von
Werder, who commanded the besieging army, allowed these medical supplies to be taken into the town, but
kept my uncle as a prisoner. He thus had to live through the siege among the besiegers, tormented by the thought
he had
a
that his flock might be thinking that in that difficult time of his own accord left them in the lurch. He had
weak
heart,
and the
results of all the excitement of
26
HOME AND HOLIDAYS

these months were too
much for him.
In the
summer
of
1872, while standing with a group of friends in Strassburg, he fell to the ground dead.
The thought of how I could provide, as it were, a conman whom my mother had loved so much haunted me a great deal, especially as I had heard so
tinuation of a
many
stories of his kindness.
When
after the siege of
Strassburg there was for a time a shortage of milk, he used to bring his allowance to a poor old woman, who
after his death told
my mother how,
during that period,
she had got her daily milk.
[FEELING FOR ANIMAL LIFE]

As far back as I can remember I was saddened by the amount of misery I saw in the world around me. Youth's unqualified joie de uivre I never really knew, and I believe that to be the case with
many children, even though
they appear outwardly merry and quite free from care.

thing that specially saddened me was that the unfortunate animals had to suffer so much pain and
One
misery.
to get
The sight of an old limping horse, tugged forward

it
by one man while another kept beating

it
with a stick
to the knacker's yard at Colmar,
haunted me for
weeks.
I
I
was quite incomprehensible to me this was before began going to school why in my evening prayers
It
should pray for human beings only. So
when my mother
27

had prayed with me and had kissed me good-night, I used to add silently a prayer that I had composed myself for all
It ran thus: "O, heavenly living creatures.

all
Father, protect and bless
things that have breath;

let
guard them from
all evil,
and
them
sleep in peace/*
deep impression was made on me by something which happened during my seventh or eighth year.
Henry Brasch and I had with strips of india-rubber made ourselves catapults, with which we could shoot small stones. It was spring and the end of Lent, when one
morning Henry said to me, "Come along, let's go on to the Rebberg and shoot some birds/* This was to me a terrible
proposal, but I did not venture to refuse for fear he should laugh at me. got close to a tree which was
We
still
without any leaves, and on which the birds were singing beautifully to greet the morning, without show-
ing the least fear of us.

hunter,
Then stooping like a Red Indian

a bullet in the leather of his
to his
my companion put
I did the same,
catapult
and took aim. In obedience

though with
nod
of com-
mand,
terrible twinges of
conscience, vowing to myself that I would shoot directly he did. At that very moment the church bells began to
ring,
mingling their music with the songs of the birds and
the sunshine. It was the Warning-bell, which began half an hour before the regular peal-ringing, and for me it
was a voice from heaven. I shooed the birds away, so where they were safe from my companion's catapult, and then I fled home. And ever since then,
that they flew
when
the Passiontide bells ring* out to the leafless trees
HOME AND HOLIDAYS

and the sunshine, I reflect with a rush of grateful emotion how on that day their music drove deep into my heart the commandment: "Thou shalt not kill."
that day onward I took courage to emancipate myself from the fear of men, and whenever my inner convictions were at stake I let other people's opinions
From
weigh
at
than they had done previously. I tried also to unlearn my former dread of being laughed
less
with
me
by my school-fellows. This
the
commandment
is
early influence upon me of not to kill or to torture other crea-
tures
the great experience of

side of that
I
all
my childhood and youth.

we had
By the
a
While
was
still
others are insignificant. going to the village school
dog with a light brown coat, named Phylax. Like many others of his kind, he could not endure a uniform, and always went for the postman. I was, therefore, commissioned to keep him in order whenever the postman came, for he was inclined to bite, and had already been
guilty of the crime of attacking a policeman. I therefore
used to take a switch and drive him into a corner of the

the postman had gone. What a feeling of pride it gave to me to stand, like a wild beast tamer, before him while he barked and showed
yard,
till
and keep him there
his teeth,
and to control him with blows of the switch whenever he tried to break out of the corner! But this
feeling of pride did not last. When, later in the day, we sat side by side as friends, I blamed myself for having
struck him; I
postman
if I
I could keep him back from the him held by his collar and stroked him. But 29
knew that
when
the fatal hour came round again I yielded once more to the pleasurable intoxication of being a wild
beast tamer!
During the holidays
was allowed
to act as driver for
our next door neighbour. His chestnut horse was old and asthmatic, and was not allowed to trot much, but in my
pride of drivership I let myself again and again be se-
duced into whipping him into a trot, even though I knew and felt that he was tired. The pride of sitting behind a
trotting horse infatuated me, and the man let me go on in order not to spoil pleasure. But what was the end
of the pleasure?
my When we got home and I noticed during

what
I
the unharnessing
had not looked
at in the
same
way when
flanks
was
in the cart, viz.
how
were working, what good was it and silently ask him to forgive me? On another occasion it was while I was at the Gymnasium, and at home for the Christmas holidays I was driving a sledge when neighbour Loscher's dog, which was known to be vicious, ran yelping out of the house and sprang at the horse's head. I thought I was fully
his tired eyes
justified in trying to sting
the poor animal's to me to look into
him up well with the whip,
was evident that he only ran at the sledge in But play. my aim was too good; the lash caught him in the eye, and he rolled howling in the snow. His cries of pain haunted me; I could not get them out of my ears
although
it
for weeks.
I
have twice gone fishing with rod and line just because
other boys asked
impossible for
me to, but this sport was soon made me by the treatment of the worms that
SO
HOME AND HOLIDAYS

were put on the hook for bait, and the wrenching of the mouths of the fishes that were caught. I gave it up, and even found courage enough to dissuade other boys from
going.
[RESPECT FOR LIFE]

From experiences like these, which moved my heart and often made me feel ashamed, there slowly grew up in me an unshakeable conviction that we have no right to inflict suffering and death on another living creature unless there is some unavoidable necessity for it, and that we ought all of us to feel what a horrible thing it is to cause suffering and death out of mere thoughtlessness. And this conviction has influenced me only more and more strongly with time. I have grown more and more certain that at the bottom of our heart we all think this, and that we fail to acknowledge it and to carry our
belief into practice chiefly because we are afraid of being laughed at by other people as sentimentalists, though
partly also because we allow our best feelings to get blunted. But I vowed that I would never let my feelings
get blunted, and that I would never be afraid of the reproach of sentimentalism.
I
never go to a menagerie because
cannot endure
the sight of the misery of the captive animals. The exhibiting of trained animals I abhor. What an amount of
suffering and cruel punishment the poor creatures have to endure in order to give a few moments' pleasure to men devoid of all thought and feeling for them!
SI
CHAPTER

[AT
MULHAUSEN GYMNASIUM]
At Miilhausen I lived with my Uncle Louis and my Aunt Sophie, an elderly married pair who had no children. Uncle Louis was half-brother on the father's side to my grandfather, and he was also my godfather. Being so related to me he had offered to let me live with them free of cost for the whole of my time at the Gymnasium, and it was this offer which made it possible for my father to send me to one; without that, the cost would have been too great. How great the benefit was which Uncle Louis and Aunt Sophie conferred upon me by thus taking me in I only realized later; at first I was conscious only of the strictness of the discipline under which I came. My uncle was the Director of the elementary schools of Miilhausen, and had a rather gloomy official residence in the Central School near the church of the B.V.M. In earlier days, about 1855, if I am not mistaken, he had lived for a considerable time in Naples, where he presided over the Franco-German school which the colonies of those two nations at that time maintained. Life in my uncle's house was lived under a system of
which governed even small points. After dinner I had to practise till it was time to go to school again. If I got my home-work finished early, I had to go to the piano again. "You don't know what good your music mayn't be to you when you're grown up," my aunt used to say when she had to drag me to the piano. And indeed she could not have dreamed that one day my music would help me to collect the funds
regulations
for starting a hospital in the primeval forest! * Sunday was the only time that was really devoted
to recreation.
I
Then we went
for
a walk, and
after that
had
till
ten o'clock to gratify
my
passion for reading.
[READING]
this passion for reading was unlimited. I have it and once I have begun a book I can never put it down; I would rather sit up all night over it. I must at least sk^m through it, and, if it pleases me, I read it through two or three times on end. To my aunt this "devouring of books" was a horror. She, too, had a taste for reading, but of another kind. Having once been a teacher, she read, as she used to say, "in order to enjoy the style, which is the important thing." For three hours every evening, while knitting or crotcheting, she had a book open before her, one hour before supper, two after it. If the style was particularly
still,
And
beautiful, the
1
movement
of her needles slowed
down,
See the writer's "book, "On the Edge of the Primeval More from the Primeval Forest." (Macmillan)
Forest and
33

paying no attention to it. Then there often escaped her such exclamations as: "Oh, this man Daudet!" "Oh, this Theuriot! What a style he has!" "How Victor Hugo can describe
like
the pace of a horse
when
the driver
is
things!" When she was reading Julius Stinde's The Buchholtz Family, she used to laugh till the tears ran down
her cheeks; nevertheless, she never spent a quarter of an hour longer over it. At half-past ten she put the marker
in the place
where she had stopped, and shut the book. Thus we used to sit at the same table but with our
utterly different tastes in reading, each a puzzle to the other. Anxiously concerned about education,
my
my
aunt would try to exercise some control each time that I got too quickly to the end of a book. Now with kindness,
now
with authority,
now
with sarcasm, she would
practice of "sniffing through" the books, and to convert me to a reasonable tempo in

try to
wean me from
my
reading. But nothing was any good; no one can do anything in defiance of his inner nature. Her representations
were the less able to shatter my determination, because I was convinced that even when one devours a book one does pay attention to the style, and indeed is the best able to distinguish what is well from what is badly written. If during my hasty perusal I succumbed to the temptation to skip a lot of sentences and long passages of description, I judged that the book was badly written.
If it so
entranced
me that I could not help reading every

And
I
sentence, I considered that the style must be good.

that
to
is still
parade
my opinion to-day. my wisdom before my

84
took care, however, not

aunt;
it
was necessary

to avoid irritating her
on the reading question. In that
matter she had me entirely in her power, for it depended on her whether I got a quarter of an hour more or a quarter of
an hour
less for reading.
[NEWSPAPERS]
from the very threw on the beginning myself newspapers. There was at my disposal for this only the quarter of an hour when
It
was
especially distasteful to her that

I
the table was being laid for supper, during which I had to interrupt my school preparation work, but then I at once snatched up the ^trassburg Post, the Miilhausen
Daily
Mail.,
and the
I
New
Miilhausen Times.
On
the
al-
leged grounds that
read nothing but the stories in the "Literary Supplement" and the murder cases, my aunt did her best to get my newspaper reading prohibited,
but I asserted that what specially interested

politics,
me was the
that was to say, contemporary history. The diswas then about eleven came before my uncle. pute "Well soon see," said he during supper, "whether the
I
young rascal reads the political news!" And then he began to examine me as to who the ruling princes in the Balkans were, and what the names of their prime ministers. Next I had to describe to him the composition of the three last French cabinets. Finally I had to summarize to him the contents of
Eugen
Richter's last speech in

its
the Reichstag. Out of this examination, with
accom-
paniment of baked potatoes and salad, I came with flying colours, and thereupon the decision was given that
35

might read the papers not only while the table was being laid, but also when I had finished my lessons later on. This permission I naturally used to refresh my soul with the stories in the Literary Supplement, but the from that time politics were after all the main thing, and my uncle began to treat me like a grown-up person, and
I
to talk about politics with me at meals. This interest in public events I inherited
from
my
mother,
who was
a passionate reader of newspapers.
That on Boxing Day, Easter Monday, and Whitsun Monday no papers appeared was always an annoyance to her, although she was a pious woman and a staunch
defender of Sunday as a day of rest. I had indeed as early as my ninth year begun to follow the events of the day
with keen
through them in thought, and now for understanding that earlier period I found very valuable all that my uncle told me.
interest,
and
to live
[FRIENDS AND ACQUAINTANCES]

There lived with
my uncle, besides myself,
a Fraulein
Anna
who
Schaffer also, a daughter of the pastor at Minister, filled a post as teacher in the Higher Girls* School.
She, with her wise and kindly personality, contributed
much more to my education than she ever suspected.

It
was
also a great
advantage for
me
to
go so often to
the home of Edward Ostier, one of my schoolfellows, for his mother was a woman much above the average. For
years in succession Ostier spent the Whitsuntide holidays with us at Giinsbach.
many
36
was also often in the Louse of Pastor Matthieu, whose son, a boy of strong personality and of character somewhat out of the ordinary, was at the Gymnasium with me. He afterwards, like myself, studied theology, and went to the Higher Boys' School in Zurich, where he gave all the religious instruction. His father was an extraordinarily well-read and learned man. I was not a frequent visitor at any houses except these two; my aunt did not look favourably on what she called
I
"knocking about outside." In my first years at Miilhausen
I felt
very
much being
so entirely cut off from Nature. Once, on a sunny day in March, when the last patches of snow were melting,
I
I
was had
sitting at table, just after four o'clock coffee
when
to begin
my home lessons,
and was looking with
longing eyes out of the window,
when my aunt, who was
doing some ironing, must have felt what was going on within me. I could hardly believe my ears when she said to me: "Come along, I'll take you for a bit of a walk."
Over the
canal, in
which blocks of ice were
still
floating,
we went, and up
the Rebberg;
my aunt never suggested
We
turning back, and it was quite dark when we got home. did not talk much, but from that day onward our relations to each other were quite different. I knew now that the woman who was bringing me up so strictly, yes, some-
times with pedantic strictness, had a heart, and understood my longings.
allowed to go walks by myon Wednesday and Saturday afternoons, when there was no school. I always went up the heights which enself
When I was bigger I was
37

close the
town on the south
side,
and looked longingly
at the mountains in the
neighbourhood of the Minister man who carried valley. I often used to meet an elderly his hat in his hand, and let his white hair blow about in
seeing him in the Alsatian the Strober, poet, who pulpit: was one of the Miilhausen pastors; he usually took a
the wind.
it
Who
it
was
knew from
was Adolph
bunch of wild flowers home with him. In the course of time he treated me as an acquaintance, and would let me walk a little by his side. To be in the company of a
real, live
poet used to fill me with pride!
On the Rebberg
was a large garden belonging to Frau Ostier, the mother of my schoolfellow, and many a delightful hour did I
spend in it!
MUSIC, CONFIRMATION,
CHURCH SERVICES
During my first terms at Miilhausen I was by no means a model scholar, being far too much given to daydreaming. My bad reports caused my parents much anxiety, without my finding the energy to pull myself
together for better results.
as being a parson's son,
The
was going
free place which I had, to be taken from me,
and
my father was
who even
to take
hinted to
asked to come and see the Principal, him that the best course might be
the school
me away from
And
I,
in
I
my
dreami-
ness, took no account at
all of the
worry
was causing

him!
only feeling was that of astonishment at his not actually scolding me. But he was too kind, and now
My
too sad, to do that.
Then a saviour appeared for me in the person of a new

form-master. Dr.
the
first
Wehmann by name.
I
In the course of
few days
saw
clearly
dreaminess
this fact:
our
new
through the mist of my teacher came with every
lesson carefully prepared; he knew exactly how much of the subject he wanted to take, and he got through that
amount. He also gave us back our fair-copy exercise books on the proper day, and in the proper lesson hour.
Experience of this self-disciplined activity had a distinct effect upon me. I should have been ashamed to incur
his displeasure,
later
and he became my model. Three months
the Quarta, got its Easter report, I of the better scholars, although Christpas so been bad that mother had had my gone at)out report the whole of the Christmas holidays with eyes that were
when my form,
was one
my
red from crying. When, later on, Herr Wehmann went from Miilhausen to Thann, and then to Saargemiind, and then to Strassburg, I always went to look him up; he
knew how much I loved him. After my return from Africa

one of
my
first
excursions after the

I
end
of the
war was
devoted to a search for him, but

vation, so they told me,
did not find him. Starto a nervous
had brought him
breakdown, and he had taken his own life. That a deep sense of duty, manifested in even the smallest matters,
is
the great educative influence, and that
it
accomplishes
what no exhortations and no punishments can, has 39

thanks to him, become with me a firm conviction, a conviction the truth of which I have ever tried to prove in
practice in
all
that I have
had
to
do as an educator.
[MUSIC LESSONS]
My
music-master, too, at Miilhausen found at
first
little pleasure in teaching
Munch, and he had
just
me. His name was Eugen come from the High School for
Music at Berlin to be organist to the Reformed Congregation at S. Stephen's. "Albert Schweitzer is my thorn in the flesh/' he used to say. This was the result partly of
the fact that in the hours my aunt compelled me to spend at the piano I used to play all sorts of music at sight, and
to improvise, instead of learning properly the pieces he had given me, and partly of shrinking from playing
my
music-master with real feeling. I could not bring myself to display to him all that I felt while playing
before
my
a beautiful piece of music, and I am sure that many music-students feel the same. Thus it was that I irritated
But one day when, still had ground out a badly practised sonata of Mozart's, he angrily opened a volume of Mendelssohn at the Song without Words in E natural.
him with my "wooden
playing/'
mastered by
this prejudice, I
"Really you don't deserve to have such beautiful music
given you to play. You'll come and spoil this Lied ohne Worte for me, just like everything else. If a boy has no feeling, I certainly can't give him any!" "Oho/' thought I to myself, "111 show you whether I have any feeling or
40

not!"
And
the whole
this piece,
week through I carefully practised which I had so often played by myself. I even
did what no one had ever got me to do yet; I found out by experiment the best fingering, and wrote it above the
notes. In the next lesson
when finger-exercises and scales
were
braced myself up and played the Lied ohne Worte just as my very soul bade me. My
all finished, I
teacher said
little,
but putting his hands firmly on
my
shoulders, he
moved me from
played over to me me. Next I was given a piece of Beethoven's, and a few lessons later I was found worthy to begin upon Bach.
the piano and himself a Lied ohne Worte that was new to
Then after a few more lessons it was disclosed to me that
my confirmation I should be allowed to have lessons on the big and beautiful organ in S. Stephen's. Thus there came to fulfilment a dream long cherished in secret, for from long, long before it had been my ambition to get
after
to the organ.
And
this
ambition had been born in ine.
My mother's father, Pastor Schillinger of Miihlbach, had

been deeply interested in organs and organ-building, and whenever he found himself in a strange town, its
organs were the first things that he went to look at. When the famous organ in the Collegiate Church at Lucerne
was being
built, he went there and spent whole days in the chancel in order to follow the building, and to test the masterpiece of Haas, the organ-builder. He is said
to
have been a very

this gift.
fine improvisator.
My
father, too,
possessed hours together as he
When
a child I listened to
him
for
sat, in the dusk, at the old square
41

piano which he had inherited from grandfather SchilBut he never linger, and gave rein to his imagination.
liked Bach's music.
Thanks to the kindness of Daddy Iltis, and because he was very glad to have a substitute, I had already, when
a boy, got admitted to the use of the organ in Giinsbach Church, and when I was only nine I had taken his place
at
it
for services.
But now, when
was
fifteen, I
was
to
learn the scientific use of the pedals on an organ with three keyboards and sixty-two stops under a great organist, for such Eugen Munch was! I could scarcely
credit
my good fortune. When I was sixteen

first
Hunch's place
the
at services,
was allowed and not long
to take
Eugen
teacher
after that I for
time sat at the organ at a concert;
my
of
accompaniment Requiem, which he gave with the choir of the church. Then for the first time I knew the joy, which I have so
often tasted since then, of letting the organ send the flood of its own special tones to mingle with the clanging
trusted me to play the organ
Brahms's
music of choir and orchestra. But the

S.
fine old
of
Stephen's, Miilhausen, has been, alas! Eugen Munch, restored and modernized in such barit
organ in since the death
barous fashion that the marvellous tone which

possessed has been completely lost
then
[CONFIRMATION]
To be prepared
for confirmation I
was sent
to old
Pastor Wennagel, for
whom I had a great respect.
But to

him., too, I
kept myself closely shut up. I was a diligent candidate, but the good man never suspected what was stirring in my heart. His instruction was in itself excellent,
but it gave no answer to a great deal of what my inner self was concerned with. How many questions I
would gladly have asked him. But

us.
that
was not allowed
one point on that I was quite clear my ideas differed from his in spite of all the respect I showed him.
On
He wanted to make us
faith all reasoning
understand that in submission to
must be silenced. But I was convinced that the fundamental principles of Christianity have to be proved true by reasoning, and by no other method. Reason, I said to myself, is given
and
am
so
still
us that
action,
we may
bring everything within the range of

religion.
its
even the most exalted ideas of
And
this
certainty filled me with joy. During the last weeks of the preparation period Pastor Wennagel used to keep a few of us back after each lestion.
son in order to speak to us individually about confirmaWhen my turn came, and he tried with affectionate questioning to learn with what thoughts and resolves
was going through the holy time, I began to hesitate, and to answer evasively. It was impossible for me, much as I liked him, to let him look right into my heart. The conversation had a sad ending; I was dismissed with
I
Deeply troubled about me, Pastor Wennagel afterwards told my aunt that I was going through confirmation as one of the indifferent ones. In reality, however, I was during those weeks so moved by the holiness
coolness.
43

of the time that I felt almost
the whole company of vestry into the church,
on Palm Sunday us walked in procession from the

ill.
When
Eugen Munch played

in
"Lift
it
your heads, O ye gates!" in wonderful harmony with the thoughts
from Handel's Messiah;
up was
my heart.
assistant pastor at S. Nicholas's, Strassburg, I for ten years gave confirmation instruction to boys.
As
How
often,
had to think of dear old Pastor Wennagel and myself, and remind myself that much more goes on in a child's heart
of
indifferent,
when any
them seemed
have
than others are allowed to suspect. I also always took great pains to make the boys feel that they could come
to
me about anything that troubled them. Twice a week

to answering questions
was given up
me.
which they put
to
CHURCH SERVICES
In
my first years
at
Miilhausen I suffered
much from
a homesick longing for the church at Giinsbach; I missed my father's sermons, and the services I had been familiar with
all
my life.
to
The sermons used

because
rience. I
I
make a
could see
how much
great impression on me, of what my father said
in the pulpit
was of a piece with his own life and expecame to see what an effort, I might say what a struggle, it meant for him to open his heart to the people every Sunday. I still remember sermons I heard from him while I was at the village school.
44
But what
of these I
loved best was the afternoon service, and hardly ever missed a single one when I was
I
in Giinsbach. In the deep and earnest devotion of those services the plain and homely style of my father's preach-
ing showed its real value, and the pain of thinking that the holy day was now drawing to its close gave these services a peculiar solemnity.
the services in which I joined as a child I have taken with me into life a feeling for what is solemn, and a need for quiet and self-recollection, without which I
From
my life. I cannot, therethe of those who would not let fore, support opinion children take part in grown-up people's services till they
to
cannot realize the meaning of
some extent understand them. The important thing
is
not that they shall understand, but that they shall feel something of what is serious and solemn. The fact that
the child sees his elders
full of
devotion, and has to feel

is
something
the service
It is to
of their devotion himself, that

its
what
gives
meaning
for him.
I attrib-
the afternoon services at Giinsbach that
ute
my
interest in missions.
On
the
first
Sunday
of
every
month
my father held a missionary service at which he told us about the life and work of missionaries. Once for
many Sundays
in succession
he read us the memoirs of
Mr. Casalis, a missionary to the Basutos of South Africa, which he had translated from the French for this very
purpose. These made a great impression upon me. Besides Casalis, Bartholdi the sculptor, a native of
Cohnar, who made the figure of Liberty which stands at the entrance to New York harbour, was one of those
45
who
my childish, thoughts in the direction of far-off lands. On his monument to Admiral Bruat, which
stands in the
turned
Champ de Mars
at Colmar,
is
the stone
figure of a Negro, which is certainly one of the most expressive pieces of work that his chisel ever produced.
a figure of herculean proportions, but the face wears an expression of thoughtful sadness which I could not
It is
forget, and every time we find time to go and look at
to
me
of the misery of
went to Colmar I tried to it. The countenance spoke the Dark Continent, and even
it
to-day I
make
a pilgrimage to
when
am
in
Colmar.
[CHURCH BUILDING]
for the Giinsbach
In the homesick longing which I felt at Miilhausen Sundays the actual building in which
we worshipped played a part. The fine new Miilhausen church struck me as terribly defective, because it had
no chancel. In the church at Giinsbach my devotional dreams could expand and be enriched in a Catholic chancel, for the church as I will explain was used for
their services
by Catholics and Protestants
alike.
Alsace during the reign of Louis Quatorze (1643-1715) became French, that monarch, wishing to
When
humiliate the Protestants, decreed that in every Protestant village in which there was a minority of at least
seven Catholic families the chancel of the church should
be given up for their exclusive use. The whole building was also to be at their disposal for services every Sunday at fixed times. Thus it came about that a number of
46

churches in Alsace are Protestant and Catholic at the
same
the
number
time. In the second half of the nineteenth century of such churches became somewhat smaller,
because many parishes decided to have a separate church built for the Catholics, but at Giinsbach, as in many other
places, this joint use of the one building fessions has remained to the present day.
by both con-
which I used to gaze, was to my childish imagination the ne plus ultra of magnificence. There was first an altar painted to look like gold, with huge bunches of artificial flowers upon it; then tall
chancel, into
The Catholic
candlesticks of metal with majestic wax candles in them; on the wall, above the altar and between the two
windows, was a pair of large gilt statues, which to me were Joseph and the Virgin Mary; and all these objects were flooded with the light which came through the
chancel windows. Then through the windows themselves
and blue sky on continued the chancel of the a world, in short, which church into an infinity of distance, and was, in its turn,
one looked out over
trees, roofs, clouds,
flooded with a kind of transfiguring glory imparted to it by the chancel Thus my gaze wandered from the
finite to
the
infinite,
and
my soul was wrapped
in
peace
and
quiet.
these youthful recollections springs an inability to appreciate the efforts made to produce a Protestant
From
type of church building.
When I
tried to
see churches in which
modern
is
architects
have
embody
the ideal of "a
preacher's church," I feel
a sinking at the heart.
A church
listens to
much more
than a building in which one
47

a place for devotions, and merely as a building it ought to keep people at a devotional level. But it can never do that if in every direction the worshipper's sermons;
it is
eye
is
brought up short by walls. There
is
need of
dis-
tance, of a background, which lends itself to the mood of the worshipper, so that the outward gaze can change
to the inner one.
The chancel, therefore, is not something
exclusively Catholic; it is part of the church as a church, and if Protestant services are from their very nature defor the building to be so as well. The building ought to make the service a complete whole, and become as much an element in the soul's exfective, there
is
no need
perience as the words heard, the singing, and the prayers.
[TOLERATION]
thing more I have taken with me into life from this little church, that was Protestant and Catholic at the same time, I mean religious tolerance. These Cathol-
One
ico-Protestant churches,
which had their origin in the a edict of ruler, are for me something more irresponsible than a historical phenomenon. They are a symbol to show
that the differences
which separate churches to-day are
things which are destined ultimately to disappear. When I was still merely a child, I felt it to be something beautiful that in our village Catholics and Protestants worshipped in the same building, and my heart fills with
joy to-day whenever I set foot inside it. I should like all the churches in Alsace which are still used by both confessions to
remain
so, as
a prophecy
of,
and an exhorta-
48

tion to, a future of religious unity, upon which we must ever keep our thoughts fixed if we are really and truly Christians.
The difficulties caused by joint ownership of the church can he quite satisfactorily got over, as experience in Alsace shows, if there is goodwill on both sides, though
if two rather hot-tempered shepherds of have to fit themselves together into the use of the same House of God, it may happen that the community of rights, instead of contributing to unity, provides matit is
true that
souls
ter for quarrels. That was the case once in the eighteenth century in a village in Lower Alsace, where on a Whitsun
Monday the pastor preached in the nave while the priest

in the chancel, because they had not been able to agree as to the times of their respective services. The Giinsbach altar, the gilded magnificence of which
said
mass
used once to
strike
me
with awe,
is
no longer
there.
Thanks
to the reforming zeal of an art-loving priest from Miinster it has had to give way to a high altar which
it.
has some "style" about

got hidden by
the
The Virgin and
new erection,
Joseph, having stand no longer flooded
with light between the chancel windows, but have been

relegated to the side walls. Instead of looking down over the whole church with an air of benediction, they stand
on opposite
Virgin, too,
sides
is
and
stare into
each other's
faces.
The
no longer resplendent with

dress of blue, green,
glittering gilt,
but has had to comply with the demands of the

style,
new
and wear a
and
red.
Now when I go and sit in Giinsbach my eyes in order to see the choir again
49
Church, I shut
in that
homely

magnificence wMcli once so enchanted me. As my mind's gaze lingers in the past, I can see again in their places
which were once there in the flesh, but are there no more, because they have been carried out into the churchyard. And the remembrance of the departed who once worshipped with us is for me one of the most heartfigures
gripping parts of the services in the village church of my home. How solemnly they sat there: the men all in
women in their simple Miinstertal costume; much more solemn in dress, in behaviour, and in character than we of the new generation! One of these old folk, Mitschi by name, was so deaf
black, the
that he could not hear a
word
of the sermon. Yet there
he was
in his place every
Sunday. Once when
my father
expressed his regret that he had to take part in the service without being able to hear anything, Mitschi shook his head with a smile and said: "The Communion of Saints,
Herr
Pfarrer, the
Communion
of Saints!"
CHAPTER
FOUB,
LATER EDUCATION
thanks to Dr. Wehniann, I had given up my day-dreaming, I continued to be a fairly good scholar,
as,
As soon
without rising to
sit
among
the best.
It
was
for history
alone that I had any real ability: in languages and mathematics my attainments did but correspond to the
amount
I
of industry that I applied to them.
But history
mastered without any effort, a result for which I had partly to thank my passion for reading, which, as time
went on, had gradually concentrated itself on historical works. It was fortunate for me that Professor Kaufrnann,
who
worker in
taught us history, was a distinguished original his subject, and in the higher forms he treated
like a friend
me more
than like a pupil. I remained in constant communication with him till his death.
[SCIENCE]
After history it was the lessons in science which took had in Dr. Forster an exthe strongest hold of me.
We
51
cellent teacher, though
it is
true that in Physics
and

Chemistry he was
no way distinguished. His special subject was Geology, and he once obtained a long leave of absence in order to carry out some geological investiWhen he worked out gations in (I think) Sumatra. chemical or physical formulae on the blackboard, it was easy to see that he had learnt them up himself for the
in
lesson. That,
with
it
us;
however, did not diminish his authority his teaching was good because he had prepared
well. Unfortunately the
number
of lesson-hours de-
voted to science was
at that
time far too small.

stimu-
The science teaching had something peculiarly
lating for me. I could not get rid of the feeling that it was never made clear to us how little we really under-
stand of the processes of Nature. For the scientific school-
books
tions
I felt
a positive hatred. Their confident explanacarefully shaped and trimmed with a view to
I
being learnt by heart, and, as
soon observed, already
somewhat out of date satisfied me in no respect. It seemed to me laughable that the wind, the rain, the
snow, the hail, the formation of clouds, the spontaneous combustion of hay, the trade-winds, the Gulf Stream,
thunder and lightning, should all have found their proper explanation. The formation of drops of rain, of snowflakes,
special puzzle never acknowledge the absolutely mysterious character of Nature, but alto
and of hailstones had always been a

It
me.
hurt
me
to think that
we
ways speak
all
that
we
so confidently of explaining her, whereas have really done is to go into fuller and more
complicated descriptions, which only make the mysterious more mysterious than ever. Even at that age, it be-
52
LATER EDUCATION
came
clear to
me
that
what we
label Force or "Life"
remains in its
Thus
I fell gradually into
own essential nature for ever inexplicable. a new habit of dreaming

us,
about the thousand and one miracles that surround
though fortunately the

thoughtless
new habit did not, like my earlier
prevent me from working is with me still, and however, properly. gets If a meal I catch sight of the light broken stronger. during
day-dreams,
habit,
The
up in a glass jug of water into the colours of the spectrum, I can at once become oblivious of everything around me, and unable to withdraw my gaze from the spectacle. Thus did love for history and love for science go hand in hand, and I gradually recognised that the historical process too is full of riddles, and that we must abandon
for ever the
hope
department produce more
of really understanding the past. In this also, all that our faculties allow us to do is to
or less
thorough descriptions.
[LITERATURE]
From my first school year to my last I found intolerable those lesson-hours in which poems were taken and
That a poem should be brought nearer to me by being explained I felt to be something hateful and silly. The talk about it did nothing but destroy in me the
treated.
by the work of the poet. A so I and feel still, does not need to be expoem, plained; it must be felt, be experienced. Consequent!} in these lessons I was a very inattentive scholar, yes,
feeling of being possessed
I felt,
even a scholar in opposition. Instead of following the
53

lesson, I read here, there,
and everywhere in the readingI
book, and intoxicated myself, without a guide, in those
poems and
extracts
which
found most
attractive. I
had
a feeling of having shut

out the noise in the
my
shop-windows so as to keep
streets.
Homer
left
me
cold.
We
were driven
to
a feeling of
positive disgust for him by being expected to know the names of the parents, grandparents, uncles, aunts, and
cousins of
all
the heroes, gods, and goddesses
who
ap-
pear in the poems.
And
genealogies and
relationships
were never my strong pointl
[MY "PUPPT STAGE. LOVE OF DISCUSSION]

fourteenth and sixteenth y^ars I passed through an unpleasant phase of development, becoming an intolerable nuisance to everybody, especially to my
Between
my
father,
through a passion for discussion.

in the street I
On
everyone
who met me
wanted
to inflict thorough-
going and closely reasoned considerations on all the questions that were then being generally discussed, in
order to expose the errors of the conventional views and get the correct view recognised and appreciated. The
what was true and serviceable had come upon me like a kind of intoxication, and every conversation in which I took part had to go back to fundamentals. Thus I emerged from the shell of reserve in which I had hitherto concealed myself, and became the
joy of seeking for
54
LATER EDUCATION
disturber of every conversation which was meant to be merely conversation. What a number of times at both
Miilhausen and Giinsbach, did I bring the conversation at meals into stormy water! My aunt scolded me as being
insolent,
my ideas with grown-up people though they were my own age. If we went to pay a visit anywhere, I had to promise my
as of
because I wanted to argue out
father not to spoil the day for during conversations."

I
him by "stupid behaviour
must confess
to
having been as intolerable as a well-
brought up young man, half-way through his education, ever can be, but it was not in the least any egotistic disputatiousness
which made
me
so; it
was a passionate need
of thinking, and of seeking with the help of others for the true and the serviceable. The light and truth-seeking spirit of my grandfather Schillinger had awoke In me.
conviction that human progress is possible only if reasoned thought replaces mere opinion and absence of thought had seized hold of me, and its first manifesta-
The
tions
made
themselves
felt in this
stormy and disagree-
able fashion.
However, this unpleasant fermentation worked itself off and left the wine clear, though I have remained essenfelt clearly tially what I then became. I have always
that
if
were
to surrender
my
enthusiasm for the true
and the
I should
serviceable, as recognised
by means
sejf I
.
of thought,
be surrendering
my very
am, therefore,
essentially as intolerable as ever, only I try as well as I can to reconcile that disposition with the claims of conven-
tional manners, so as not to annoy other people.
Bowing to
66
MEMOIRS OF CHILDHOOD AND "YOUTH

these claims, I force myself to take part in conversations which are merely conversations, and to listen to empty,
unthinking chatter without rebelling against them. My innate reserve has in this matter helped me to adopt as my own this usual behaviour of the well-bred.
But how often do I inwardly rebel! How much I suffer from the way we spend so much of our time uselessly instead of talking in serious- wise about serious things, and getting to know each other well as hoping and believing, striving and suffering mortals! I often feel it to be absolutely wrong to sit like that with a mask on, so to say.
Many a time I ask myself how far we

If I
can carry
this
good
breeding without harm to our veracity.
meet people to whom
out as a
man who
possible to open oneself thinks, I feel a passionate enjoyment

it is
in their society as
if I
were
as
is
young
as ever,
and
if I
stumble on a young
sion, I
man who
ready for serious discus-
give myself up to a joyous exchange of cut and thrust which makes the difference between our ages,
whether for good or
ill,
a thing of no account.
[INFLUENCE OF WILHELM DEECKE]

The deepest impressions I received while still at the Gymnasium were from its Principal, Wilhelm Deecke, who came to MiiHiausen just as I got into the higher forms. His somewhat stiff manner he was a native of
Liibeck prevented us at first from feeling at our ease with him, but we soon got accustomed to it. He was a schoolmaster quite above the average, a scholar of wide
56
LATEH EDUCATION
and a man of serious purpose: we felt that Ms object was not merely to make us learn, but to educate us to be men. We knew in a dim way that he had incurred the displeasure of the Governor, General von Mantesffel, through some over-candid expressions of his views, and had had to pay for it by being reduced to a lower grade. His position at the Gymnasium at Miilhausen was in reality a kind of banishment for him. That in spite of this he was always cheerful, and gave us his very best in the lessons, though he had so many much higher matters in his head, filled us with astonishment. He was for us a Stoic in modern dress. That among his friends were Geibel, the poet, Mommsen, the historian, and other notabilities, while he himself was an authority on early Greek inscriptions and on Etruscan archaeology, made us feel still more respect for him. He used to spice the
culture,
lessons for us by going off into discursive interludes which introduced us to any sort of object or question which had any connexion with the subject-matter of the lesson. Quite unforgettable are the lessons in which he read Plato with us, and so gave us a general introduction to philosophy. His favourite philosopher was Arthur
Schopenhauer. A short time after
we had
left
the Gymnasium, and
just as the authorities were preparing to let justice done to him again, he died of cancer of the stomach.
be
[RES ANGUSTA DOMI]

For a long time there lay a shadow on my youthful With five chilperiod, which was otherwise so sunny. dren at the Manse there were endless money-worries, although my mother practised all sorts of economies,
and I myself took a pride in making my wants as small as in autumn when my mother volunteered possible. Once the opinion that my winter suit must be too small and I must want a new one, I said that was not the case. It was, however, the fact that I could no longer wear it, so I had to go about all the winter in my light-coloured summer suit. My aunt acquiesced, because she was all for hardening me. But to be considered by my school fellows as one of the "starvelings" who never had anything to spend on themselves was something which my boyish
pride could only endure because
worries.
it
lessened my mother's
In order to economise
so she told
me in after days
she used vegetable fat instead of butter for cooking. In the 'eighties of the last century this was not prepared as faultlessly as it is nowadays, and it often left an unpleasant taste behind it. To the use of it she ascribed the fact that during that time my father was dyspeptic. He
was brought lower still by rheumatism in the joints which he contracted by sleeping in a damp bed at S trassburg, and thus there came upon the home a long succession of anxious weeks and months. There comes up even now into my memory from that time a vision of my mother's eyes, so often red from weeping.
LATER EDUCATION
But about the time
of
my
confirmation
my
father's
health began to improve. This was greatly helped by a piece of good fortune that enabled us to exchange the
somewhat damp, and shut in on a new one situated in a sunny by This house, to which we moved at the end of garden. the 'eighties, was an old one which had been restored, and fitted up in a very practical way as a dwelling-house, by Herr Adolph Miiller, the son of a former pastor of Giinsbach, when he retired from his professional work as an engineer and settled in his native village. He left it at his death to the parish for a manse. During the war
old,
all sides
manse, which was
buildings, for
the cellars with their massive walls, built about the
middle of the nineteenth century, served the whole population as a place of shelter from bombs. father became with advancing From that time age more and more vigorous. As a man of seventy he
my
looked after his flock during the war under the fire of the enemy's guns, and to-day, well on in the 'seventies,
he is approaching the fiftieth year of his ministry in Gunsbach. My mother was during the war knocked down and killed by army horses on the road between Giinsbach and Weier in the Miinstertal. As time went on we were saved from the worst of our
money-worries, for a distant relative of my mother's, who had no children, left us her small fortune, and during
my last years at school there was again unclouded sunshine over my home. We were all in good health, and
harmony together. The relations between parents and children were ideal, thanks to the wise
lived in the closest
59

understanding with which the former treated us, even in our follies. They trained us for freedom. Never,
.
after I
had abandoned my unfortunate disputatiousness, was there in our home any tension between the father and his grown-up son, that thing which spoils the happiness of so many families. My father was my dearest
.
friend.
We felt it as a special kindness of our parents that they

allowed us to bring home with us in the holidays some of our school-friends till the house was full. How my mother
could get through the work that was thus caused a mystery to me!
is still
[THE RIGHT TO HAPPINESS]

The thought
that I
had been granted such a
specially
happy youth was ever in my mind; I felt it even as something oppressive, and ever more clearly there presented itself to me the question whether this happiness was a
thing that I might accept as a matter of course. Here, then, was the second great experience of my life, viz. this
question about the right to happiness. As an experience it joined itself to that other one which had accompanied
me from my childhood up; I mean my deep sympathy with the pain which prevails in the world around us. These two experiences slowly melted into one another,
and thence came definiteness to my interpretation of life as a whole, and a decision as to the future of my own
life
in particular.
60
LATER EDUCATION
became steadily clearer to me that I had not the inward right to take as a matter of course my happy youth, my good health, and my power of work. Out of the depths
It
of
my
within
we
feeling of happiness there grew up gradually me an understanding of the saying of Jesus that must not treat our lives as being for ourselves alone.
Whoever is spared personal pain must feel himself called

to help in diminishing the pain of others. must all carry our share of the misery which lies upon the world.
We
Darldy and confusedly this thought worked in me, and sometimes it left me, so that I breathed freely and fancied
become completely the lord of my own life. But the little cloud had risen above the horizon. I could, indeed, sometimes look away and lose sight of it, but it was growing nevertheless; slowly but
I
once more that
was
to
unceasingly
it
grew, and at last

still
it
The
decision
was made when
hid the whole sky. I was one and twenty.
In that year, while

life till I
a student, I resolved to devote
was thirty to the office of preacher, to science, my and to music. If by that time I should have done what I hoped in science and music, I would take a path of immediate service as man to my fellow men. What this path should be I counted on learning from circumstances
during the interval. The idea of devoting myself to the work of medical help in the colonies was not the first form that the resolution took. This one
emerged after plans for giving other kinds of help had occupied my mind, and had been given
up for the most varied reasons.

61
Finally a chain of circum-

stances pointed out to
sufferers
me
the road which led to the

Africa.
from leprosy and sleeping-sickness in
[LEAVING SCHOOL]
When in 1893, in my nineteenth year, I was preparing
for the final examination at the
Gymnasium,
was only
beginning darkly to suspect that ideas were at work within me to the control of which I should one day have
to submit.
The
claims of the immediate future were for
the present supreme. I was looking forward with joy to the life of a University student, and I boldly deter-
mined to take up as my subjects philosophy, theology, and music. My excellent health, which made it possible
for
me
to stand the necessary night-work, did enable
me
to carry out this intention, work than I had calculated.
but
it
was much harder
leaving examination at the Gymnasium I passed satisfactorily, though not so well as people expected,
My
and the cause of that was the trousers I wore on the occasion! I possessed a black frock-coat which I had inherited from an old relative of my mother's, but I had no black trousers. For economy's sake I would not have a pair made, but asked my uncle to let me wear his for the examination. He was much shorter than I was, and fairly stout, while I was tall and thin; however, we thought it would be all right for this one occasion. Unfortunately I omitted to try beforehand how they fitted, and when
68
LATER EDUCATION
on the morning
scarcely
of the examination I
put them on, they
ened
shoes, although I had lengthbraces with my string; moreover, between them and the waistcoat there was a yawning gap. How they
fitted
came down to my
me behind I refrain from describing! My appearance among my fellow-examinands produced unrestrained merriment. They turned me round
and round so that they might look at every side of me, and our solemn entry into the examination room was
anything but comme ilfaut, because we could not control our laughter. When our masters at the table saw the
trousers, they too
were amused, though the stern School Commissioner from Strassburg his name was Albrecht who was to preside, failed to see what it was all about.
he could see was that I was the cause of the ill-timed merriment, and he made some severe remarks on our irreverent behaviour in general and on myself in particAll
ular.
the conceit of the supposed buffoon, he undertook to examine me himself in all the
In order to take
down
subjects except in mathematics, of
which he confessedly
knew
Some friendly nothing. gave looks from the Principal encouraged me, and I did my best, but many of the questions from my stem vis-&-vis
a hard time.
got no answer, and again and again he shook his solemn head. He was especially annoyed that I was unable to
give him any accurate information about the way they beached the ships, as described by Homer, and as the other candidates knew very little more about it than I
did,
He
me
he denounced our ignorance as a serious defect in our culture. For my part I thought it a far greater defect
09

in our culture that we
were leaving the Gymnasium without knowing anything about astronomy or geology. The last subject of all was history, the Commissioner's own special subject. In ten minutes he seemed a different
person! His indignation melted away, and finally, instead of questioning me, he discussed with me the differences between the colonizing efforts of the Greeks and
those of the Romans.
In his
results,
final address, after
the announcement of the
he mentioned the pleasure I had given him over the history, and a very real compliment, suggested by him, adorns my leaving-certificate, which was otherwise a very ordinary one. Thus everything ended satisfactorily.
It
was a hard thing
to say
goodbye
to
my
uncle and
aunt, but they lived for a good many years after that, and I had opportunities of showing them how dear they
were
to
me.
When my uncle, from
considerations of age,
gave up
also
burg, where they
his post at Miilhausen, they removed to Strassrest in the S. Gallus cemetery, as does
my uncle Albert, who was preacher at S.
Nicholas's
Church.
64
CHAPTER FIVE

[
GRATITUDE ]
When
I
look back upon
my
by the thought of the
number
early days I am stirred of people whom I have to
thank for what they gave me or for what they were to me. At the same time I am haunted by an oppressive consciousness of the little gratitude I really showed them while I was young. How many of them have said farewell to life without my having made clear to them what it meant to me to receive from them so much kindness or so much care! Many a time have I, with a feeling of shame, said quietly to myself over a grave the words which my mouth ought to have spoken to the departed, while he was still in the flesh. For all that, I think I can say with truth that I am not
ungrateful, I did occasionally wake up out of that youthful thoughtlessness which accepted as a matter of course
all
the care and kindness that I experienced from others, and I believe I became sensitive to my duty in this matter did to the prevalence of suffering in just as early as I twentieth year, and even later the world. But down to
my
still,
I did not exert myself sufficiently to express the
65

gratitude which was really in my heart. I valued too low the pleasure felt at receiving real proofs of gratitude. Often, too, shyness prevented me from expressing the
gratitude that I really
felt.
result of this experience with myself I refuse to think that there is as much ingratitude in the world as
As a
commonly maintained: I have never interpreted the parable of the Ten Lepers to mean that only one was
is
grateful. All the ten, surely,
were
grateful,
but nine of
them hurried home
first, so as to greet their friends and attend to their business as soon as possible, intending to
go to Jesus soon afterwards and thank him. But things turned out otherwise; they were kept at home longer
than they meant to be, and in the meanwhile Jesus was put to death. One of them, however, had a disposition which made him act at once as his feelings bade him; he
his soul
sought out the person who had helped him, and refreshed with the assurance of his gratitude.
In the same way we ought all to make an effort to act on our first thoughts and let our unspoken gratitude find expression. Then there will be more sunshine in the world, and more power to work for what is good. But as concerns ourselves we must all of us take care not to
adopt as part of our theory of life all people's bitter sayings about the ingratitude in the world. A great deal of
water
is flowing underground which never comes up as a spring. In that thought we may find comfort. But we ourselves must try to be the water which does find its
way
up;
we must become
a spring at which
men can
quench
their thirst for gratitude.
66
[INFLUENCE]
One other thing stirs me when I look back at my youthful days, viz. the fact that so
thing or were something to
many people gave me someme without knowing it Such
people, with whom I have, perhaps, never exchanged a word, yes, and others about whom I have merely
heard things by report, have had a decisive influence upon me; they entered into my life and became powers within me. Much that I should otherwise not have
felt so clearly or
done so
I
as
it
was, because
effectively was felt or done stand, as it were, under the
sway of these people. Hence I always think that we all live, spiritually, by what others have given us
in the significant hours of our
life.
These
significant
hours do not announce themselves as coming, but arrive unexpected. Nor do they make a great show of themselves; they pass almost unperceived. Often, indeed, their
significance comes home to us first as we look back, just as the beauty of a piece of music or of a landscape often
strikes us first in our recollection of
it.
Much
that has
become our own
in gentleness, modesty, kindness, willingness to forgive, in veracity, loyalty, resignation under we have seen or suffering, we owe to people in
whom
experienced these virtues at work, sometimes in a great matter, sometimes in a small. thought which had be-
come
I
act sprang into us like a spark,
and lighted a new
flame within us.
do not believe that we can put into anyone ideas which are not in him already. As a rule there are in every67
MEMOIBS OF CHILDHOOD AND YOUTH

one
all sorts of
good
ideas,
fire,
ready
like tinder.
it
But much
of this tinder catches
or catches
successfully, only
when it meets some flame or spark from outside, i.e. from some other person. Often, too, our own light goes out, and is rekindled by some experience we go through with a fellow-man. Thus we have each of us cause to think with deep gratitude of those who have lighted the flames within us. If we had before us those who have thus been a blessing to us, and could tell them how it came about,
they would be amazed to learn what passed over from
their life into ours.
Similarly, not
one of us knows what
effect his life
produces, and what he gives to others; that is hidden from us and must remain so, though we are often allowed
to see
some
little
fraction of
in
it,
so that
we may
is
not lose
courage. The way
which power works
a mystery.
[MUTUAL KNOWLEDGE]
After
tions
much more mystery in the relaof man to man than we generally recognise? None
all, is
there not
even
of us can truly assert that he really knows someone else, if he has lived with, him for years. Of that which
constitutes our inner life we can impart even to those most intimate with us only fragments; the whole of it we cannot give, nor would they be able to comprehend it. We wander through life together in a semi-darkness in which none of us can distinguish exactly the features
of his neighbour; only from time to time, through some experience that we have of aur companion, or through
68
some remark that he
passes he stands for a moment close to us, as though illumined by a flash of lightning. Then we see him as he really is, After that we again walk on
together in the darkness, perhaps for a long time, and try in vain to make out our fellow-traveller's features.
To this fact, that we

have to reconcile
are each a secret to the other,
ourselves.
we To know one another cannot
everything about each other; it means to feel mutual affection and confidence, and to believe in
to
mean
know
one another.
A man
must not
try to force his
way
into
it
the personality of another.
To
analyse others
unless
be
to help back to a sound mind someone who is in is a rude commencespiritual or intellectual confusion
is
ment, for there

has
its
a modesty of the soul which we must recognise, just as we do that of the body. The soul, too,
clothing of which we must not deprive it, and no one has a right to say to another: "Because we belong to each other as we do, I have a right to know all your
thoughts/' Not even a mother may treat her child in that way. All demands of that sort are foolish and unwhole-
some. In
it is
is the only valuable process; as as you much that stimulates. Impart only giving on the who are road can of your spiritual being to those
this
matter giving
with you, and accept as something precious what comes back to you from them.
was perhaps a result of my inherited reserve that from my youth up reverence for the personality of others was to me something natural and a matter of course. Since then I have become more and more confirmed in
It
this
view through seeing
how much
69
sorrow, pain, and

mutual estrangement come from people claiming the right to read the souls of others, as they might a book
that belonged to them,
and from wishing
to
know and
must all understand where they ought to believe. beware of reproaching those we love with want of confidence in us
into all
We
they are not always ready to let us look the corners of their heart. We might almost say
if
that the better
we
get to
know each
other, the
more
mystery
we see in each other. Only those who respect the personality of others can be of real use to them. I think, therefore, that no one should compel himself
to
show
to others
more
of his inner life than he feels
it
natural to show.
We
can do no more than
let others
judge for themselves what we inwardly and really are, and do the same ourselves with them. The one essential
thing
is
that
we
strive to
have
light in ourselves.
Our
strivings will
be recognised by
others,
and when people
have
light in themselves, it will shine out from them. Then we get to know each other as we walk together
in the darkness, without
each other's faces,
needing to pass our hands over or to intrude into each other's hearts.
RESERVE
If
V.
FREEDOM
reverence for the inner personality of others was a matter of course with me from my childhood up, I had,
on the other hand, much trouble in answering the question
how far in our
ordinary intercourse with others
we
70

should hold ourselves back, and
how
far
we
should
freely give ourselves. The two tendencies struggled within me, but up to the last year of my time at the Gym-
nasium the former was the stronger. My shyness held me back from showing as much interest in others as I really felt, and from giving them as much help and service as
inward impulse bade; and
strengthened by
in this habit of
mind
was
my
aunt's bringing
up
at Miilhausen.
deeply with the idea that reserve is of the essence of good breeding. Every kind of "for-
She impressed
I
me
wardness"
ought
she said) to learn to regard as a very
and I did make genuine efforts to avoid it. As time went on, however, I ventured to emancipate
serious fault,
myself somewhat from these rules about well-bred reserve.
They seemed to me to be like the rules

are, indeed, universally valid,
which
aside
of harmony, but are often swept
by the
living stream of music, I realised
more and
more
miss,
clearly how many opportunities of doing good we if we let ourselves be slavishly hemmed in by the
reserve which the conventional rules of social intercourse
expect us to practise. must, indeed, take care to be tactful, and not mix ourselves up uninvited in other people's business. On the other hand we must not forget the danger lurking in the
We
reserve which our practical daily life forces on us. cannot possibly let ourselves get frozen into regarding
We
everyone
we do
not
know
as
an absolute stranger.
No
man
is
his fellow-man.
ever completely and permanently a stranger tc Man belongs to man. Man has claims
arise
on man. Circumstances great or small may 71
which
make
tise in daily life,
impossible the aloofness which we have to pracand bring us into active relations with
as
each other,
men
to
men. The law
of reserve is con-
demned
be broken down by the claims of the heart, and thus we all get into a position where we must step
to
outside our aloofness,
and to one of our fellow-men become ourselves a man. Too often we let the opportunity
because the prevailing views about good breeding, politeness, and tact have robbed us of our power
slip by,
of independent action. Then we fail to give to others what we should like to give them, and what they long to have. Our human atmosphere is much colder than it
need
be, because we do not venture to give ourselves to others as heartily as our feelings bid us. I had the good fortune, when I was young, to meet a
for all the respect they paid to current social behaviour, had yet preserved their
few people who,

rules about
power
of
independent action.
for others, I
thus did
make my
actions as
saw what they gained courage enough to try to natural and hearty as my feelings
I
When
were, and the experience thus gained has prevented me from ever again bowing my neck under the rule of reserve. Now I try as well as I can to reconcile the politeness of the heart with that of society, though whether I always succeed I cannot tell. I can no more lay down
rules for producing such reconciliation than I can say when a musician must bow to the accepted rule of har-
mony, and when he may surrender himself to the spirit of music which stands outside and above all rules. But
I
have managed to learn
this: that
a defiance of current
72

rules, if dictated
purpose, is forwardness.
by the heart and made of deliberate seldom taken by others to be thoughtless
[FROM ENTHUSIASM TO
"RIPENESS"]
character and life are
The ideas which determine our

implanted childhood behind
are seized
in mysterious fashion.
us,
When we
are leaving
they begin to shoot out. When we by youth's enthusiasm for the good and the
and the fruit begins to set. In the development which follows the one really important thing is how much there still remains of the
true, they burst into flower,
fruit,
by The
the buds of which were put out in the tree of our life.
conviction that in after
as freely
life
its
spring-time
remain thinking
and
struggle to feeling as deeply as we
we must
did in our youth, has accompanied me on my road through life as a faithful adviser. Instinctively I have
taken care not to become what
is generally understood a by the term, man of ripe experience (ein reifer Mensch).
epithet "ripe" applied to persons always did, and does still, convey to me the idea of something depressing,
it, like musical discords, the words, impoverstunted ishment, growth, blunted feelings. What we are
The
hear with
usually invited to contemplate as "ripeness'* in a man is the resigning of ourselves to an almost exclusive use of
the reason.
One acquires it by copying others and getting

73

rid,
one by one, of the thoughts and convictions which were dear in the days of one's youth. We believed once in the victory of truth; but we do not now. We believed
in our
fellow-men;
we do
not now.
We
believed
were zealous for justice; in goodness; we do not now. trusted in the power of kindbut we are not so now.
We
We
ness and peaceableness;
we do
not now.
We
were
capable of enthusiasm; but we are not so now. To get through the shoals and storms of life more easily we have
lightened our craft, throwing overboard what we thought could be spared. But it was really our stock of food and
deprived ourselves; our craft is easier to manage, but we ourselves are in a decline.
I listened, in
drink of which
we
now
youth, to conversations between grown-up people through which there breathed a tone of sorrowful regret which oppressed the heart The
my
speakers looked back at the idealism and capacity for
enthusiasm of their youth as something precious to which they ought to have held fast, and yet at the same
time they regarded it as almost a law of nature that no one should be able to do so. This woke in me a dread
of having ever, even once, to look back on my own past with such a feeling; I resolved never to let myself be-
come subject to this tragic domination of mere reason, and what I thus vowed in almost boyish defiance I have
tried to carry out.
74
[IDEALISM]
Grown-up people reconcile themselves too willingly to a supposed duty of preparing young ones for the time when they will regard as illusion what now is an inspiration to heart and mind. Deeper experience of life, however, advises their inexperience differently. It exhorts them to hold fast, their whole life through, to the
thoughts which inspire them.
It is
through the idealism
of youth that man catches sight of truth, and in that idealism he possesses a wealth which he must never ex-
change for anything else. We must all be prepared to find that life tries to take from us our belief in the good and
the true, and our enthusiasm for them, but we need riot surrender them. That ideals, when they are brought into contact with reality, are usually crushed by facts does not
mean
that they are bound from the very beginning to capitulate to the facts, but merely that our ideals are not
strong enough; and they are not strong enough because they are not pure and strong and stable enough in ourselves.
The power
of ideals
is
incalculable.
We see no power
in a drop of water.
and be turned
steam,
it
to ice,
But let it get into a crack in the rock and it splits the rock; turned into
drives the pistons of the most powerful engines. Something has happened to it which makes active and
effective the
power that is latent in it.
So it is with ideals. Ideals are thoughts. So long as they merely as thoughts, the power latent in them remains ineffective, however great the enthusiasm, and
exist
75

however strong the conviction with which the thought is held. Their power only becomes effective when they are taken up into some refined human personality. The ripeness, then, that our development must aim at is one which makes us simpler, more truthful, purer, more peace-loving, meeker, kinder, more sympathetic. That is the only way in which we are to sober down with age. That is the process in which the soft iron of youthful
idealism hardens into the steel of a full-grown idealism
*
which can never be lost. The most valuable knowledge we can have is how to deal with disappointments. All acts and facts are a prodi'
**
uct of spiritual power, the successful ones of power which is strong enough; the unsuccessful ones of power
which is too weak. Does my behaviour in respect of love effect nothing? That is because there is not enough love in me. Am I powerless against the untruthf ulness and the lies which have their being all around me? The reason is that I myself am not truthful enough. Have I to watch dislike and illwill carrying on their sad game? That means that I myself have not yet completely laid aside small-mindedness and envy. Is my love of peace misunderstood and scorned? That means that I am not yet
sufficiently peace-loving.
The
great secret of success
is
to
go through
life
as a
man who never gets used up. That is possible for him who never argues and strives with men and facts, but in
all experience retires upon himself, and looks for the ultimate cause of things in himself. No one who is always striving to refine his character
76

he experiences in himself the power of the ideas of the good and the true. When he sees far too little of the external results at which he is aiming, he knows nevertheless that he is producing
of his idealism, for
can ever be robbed
as much as his character allows; it is only that success has not yet begun, or that it is as yet hidden from him. Where
there
is
power, there some result or other is produced.
No
ray of sunlight is ever lost, but the green which it wakes into existence needs time to sprout, and it is not always
granted to the sower to live to see the harvest. All work

that is worth anything is done in faith. The knowledge of life, therefore, which
we grown-ups
have
to pass on to the younger generation will not be expressed thus: "Reality will soon give way before your
but "Grow into your ideals, so that life can never rob you of them." If all of us could become what we were at fourteen, what a different place the world would be!
ideals,"
As one who tries to remain youthful in his thinking and feeling, I have struggled against facts and experience on behalf of belief in the good and the true. At the present
time
when violence,
clothed in
life,
dominates the world
more
cruelly than it ever has before, I still remain convinced that truth, love, peaceableness, meekness, and
kindness are the violence which can master

lence.
all
other vio-
The world will be number of men with purity
theirs as soon as ever a sufficient
of heart, with strength, and and live out the thoughts of love with perseverance think and truth, of meekness and peaceableness.
it
All ordinary violence produces its own limitations, for calls forth an answering violence which sooner or later
77

becomes its equal or its superior. But kindness works simply and perseveringly; it produces no strained relations which prejudice its working; strained relations which already exist it relaxes. Mistrust and misunderstanding it puts to flight, and it strengthens itself by calling forth answering kindness. Hence it is the furthestreaching and the most effective of all forces.
All the kindness
which a man puts out
into the
world
works on the heart and the thoughts of mankind, but
we
are so foolishly indifferent that we are never in earnest in the matter of kindness. want to topple a great load over, and yet will not avail ourselves of a lever which
We
would multiply our power a hundred-f old. There is an unmeasured depth of truth in
that strange
saying of Jesus: "Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth" (St. Matt v, 5).
78
124938

Memoirs of Childhhood and Youth - Albert Schweitzer

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

Memoirs of Childhhood and Youth - Albert Schweitzer

Uploaded by

Document Information

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

Memoirs of Childhhood and Youth - Albert Schweitzer

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

413-3 (3) 92 Schweitzer Memoirs of childhocx and youth 1331367 $1,75

be issued only on presentation

for two weeks.

cost of over-due books 2c a day plus

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY

BOSTON - CHICAGO ATLANTA * SAN FBANCISOO

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY OF CANADA, LIMITED

[ORIEL COLLEGE, OXFORD]

FIRST AMERICAN EDITION

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

TWO; HOME AND HOLIDAYS

EDUCATION: SECOND STAGE

RETROSPECT AND REFLECTIONS

was born in the

houses the police.

child, following a sister

was from Kaysersberg

that a famous mediaeval

preacher took his surname,

Geiler von Kaysersberg

(1445-1510) who used

to preach in Strassburg- Catheborn at Schaffhausen, in Switzerland, but

MEMOIRS OF CHILDHOOD AND YOUTH

father left Kaysers-

settled at Giinsbaeh, in the Miinstertal, as

my mother's home-district, for

the daughter of Pastor Schillinger, of Miihlbach, higher up the valley.

at Giinsbach I passed a delightful childhood with

parents by a premature death.

My first recollection is of seeing the

or four years old, I

devil! As soon was allowed to go

or sang too loud.

gave quite a distinctive tone

was only much

childish piety. It at school a fairly

into the pulpit.

MEMOIRS OF CHILDHOOD AND YOUTH

me to stop, but in order to be interesting

has happened to me!

childhood was the sacristan and

the things needed for

were to be sung and to get baptisms, he would make a grab at

in the Bible a picture of the sacristan had learnt about

Moses with horns. my worry I do not

took every opportunity

could of waiting about in

ever came; there were only horses and donkeys

MEMOIRS OF CHILDHOOD AND YOUTH

the Crimea, and

belonged to the class of dry humourists,

not long afterwards.

hands shook with excitement when she handed him the

MEMOIRS OF CHILDHOOD AND YOUTH

behind him and

his donkey-cart, shouting:

Mausche!" The most daring of them used

but good-natured smile. This smile overpowered me.

From Mausche it was