Tuesday, January 13, 2009

Happy birthday, Albert Schweitzer

As regular readers may remember, I like to honour the birthday of Albert Schweitzer on January 14 1875 by remembering him in my Historical Jesus class as close as I can to the occasion. I will therefore be talking about the man today, and I hope to use a few clips from the web, which I will also blog here:

First, there is a short one minute celebration of Schweitzer's life on History.com.

Second, a remarkable French piece featuring a fairly lengthy interview with Schweitzer (in French) from dailymotion.com: Video Docteur Albert Schweitzer. It is apparently from 1961 and the quality is very good.



At about eight minutes in, you can watch the eighty-six year old Schweitzer playing the piano. One delightful thing about this footage is that there is a lot of humour -- Schweitzer comes across as a warm, friendly and funny person. Watch all the way to the end to see him waving at the camera as it departs in a boat.

If you would like to see film of the younger Schweitzer, you will have to make do with a reconstruction. This short clip from the Young Indiana Jones features Schweitzer at the piano, while Indiana Jones surveys his books, including Paul and his Interpreters:



Here is a second clip from the same episode, with Schweitzer on a boat with Indiana:



Here is a third clip, on a boat talking about "reverence for life":



And finally, there is a clip of Schweitzer receiving his honorary degree at Cambridge in 1955 from British Pathe News; you can download this in reasonable quality for free onto your computer, or you can pay for a high resolution version.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Bravo. We all stand in his tall shadow - you reminded me to dig out a collection I have of old copies of Life Magazine and such - I am just old enough to recall, as a child, the passing of this remarkable man.

Anonymous said...

Thanks for sharing these videos. Schweitzer remains one of my heroes.

Dim Lamp