Schweitzer, the Colonial? A Re-Evaluation of the Source Material

Schweitzer, the Colonial? A Re-Evaluation of the Source Material _______________________* Summary Albert Schweitzer (1875-1965) was a humanitarian and scholar, whose medical mission in Africa drew both praise and criticism in academic discourses. At issue is Schweitzer’s alleged role in the colonial exploitation of the African people under his medical care. This characterization of Schweitzer as a colonial “despot” has as its origin the imaginative biographical sketches by academics and journalists in his own time. This article examines the impact of those source materials on the representations of Schweitzer in academia today. It is argued that, while these first-generation source materials cannot be considered reliable, Schweitzer exhibited unacceptably colonial attitudes when evaluated with postcolonial critique. New ethical questions are then raised, together with a call for a fuller investigation of Schweitzer’s place in central African history. Keywords: Albert Schweitzer; Colonialism, Postcolonialism; French Equatorial Africa; Gabon; James George Frazer. 1. Introduction In contemporary academic discourses, it is common to see the Alsatian polymath and humanitarian Albert Schweitzer described as being both colonial and patriarchal in his dealings with the patients under his care in the region of French Equatorial Africa which would later become the nation of Gabon. Often this characterization is used as counterpoint for the opposing portrayals of him as a selfless doctor who devoted over fifty years of his life to people who otherwise would have lacked access to modern medical care. The portrayal of Schweitzer as a “patriarchal colonial” thus serves to temper and contextualize the positive accounts that try to make Schweitzer into a moral hero or modern saint: any good he did for the people of Africa, it is argued, must be measured against the harsh colonial reality of these early twentieth century humanitarian missions. The result is a most curious divergence in the academic record that has Schweitzer personifying the best and the worst of humanity simultaneously. There is more than a little difficulty in trying to resolve the contradiction he was said to embody. One solution is to juxtapose the two depictions to arrive at a nuanced synthesis. A leading advocate of this, let us call it, balanced position on Schweitzer’s legacy is Ruth Harris. She writes, in thoughtful analysis that, despite all the philanthropic work Schweitzer did in Africa, in retrospect, his “desire to live in a world of his own making now seems a morally precarious, if not naïve, position” when considering the colonial context of his hospital.1 As a result, she says that his medical mission was little more than an expression his own egocentric and patriarchal aims—becoming, in the words of Harris, “a colony within a colony.”2 Other advocates on the balanced position will be discussed further later on in this analysis. Collectively, they represent recent efforts to reverse the characterizations of the negative 1 2 Ruth Harris, ‘The Allure of Albert Schweitzer’, History of European Ideas, 40/6 (2014): 824. Harris, ‘The Allure of Albert Schweitzer’, κ05. 2 portrayals that frame this present study. That being said, it will be argued that this “correction” has not been fully achieved. For example, there are those who portray Schweitzer one-sidedly, including some who would cast him in villainous light. For example, Nina Berman concluded that “Schweitzer saw Gabon as a fertile ground for his paternalistic ideas. In Lambarene he enacted the life of an enlightened ruler, with African serfs, living an agrarian and patriarchal eighteenth-century vision. Schweitzer looked for an empire of his own, and he found it in Africa.”3 I will refer to this kind of negative characterization as the despot position. On the other side, there are many who present Schweitzer a moral exemplar despite the many criticisms, particularly when considering his Nobel Peace Prize and tireless public campaign against atomic and nuclear weapons in furtherance of world peace. The recent study by Giorgos Papageorgiou, for example, goes as far as to parallel Schweitzer with Hierarch-Confessor Saint Luke (Voino-Yasenetsky) of Crimea and Simferopol (1877-1961). Both, according to Papageorgiou, were unmercenary surgeons whose “motives were questioned by many,” and who suffered defamation and slander for the sake of a Christian life.4 Yet, he says, both steadfastly witnessed the faith by despising worldly careers to live only for “service to God and their fellowmen.”5 Let us call this the hero position. My investigation here is on how the academic record became so divergent in the first place, such that such these wildly contrasting representations of the life and legacy of Schweitzer are possible. It is not a matter, as I will show, of personal bias or unconscious motivation by the 3 Nina Berman, Impossible Missions? German Economic, Military, and Humanitarian Efforts in Africa, University of Nebraska Press (Lincoln, 2004), 81. 4 Giorgos K. Papageorgiou, Ά ο ου αία α ο Α ο Σ - α ύο ων [St. Luke of Crimea and Albert Schweitzer: Comparison of Two Great Men], Ἐπ οφή Ἐ ό (σáfplio, 2016), 15. Translated by author. 5 Papageorgiou, St. Luke of Crimea and Albert Schweitzer, 16. Translated by author. 3 part of present-day researchers, nor is the solution to this problem simply a matter of choosing a new position that tries anew to balance the vitriol with the hero-worship. Something much more fundamental is at issue. Both the despot and balanced positions are reliant on the works of those academics and journalists who knew or visited Schweitzer personally. These “first generation” source materials influenced all the secondary works that followed, resulting in the curious divergence in how Schweitzer is represented today. These source materials, as will be shown below, are inherently problematic and contradictory—a situation that has forced academics to be selective to support particular research claims for either the hero, despot, or balanced position. The aim of this article is to show why a new beginning is required, one that is not reliant on the interpretative claims of these problematic first-generation sources. Only then can an accurate picture of Schweitzer and his place in African history be established. Many readers will have come to this question with definite opinions as to where Schweitzer should be situated on the hero-to-despot spectrum of possibility. For this reason, it will be helpful to begin with a snapshot of the findings to which this presentation will lead. It is my conclusion that Schweitzer was indeed colonial, but not in any of the ways discussed in the secondary literature about him. Rather, Schweitzer was colonial only in the sense that postcolonial theory would necessarily characterize him. What I mean, put simply, is that the anthropological and ethnographic works of the 19th and early 20th Century reveal certain biases that are no longer considered acceptable in academia. This generation of scholars invariably reflect certain attitudes that colored the perception of their human research subjects. Specifically, following the pioneering work James George Frazer (1854-1941), these scholars tended to look upon non-European people as being superstitious and 4 unenlightened—or, to use Frazer’s distinctive and uncomfortably outmoded academic term, as being primitives. In this, Schweitzer not only personified these colonial attitudes, but perhaps exceeded many of his generation with distinctively ardent scientific views on religion and traditional culture, seeing them as comparatively inferior and unenlightened when compared to his own. This article hopes clarify who Schweitzer was, and what he represented in African history. However, a full and final determination about his legacy cannot be arrived at in the space available; this article can only signal the need for such a fuller study to take place, and outline parameters for how a new study should proceed. To this end, I examine only the accounts of the most influential first-hand witnesses who presented Schweitzer as a despot, and reveal how this has impacted those who advocate for a balanced position today.6 It is argued that these source materials have distorted our overall understanding of Schweitzer in ways that are not helpful or accurate. My investigation also raises certain new ethical questions about Schweitzer’s patriarchal behavior and attitudes in Africa. But first, since the word “colonial” is rife with many negative connotations, each suggesting a particular attitude or behavioral trait in My focus is on first-hand accounts of Schweitzer’s hospital, a decision that excludes certain prominent voices on Schweitzer’s relation to colonialism. Foremost is W.E.B. Du Bois, who is widely considered to be a critic of Schweitzer. A plain-reading of Du Bois (1945) however shows that, while indeed he was a formidable opponent of colonialism, he praised Schweitzer: “That this man [Schweitzer] was their friend and benefactor there was no question. If more people were like him, not only Africa but Asia; not only far-off lands but near-by slums, might be raised to decency, efficiency, and real civilization … Since, however, he did not comprehend this, and since nothing in his surroundings brought him any such clear comprehension, he deserves every tribute that we can give him for trying to do his mite, his little pitiful mite [cf., Luke 21: 1-4], which in a sense was but a passing gesture, but perhaps in the long run will light that fire in Africa which will cleanse that continent and the world”—W.E.B. Du Bois, ‘The Black Man and Albert Schweitzer’, The Albert Schweitzer Jubilee Book, edited by A.A. Roback, Sci-Art Publishers (Cambridge, 1945). For a thoughtful treatment of Du Bois from the balanced position, see Michael Thate, ‘An Anachronism in the African Jungleς Reassessing Albert Schweitzer’s African δegacy’, A Life in Parts: Albert Schweitzer in Thought and Action, edited by James Carleton Paget and Michael Thate, Syracuse University Press (2016). 6 5 the mind of the reader, it is necessarily to specify exactly what is meant when I claim that Schweitzer was indeed colonial. 2. Science versus Superstition Schweitzer, as with many in his generation, betray the telltale influence of Frazer’s pioneering anthropological theories. Frazer is the one who created the enduring image of an evolutionary view for culture. According to him, the earliest people in the Paleolithic had believed in such things as magic and animism to explain the phenomena of their social and worldly experiences. Later, Frazer argued, true agrarian societies evolved from these hunter and gatherer origins; their sedentary lifeways and agrarian economies allowed for the development of textual-based religions, complete with dedicated priesthoods who used rituals and other religious practices to bring society into harmonious relationship with a claimed metaphysical reality of gods and goddesses. Finally, he claimed, European societies evolved to embrace science, and thereafter give up all belief in myth and metaphysical realities. This was the advent of modernity, and it is the pinnacle of his evolutionary hierarchy. Modern people, he claimed, rely only on technology and scientific advancement to guide their lives. The rest of the world however, according to Frazer, still languished in mere superstition, having yet to evolve to embrace the scientific worldview. Frazer, a true heir of the Enlightenment, wrote of non-European people very condescendingly, saying that “the very idea of science is lacking in his undeveloped mind.”7 Because of Frazer, scientifically trained anthropologists and ethnographers of the 19th and early 20th Century (that is, prior to postcolonial critique) tended to see traditional cultures as if they were trapped in a “time capsule” that reflected how humans lived and believed before the Enlightenment; in other words, they invariably saw their research subjects as primitives who 7 James George Frazer, The Golden Bough: A Study of Magic and Religion, Oxford Paperbacks (2009), 20; emphasis added. 6 believed strange and exotic things like magic and animism. This is not to say that their research was done maliciously, or that these scholars were consciously aware of being condescending toward other cultures. Most often, their only motivations were intellectual curiosity and a benevolent appreciation of their distinctiveness. Yet, as benign as this may seem, it still betrays that these people were invariably seen as “other” and “exotic.” This attitude is no longer considered acceptable today. Traditional societies are just as modern as those of the so-called First World, even though do not possess the latest technologies that characterize Western life. They are modern in the sense there is no time capsule: these are contemporary people, and there is no evolutionary divide the separates them from the rest of the world, only a technological and ideological one. Accordingly, academia has rejected Frazer’s theories on the origin of religion, and now proceeds as nonjudgmentally as possible—which is to say, comparatively. Today, researchers employ such methodologies as ethno-hermeneutics to reduce perspectival biases and “attempts to locate the scholar and the people under study in each their own network of discourses, traditions, texts and meanings in the context of their social and intellectual circumstances.”8 The aim is to engage with these cultures as equals who are exchanging culturally-specific ideas through respectful dialogue—a necessary undertaking that can still pose certain insurmountable challenges.9 Armin Geertz, ‘Ethnohermeneutics and worldview analysis in the study of Hopi Indian religion,’ Numen 50.3 (2003): 309–348; 315. 9 Paldam, for example, documents a case where ethnographic research contradicted certain ancestral narratives within the Chumash First σations community, leading to irresolvable difficulties: “These results immediately created tensions among both Indians [the Chumash] and scholars and initiated an irresolvable debate on whether ethnic authenticity should be determined by blood levels or by experience-based self-identification.”—see Ella Paldam, ‘Postmodern Critiques Still Challenge the Study of Religion,’ Theory and Method in the Study of Religion, edited by Aaron Hughes, Russell McCutcheon, and Kocku von Stuckrad, Brill (Boston, 2013), 270. The point to be taken is that science and cultural narratives can sometimes come into conflict, which is a situation Schweitzer would also confront. 8 7 Frazer himself, it must be observed, knew that his theories may be subjected to unknown biases: “In the last analysis magic, religion, and science are nothing but theories of thought; and as science has supplanted its predecessors, so it may hereafter be itself superseded by some more perfect hypothesis, perhaps by some totally different way of looking at the phenomena—of registering the shadows on the screen—of which we in this generation can form no idea.”10 This has indeed come to pass with the emergence of postcolonialism, which has revealed the flaws of looking at contemporary cultures in this condescending way. Yet, it may be that even their invaluable insights, in time, will come to be seen as limited and indicative of a particularly historical attitude. Undoubtedly, there will be scholars decades from now will look upon all these discourses as products of early 21st Century academic expectations. But what that new theoretical worldview will be, we cannot say, just as Frazer cautioned. Notwithstanding, when Schweitzer is accused of being colonial toward the indigenous cultures of Gabon, he was not being criticized with postcolonial critique over theoretical biases. Instead, it is alleged that Schweitzer somehow represented, or even personally exemplified in his moral character, something of the colonial project that sought to keep the African territories weak and dependent upon the occupying European powers. Thus, it is claimed, if he was a humanitarian at all, it was as a misbegotten one who did more harm than good with respect to ultimate self-determined betterment of the African people. With this in mind, the actual case against Albert Schweitzer can be examined, beginning with the characterizations by biographers and essayists of his own generation. Several influential figures would emerge, each developing disparate images of a despotic Schweitzer. The critical examination that follows reveals why advocates of the balanced position will always miss the 10 Frazer, The Golden Bough, 624. 8 mark in trying to arrive at an accurate image of his legacy in Africa when carrying the counterweight of these unreliable sources. 3. The Myth of the Colonial Tyrant Robert Payne was a renowned English-born author and professor of English literature. His book, published in 1957, is now out-of-print. It was the first major biographical work on Schweitzer, and with it, came the myth of a colonial Schweitzer.11 It is a curious and sensational biography on Schweitzer, most notable for comparing him to one of history’s most notorious and ruthless mass-murders, Joseph Stalin. “To compare Schweitzer with Stalin is to compare the utmost good with the utmost evil, but in these regions opposites meet, or at least they obey the same laws.”12 This set the tone of the biography, and it became the precedent for all subsequent biographical works that cast Schweitzer as something more sinister than a simple humanitarian. The comparison to Stalin has its basis in a bacillary dysentery epidemic that ravaged French Equatorial Africa in the mid-1920s. It trapped the people in a perpetual cycle of death and starvation. The consequences were tragic because, during the rainy season, the people became infected from drinking untreated water, leaving them too weak with chronic dysentery to plant crops. This lead to food shortages in the dry season, resulting in malnutrition that left them even more vulnerable to dysentery the following rainy season. It was an unending cycle of infection, starvation, and death. Schweitzer found himself powerless to redress it since he lacked the medicines, treatment facilities, and nursing personnel to treat all the infected.13 Exasperating the tragedy was that the local people had no scientific knowledge about disease vectors, and would not boil water before drinking it, even though Schweitzer warned 11 Robert Payne, The Three Worlds of Albert Schweitzer, Nelson (New York, 1957). Payne, The Three Worlds, 239. 13 Payne, The Three Worlds, 157. 12 9 them to do so. This situation is no different today when, after natural disasters, we hear of people dying of cholera from drinking water that seems safe to all outward appearances but is, in reality, infected with microscopic pathogens. The same was true for this part of Africa in the 1920s, and Schweitzer could not stop the people from drinking untreated water, regardless of his constant pleas. The concept of invisible pathogens was simply unimaginable with respect to traditional medical knowledge—worse, the recommendation to boil water in a tropical climate, and then allowing it to cool before drinking it, was both counterintuitive and inconvenient. The cycle of infection and death thus continued unabatedly. Schweitzer’s frustration eventually rolled over onto the Gabonese, causing him to condescendingly complain about their “sheer idiocy.”14 He then took what would prove to be an exceedingly controversial step for a humanitarian. Schweitzer, who had served in the German army, assumed command as if this were a military hospital, and started mandating medical precautions and overseeing their implementation in ways that Payne would liken to the dictatorial style of Stalin. It saved lives, and stopped the epidemic. But it was also an image that many find disquieting considering the colonial history of the Congo. Even though taking charge in this way is highly problematic from our perspective, it should be noted the people of the region welcomed Schweitzer’s new authoritarian persona. They began to acknowledge him as something akin to a tribal chief, going as far as to call him “Papa pour nous” [a father for us—alternately, our Papa] throughout his life.15 And while 14 Payne, The Three Worlds, 158. James Brabazon, Albert Schweitzer: A Biography, second Edition, Syracuse University Press (2000), 497. This title was not a posthumous honour. For example, in 1926 there came a man named σ’Tsama who was suffering from an advanced case of sleeping sickness. The wasting effects of this disease had “reduced [him] to a [living] skeleton”—Albert Schweitzer, More from the Primeval Forest, Fontana Books (London, 1960), 137. Fortunately, Schweitzer had in stock a powerful new drug called tryparsamide. It saved his life, though it took many months of treatment. Once it was time for him to be discharged, σ’Tsama asked to stay as a labourer saying, “The Doctor is [now] my father … and the hospital is [now] my village”—see Schweitzer, More from the Primeval Forest, 138. 15 10 Schweitzer’s new authoritarianism helped ensure the continued efficient operation of the medical mission longer after the crisis had passed, he knew it was a controversial decision. Schweitzer would write, prophetically as it turned out, that “it seemed to me to be a hard and unnatural position to take up, as it does to every one in Europe who reads or hears the same.”16 This would indeed come pass with Payne’s biography, which brought this image of Schweitzer to the public with a sensational comparison to the murderous Stalin. Ironically, Payne was not criticizing Schweitzer by comparing him to Stalin. Instead, he portrayed Schweitzer as a tragic hero who could have saved the colonial enterprise in Africa— rather than being too colonial, he saw him as insufficiently colonial. Because of this, he writes, Schweitzer failed to stop the tide of nationalism that would see political independence for the new nations. “σow at last they have acquired guns of their own and they are determined to be rulers of their own land and to free Africa from colonialism. The revolt of Africa has begun. Today Africa is in flames. From one end of the continent to the other the fire blazes, and it is too late to put it out.”17 Schweitzer’s hospital, he believes, “represented the path that colonialism might have followed to success.”18 Regrettably, he goes on to say, “With a thousand more Lambarenes [sic] there might have been no revolt of Africa against the West.”19 But this did not come to pass, and so he says that Schweitzer must be regarded as “the symbol of the Africa that might have been, before the terrorists emerged with their guns.”20 Hines Mabika, a medical historian at the University of Bern, questions whether Schweitzer should be seen as an African Chief figure since his medical mission does “fit” with a typical village setting—found in “The Visionary, Controversial, Albert Schweitzer,” which aired on CBC Radio for the series Ideas with Paul Kennedy on April 17, 2013 (http://www.cbc.ca/radio/ideas/pastepisodes/2013/april). However, as this report from Schweitzer’s journals indicates, Schweitzer was indeed seen by many as “our Papa” in this novel setting of the medical mission. 16 Albert Schweitzer, On the Edge of the Primeval Forest, translated by C.T. Campion (Macmillan), 96. 17 Payne, The Three Worlds, 12. 18 Payne, The Three Worlds, 25. 19 Payne, The Three Worlds, 25. 20 Payne, The Three Worlds, 27. 11 It is a most curious assessment, revealing that the comparison to Stalin was not meant unfavorably. In his opinion, this is exactly what Africa needed, but Schweitzer could not fulfill this role since he was too narrowly focused on helping others rather than geo-politics. Payne’s biography represents an eccentric editorial written at a time when colonialism was still seen as benign and appropriate. It was how Schweitzer’s name came to be associated with colonialism at all. The next significant biographical piece would carry this image further, making it indelible. But in another ironic twist, this time Schweitzer would be said to personify the sins of colonialism, rather than being its ill-fated savior. 4. In Quest of the Historical Schweitzer Perhaps the most influential article ever written about Schweitzer regarding his relations with the people of Africa is piece from a literary magazine penned by James Fernandez in 1964. 21 It has had a lasting influence in academia, becoming almost canonical, owing partly to the fact that is available through many library databases, and is therefore not at risk of going out of print, such as with Payne’s biography. Fernandez therefore has had a much longer and continuing influence than any other early work about Schweitzer. That being said, its quality in terms of offering a fair assessment is as dubious as the others, perhaps even worse in some respects. Fernandez begins with an epigraph from Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, a historical novella that documents the inhuman cruelty and nightmarish abuses in the Belgium Congo during the worst days of colonialism in the 19th century. Fernandez uses the literary allusion to set the tone and introduce the thesis of the article, which is blatantly iconoclastic. Fernandez makes no pretense at impartiality here. He claims from the onset that the elderly Schweitzer has become an embarrassment and scandal. Just like the nightmarish figure of Kurtz in Conrad’s James Fernandez, ‘The Sound of Bells in a Christian Country—In Quest of the Historical Schweitzer,’ The Massachusetts Review (Spring 1964): 537-562. 21 12 Heart of Darkness, Schweitzer, for him, is a living relic of a horrific colonial past that is now better buried and forgotten. Fernandez, in turn, sees it as his self-appointed place in history to become like the protagonist εarlow in Conrad’s novella and bring this tale of an aging colonial tyrant to public light. The genesis of the article, as he admits, was an uninvited visit made by him and his wife in 1960. Schweitzer, nevertheless, greeted them at the docks, offered the hospitality of facilities, then went off to tend his patients. Fernandez complains about this, saying Schweitzer only spent a few moments talking with him at the pier, and deems his concern for the hospital patients (that is, to the exclusion of catering to foreign guests) as patriarchal. 22 Later, he saw Schweitzer at the evening meal in the dinner hall with the other foreign guests, of which there were many. But again he complains that he had no opportunity to engage Schweitzer in conversation since there was too much competition for his attention in the crowded and noisy dining room. Fernandez further protests that, on the second day, he was seated by the dining staff too far away from the doctor for any chance to converse with him at all. The same anger is expressed on the third day when he and the other foreign guests were invited by Schweitzer after dinner to listen to a short sermon from the New Testament followed by hymn singing while he played for them at the piano, after which the elderly Schweitzer retired to bed without giving Fernandez a chance to speak with him one-on-one. Fernandez deems Schweitzer’s behavior as insulting, standoffish, and colonial.23 Fernandez in his frustration left the next day, and indignantly reports that Schweitzer was not present to see him off. Fernandez, who would go on to a distinguished academic career at the University of Chicago, was only 29 years old at that time, whereas Schweitzer was 85. The multigenerational 22 23 Fernandez, The Sound of Bells, 541f. Fernandez, The Sound of Bells, 546. 13 gap in age between them explains, in part, why Fernandez sees Schweitzer as part of the colonial world of the late nineteenth century and himself as part of the emerging postcolonial Zeitgeist of the 1960s.24 Thus, with only three days at the hospital, and never having a chance to interview him, Fernandez felt he was in a position to render a verdict on the elderly Schweitzer—and it is a damning one. “All the rest of the Europeans have come to Africa for profit, so the Doctor too must have come for the same motive. It might even be argued that he cures them for the singleminded colonial purpose of getting them the more quickly back to work.”25 There is no logic here, only uncritical inference. It is claimed that every foreigner in Africa came to exploit the people there—himself excluded, presumably—therefore, Schweitzer must be guilty of the same. Even more damningly, Fernandez suggests that, by the same reasoning, Schweitzer’s hospital was part of the colonial agenda aimed at exploiting African workers. Again, the logic here is dubious at best, and no mention is made that the majority of Schweitzer’s patients were not labourers, but women, children, the crippled, and the leprous. The article then takes a very strange turn. Fernandez concludes that the whole humanitarian mission was all a carefully planned conspiracy by Schweitzer that would take five tireless decades to come to fruition. “Schweitzer’s decision to go to Africa was taken in calculation of the greater attention it would bring him. Hence the burst of publicity he knew in the fifties was a portion of his egocentric plan.”26 Fernandez, however, neglects to mention that Schweitzer was world famous before he left for Africa, and that his decision to renounce academia pushed his name into relative obscurity for many decades thereafter. 24 Fernandez, The Sound of Bells, 549. Fernandez, The Sound of Bells, 555. 26 Fernandez, The Sound of Bells, 548. 25 14 Oddly, Fernandez also praises the cannibal cult of “human leopards” as a nativist religious movement that Schweitzer, with the outsider’s sense of superiority, had wrongly condemned as barbaric.27 The cult was not, however, an expression of indigenous opposition to the Christian missionary project, as Fernandez claims, but an aberrant from of shamanism that terrorized the countryside with murder and magical conscription. Rather than an expression of nativist religious sentiment, the Gabonese lived in constant fear of these cultists. It is also worth noting that, despite Fernandez’s polemic about Schweitzer’s standing in the way of “a continuing equatorial search for a relevant Jesus” through such nativist movements,28 Schweitzer had embraced African and Christian religious syncretism, and the content of Schweitzer’s African sermons reveals that he went out of his way to give Christianity a distinctively African expression.29 So too, here, there is no basis for the charges made against him by Fernandez. τne last point is worth mentioning. Schweitzer’s efforts at growing local produce to supply the hospital with food during wartime shortages was seen as suspicious by Fernandez. 27 Fernandez, The Sound of Bells, 538. Fernandez, The Sound of Bells, 529, cf. 538. 29 Steven εelamed and Antonia εelamed, ‘Albert Schweitzer in Africa,’ Culture, Ecology and Politics in Gabon’s Rainforest, edited by Michael Reed and James Barnes. Edwin Mellen Press (New York, 2003). In 1960, Schweitzer was asked by a village chief to baptize his infant daughter—see Edgar Berman, In Africa with Schweitzer, New Horizons Press (New Jersey, 1986), 159ff. Ordinarily, he would refrain, letting the actual missionaries perform all such services. But since he was asked personally, Schweitzer was more than happy to do so. What is noteworthy about the baptism is that we have an eye-witness who documented it all. The service itself was syncretic, combining elements of traditional religious practice with Christianity. It took place in the home of the chief. The observer, Dr. Berman, noticed a crucifix and magic amulet hanging side by side on the wall. Once the people were gathered, the service began with a non-Christian priest adorned with white and green body paint and a horned headdress. In this role, he represented an evil spirit. Three drummers and other percussion players with bamboo sticks set a rhythmic beat, and the pagan priest began a slow, shuffling, and stomping dance. The gathered people then commenced dancing as the “evil spirit” departed from the room—which evidently represented the exorcism element of a Christian baptism service. The pagan priest returned after a few moments with a different headdress, one with a reddish wooden mask carved to show a very serious expression. He now represented the good spirit who would oversee the child throughout her life. The dancing then slowed, and stopped. This was Schweitzer’s cue to begin the Christian baptism rite. Schweitzer did not have a problem with any of this. In fact, the whole experience was only found to be remarkable by the observer, Dr. Berman. For Schweitzer, it was just another day. Later, when they spoke about it, Schweitzer said his only concerns were that all such baptismal requests had to be completely voluntary, and that the person must truly believe in the Christian way of life. 28 15 “In this he is again the old colonial.”30 It would seem that he interpreted the agricultural efforts of Schweitzer as a private garden that reflected his own vainglorious egotism in some undefined way. However, the actual truth, as revealed in the Payne biography, is that the orchards were Schweitzer’s homespun prescription for helping patients recover from dysentery: everyone under his care was served fruit salads daily, consisting of oranges, grapefruit, tangerines, bananas, and even pineapples when they were in season. As Schweitzer was fond of saying, “Fruit is the best medicine in the tropics.”31 As such, it is rather difficult to detect a sinister colonial agenda here. 5. The Verdict on Schweitzer Gerald McKnight would offer his own assessment on Schweitzer and his legacy in Africa with a biography published in 1964.32 In it, McKnight levels a verdict even more damning than the one given Fernandez—it is book that a contemporary biographer, James Brabazon, remarks should “be passed by in silence” entirely.33 However, for many years, it was the only academic fulllength book available about Schweitzer, and is still cited by mainstream academics today. McKnight levels a whole host of ad hominem charges against Schweitzer, including that he was a poor husband and father, and that he enjoyed the company of young beautiful nurses and rich widows, who became generous benefactors of the hospital, because of the elderly Schweitzer’s robust sexual charisma. “The striking fact is that Dr. Schweitzer’s appeal for women has been and still is the keel on which the whole fabric of Lambaréné is laid, the basis from which he has been able to rule in god-like mastery over his kingdom.”34 This set the tone for the book—which is to say, it is wholly salacious. 30 Fernandez, The Sound of Bells, 544. Payne, The Three Worlds, 203. 32 Gerald McKnight, Verdict on Schweitzer, Fredrick Muller Limited (London, 1964). 33 Brabazon, Albert Schweitzer, 489. 34 McKnight, Verdict, 135. 31 16 The only serious charges from an academic perspective are the allegations that Schweitzer was a fraud, bigot, and hypocrite. The basis for these accusations is the oft-repeated charge that the hospital was dirty and primitive when compared to the colonial hospitals in the coastal cities. Foreign visitors found the facilities “horrifying” particularly with respect to the open-air latrines, from which manure would be harvested to fertilize the kitchen gardens.35 Worse, or so it seemed to some, the latrines were only for the hospital staff; the indigenous people utilized traditional means for toiletry in the surrounding jungle. This disgusted foreigners, including Jane Rouch, an American wife of a famous French film director, who referred to the hospital as a “cesspool” and called Schweitzer as a racist for allowing such hygiene practices to continue in the modern age.36 McKnight concurs with Rouch here, and then goes on to call Schweitzer a fraud and hypocrite for reserving for himself two hen’s eggs each morning for breakfast. In truth, the hospital was woefully inadequate to handle the number of patients in dire need of care. As McKnight documented, on a typical day—he chose August 9, 1962—the hospital had 451 adult and 116 infant in-patients while the facilities only had 342 beds available; on top of this, the leper village held 120 to 130 patients, and that a far greater number of out-patients were evaluated and treated each day.37 The available resources to feed this number of people were marginal at best, and particularly needful was adequate protein. Because of this, McKnight brands Schweitzer a fraud and hypocrite for his special breakfast. “Thus the jungle doctor whom the world sees as a saint ensures that his strength is kept up whatever happens to anyone else.”38 35 McKnight, Verdict, 21. McKnight, Verdict, 32. 37 McKnight, Verdict, 27. 38 McKnight, Verdict, 28. 36 17 It goes on. There seems little utility in further exploring his criticisms—agreeing in this respect with Brabazon that this biography, while once the foremost academic work about Schweitzer, should now be passed over in silence. Undoubtedly, many will agree with me here, seeing εcKnight’s accusations as simply absurd at face value. τne charge, however, still radiates today with seeming authority. It is the oft-repeated accusation that Schweitzer’s hospital was an unhygienic squalor. McKnight alleged that Schweitzer was a racist for failing to impose Western ideals of civilized hygiene on Africans, and for allowing them to live this way—which is to say, traditionally. It is another case of Schweitzer being accused for being insufficiently colonial. Ironically, there are those today who still cite the visual affront of traditional African living arrangements as proof of Schweitzer’s colonial attitude—as if indigenous lifeways were Schweitzer’s racist invention. σot only is this the height of hypocrisy, it also reflects subtle colonial attitudes persisting today. 6. Point of Departure The acclaimed British journalist James Cameron added his own take on Schweitzer in his memoir, published in 1967.39 Cameron had visited the hospital in 1954, which became the basis for his memoir. He refrained, however, from writing it until after Schweitzer’s death because, as he confessed, the atmosphere at that time was solely bent on defaming the now legendary Schweitzer. “Among the wistful fancies that haunted the reveries of biographers and journalists for years [after the Nobel Peace Prize] was the definitive exposure of Dr. Schweitzer. There, it had been felt, would be the really outstanding essay in tastelessness, the truly resounding 39 James Cameron, Point of Departure: Experiment in Biography, Granta Books (London, 1967). 18 iconoclasm.”40 Cameron did not, of course, name names here. He simply waited until after the rush to defame Schweitzer had run its course, then added his own views in a memoir published after Schweitzer passed away in 1965. Cameron’s reminiscences about his brief time at the hospital are admix with both nostalgia and criticism. Overall, he saw Schweitzer as having been once a youthful idealist whose dreams ossified with age into small-minded intransigence. The hospital, he found, was small, dirty, and technologically backward. “It was a place of surpassing ugliness.”41 Part of the blame here though, he admits, lay with the preferences of the patients, who mistrusted Western style hospitals, and would only consent to being treated if he or she could bring their entire family and livestock with them. As a result, the hospital became a “glaring squalor” of people and animals living together.42 Schweitzer, he said, should have done more to impose Western ideals of cleanliness regardless of the native preferences, such as could be seen at similar ventures in Zululand or the Belgian Congo—agreeing with McKnight in this respect. Worse, he says, is that for all Schweitzer’s efforts at humanitarianism, it was wasted in such a remote region of Africa, in that he had only managed to care for a few hundred patients. Following a similar critique by the publisher Victor Gollancz, with whom he agrees, Cameron indicates that if Schweitzer had chosen to be stationed elsewhere in the world, his talents could have helped countless more.43 This, he writes, is the real tragedy of Schweitzer, in that “to surrender such a rare virtuosity for the sake of a dream was not a small thing, albeit the end 40 Cameron, Point, 174. Cameron, Point, 157. 42 Cameron, Point, 162. 43 Cameron, Point, 170. 41 19 [result] was so little [achieved].”44 In this, it has to be remarked that Cameron and Gollancz were at least partially right. It is estimated that Schweitzer’s hospital treated 1.5 million African patients over his 52 years of service.45 He provided for all medical needs: childbirth, preventive care, general health and wellness counselling, dental work, internal medicine, surgery, and end-of-life hospice care. And while the foreign visitors like Cameron and McKnight criticized his hospital for looking like a traditional African village, with seemingly unhygienic conditions and wandering wildlife everywhere, the design of the medical mission was intentional. Schweitzer wanted to give recovering patients a sense of familiarity during their time of stress by replicating aspects of local dwellings and communal life.46 Throughout all this, his hospital maintained lower death rates from surgeries than hospitals in Europe during the same period.47 Even without access to the most advanced diagnostic equipment and newest medicines, the level of individualized care he and his staff provided was often what mattered most for their recovery. As for as the claim of Cameron and Gollancz that Schweitzer’s talents as a doctor could have done more philanthropic good in a larger urban outpost, undoubtedly this is true. It raises an important question, why Lambaréné? Schweitzer’s motivation to live at a remote outpost suggested to Cameron that it reflected a desire to live away from modernity, that the whole venture in Africa was aimed at “fulfilling his insistence on remoteness, self-containment, [and] his resistance to progress.”48 He saw Schweitzer as remaining true to his familial heritage as coming from Alsatian peasants, and that 44 Cameron, Point, 175. Richard Cavendish, ‘Albert Schweitzer’s σobel Prize: τctober 30th 1953.’ History Today 53/10 (2003): 57. 46 Damien εougin and Claudine εougin, ‘Reflection on Albert Schweitzer in Africa,’ Reverence for Life Revisited: Albert Schweitzer’s Relevance Today, edited by David Ives and David Valone, Cambridge Scholars Publishing (New Castle, 2007), 21f. 47 Brabazon, Albert Schweitzer, 488. 48 Cameron, Point, 153. 45 20 this inspired a desire to live rustically, away from the advance of technological progress. It is a most curious claim that continues to be reflected in the secondary literature. But, strictly speaking, there is no way, from an academic perspective, to say whether his ancestry shaped Schweitzer’s personality. Case-in-point is McKnight who said that Schweitzer’s life as a Parisian socialite in his twenties determined his lifelong personality—a characterization that stands opposed to Cameron’s insistence that Schweitzer behaved as a rustic Alsatian peasant. Both cannot be true. Put simply, rather than trying to make a case for one or another, it should instead be admitted that imaginative biographies are not the business of academics. σotwithstanding, what are we then to make of Cameron’s claim that Schweitzer ran a technologically backward hospital? It is simply not true. As a doctor, Schweitzer embraced every new advance in medicine, and even conducted field trails of a powerful new pharmaceutical for the treatment of sleeping sickness.49 Schweitzer also gladly embraced the new pesticide DDT in his fight to save the hospital facilities from destructive African termites.50 True, Schweitzer possessed certain personality quicks that would make him seem like a luddite, such as shunning the typewriter—he found the sound annoying, and preferred the intimacy of writing longhand.51 When Schweitzer contacted the Paris Mission Society about serving in the French Congo, he was summarily rejected. Schweitzer’s landmark study, The Quest of the Historical Jesus, had made enemies within the Church for daring to examine the Christian faith in the light of historical science. In retaliation, they sought to prevent Schweitzer from going to Africa, lest he 49 Schweitzer was the vanguard for field trials of a powerful new pharmaceutical called tryparsamide, which proved highly effective in combatting a lethal disease known as sleeping sickness—see Schweitzer, More for the Primeval Forest, 137f.; Brabazon, Albert Schweitzer, 325. 50 Payne, Three Worlds, 205. 51 Brabazon, Albert Schweitzer, 366. 21 contaminate the people there with his heresies. Even after he agreed to go only in a nonpreaching and supportive role (a doctor), he was rejected again. Only after he agreed to pay all his expenses did the Paris Mission Society finally give permission. But they sent him to the most unimportant and remote outpost imaginable. Schweitzer remarked that this was a direct repercussion for having dared to challenge the Church. “I got my reward—a chicken coop Mission.”52 He meant this literally. His first operating room had to be set up in an abandoned chicken coop because no other facilities existed at the small mission village of Lambaréné. As Berman quite correctly observed, had Schweitzer not been seen as a heretic, he would have “ended up somewhere in Africa in an urban church not too different than those in Strasbourg.”53 The technological character of his mission hospital was therefore a reflection of Paris Mission Society who kept the mission financially unsupported. Schweitzer’s notorious frugality in keeping the mission’s operating expenses as low as possible must be measured against that fiscal reality. 7. Impact on the Subsequent Literature Payne, McKnight, and Cameron all criticized Schweitzer for being insufficiently colonial, while Fernandez condemned him for being too colonial. McKnight decried Schweitzer as a fraud and hypocrite, whereas Payne and Cameron portrayed him as a tragic hero, albeit in contrasting ways. Then there is Fernandez, who likened Schweitzer to the nightmarish Kurtz from Conrad’s Heart of Darkness. The source materials all stand opposed—a consensus is impossible. It is a situation which has forced academics either to be selective on who to believe, or search for some kind of nuanced assessment that balances the praise with the criticism. This would be sensible approach provided the source materials were all trustworthy—which they are not. Each contain 52 53 Berman, In Africa, 108. Berman, In Africa, 109. 22 logical contradictions, display interpretive excess, and/or are overly sensational. While Payne, McKnight, Cameron, and to a limited extent Fernandez each had a chance to see Schweitzer in life, and this experience informed their impressions in ways few present academics can claim, it has to be now concluded that the only value of these sources is with events the authors witnessed, not in the interpretation of those events.54 The advocates of the balanced position on Schweitzer’s legacy in Africa carry the counterweight of these unreliable sources, shifting the balance of perception toward seeing a darker side to his humanitarian mission. Thate, for example, begins with Fernandez’ assessment of Schweitzer before seeking to establish a balanced position, which is generally wellestablished. The reliance of Fernandez, however, introduces certain unhelpful characterizations that distorts his overall analysis, such as only saying that Fernandez “perhaps unfairly” branded Schweitzer’s hospital as a Nazi-esque concentration camp.55 Clearly, we need an objective appraisal of Schweitzer’s place in African history that is not reliant of this first-generation of literature that went to startling lengths to present Schweitzer as a despot. This is not to say that every representative of the balanced position is entirely off the mark.56 The scholar who comes the closest to capturing an accurate assessment of Schweitzer, in my opinion, is Joanne Miyang Cho.57 While she uses both McKnight and Cameron to For example, Payne’s biography documents the dysentery epidemic and εcKnight includes details not found in any other work about the enigmatic patient known as Mama Sans Nom. 55 Thate, Anachronism, 315. 56 Particularly noteworthy is the balanced discussion by Nils Ole Oermann, Albert Schweitzer, 1875–1965: Eine Biographie, C. H. Beck (Munich, 2009). Other works relevant to the balanced position and the recent efforts to correct the historical record include: Sylvere Mbondobari, Archäologie eines Mythos. Albert Schweitzers Nachruhm in europäiischen und afrikanischen Text und Bildmedien (Frankfurt, Berlin, New York, 2003); Rita Headrick, Colonialism, Health and Illness in French Equatorial Africa 1885-1935 (Atlanta, 1994); James Carleton Paget, ‘Albert Schweitzer and Africa’, Journal of Religion in Africa 38 (2012), 277-316; and Thomas Suermann, Albert Schweitzer als Politiker (Berlin, 2012). 57 Joanne εiyang Cho, ‘Provincializing Albert Schweitzer's Ethical Colonialism in Africa,’ The European Legacy, 16/1 (2011): 71–86. 54 23 substantiate the view that Schweitzer held back the economic development and political selfdetermination of African people, she finds that this was not out of character for “nineteenthcentury liberals who preached Enlightenment humanism to the colonized while denying it in practice.”58 At issue is Schweitzer’s views on the future of French Equatorial Africa that, when seen through the interpretative lens of McKnight and Cameron, makes Schweitzer seem more like hypocrite than a true humanitarian. Against this backdrop, Cho finds that Schweitzer subscribed to a political and economic philosophy of gradualism based in what she calls “the developmental stages of Hegelian-Marxist historicism” that typified the attitudes of his fellow missionaries. Consequently, Cho concludes that Schweitzer was not in fact a racist, merely a liberal Christian exhibiting the anachronistic morality of the European petty-bourgeois. Cho’s findings come closest to my own conclusions, which were introduced at the beginning of this article. But before proceeding, it is necessary to show how Cho’s analysis also “misses the mark” because of the biases introduced by source materials. Whether or not Schweitzer was influenced by greater economic and political discourses of his time is hard to establish. He did, as she reveals, advocate for a policy of gradualism with respect to political independence, which does stand in contrast to his views on colonialism before arriving in Africa. But with respect to the prevailing discourses about colonialism, all that can be said is that, as Cho has shown, there is, at a minimum, a “family resemblance” between Schweitzer’s views and those of other missionaries. This is indeed noteworthy. But it also displaces the analysis of Schweitzer away from his actual writings, and toward the nebulous zeitgeist of his time. 58 Cho, ‘Provincializing,’ 72. 24 When examining his commentaries about Africa, Schweitzer confesses a reliance on the famed African-American scholar Booker T. Washington and the anthropologist Franz Boas.59 Through them, Schweitzer began to write extensively about protecting traditional industries against the destructive effects caused by colonial goods and merchandise. “Real wealth for native peoples,” he advises, “would be found in their producing, as far as possible, the necessities of life by their own agricultural and handicraft efforts.”60 He therefore urged improvements in domestic farming techniques and placed an emphasis on skilled trades important for strengthening local economies such as construction and carpentry. These statements are the basis for the accusations that he was paternalistic toward the African people. But the actual history here is quite different, and new perspectives emerge once the source materials from the despot position are set aside. The writings of Washington and Boas are essential for assessing Schweitzer’s own views on the future of Africa. Notably, Boas wrote that, “At the present time … the distribution of Negro culture in Africa is such that in all regions where the whites have come into contract with the Negro, his own industries have disappeared or have been degraded. As a consequence, all the tribes that live near the coast of Africa are, comparatively speaking, on a low level of industrial culture.”61 Washington concurs: “[Colonialism] corrupted the native customs and destroyed native industries. It substituted the cheap machine-made European goods for the more artistic native manufacturers, which take a great deal more time and energy to produce.”62 Washington therefore advises economic self-sufficiency. “τne of my favourite ways of emphasising this mistake, in my talks to Negro farmers, is to get a basket of canned vegetables 59 Schweitzer, Edge of the Primeval Forest, 57. Albert Schweitzer, ‘The Relations of the White and Coloured Races,’ The Contemporary Review, CXXXIII (1928): 65-70. 61 Boas cited in Booker T. Washington, The Story of the Negro, Peter Smith (New York, 1909), 58. 62 Washington, Story, 58. 60 25 from the store, show them what they are buying, calculate what they are paying for them, and make clear to them how much more independent they would be if they raised these things at home.”63 Schweitzer’s advice follows Boas and Washington almost word for word. As early as 1927, Schweitzer argued on behalf of human and economic rights for the African people, including the rights to freedom and self-determination in land ownership, the right to use their own natural resources, the ability to freely choose work and place of residence, and the right to an education.64 His aim was to encourage the kind of economic development that would allow for the greatest self-determination for the Gabonese people. It was his way to respond to the same concerns later echoed by Du Bois, who wrote that Africa needed “defenders” of personhood—meaning, those who would empower the people with respect to their own economic, intellectual, and personal self-determination.65 This is exactly what Schweitzer set out to do in his 1927 article that called for a co-management programme between African chiefs and western administrators. “It is on the development of [person]hood in the native craftsman and cultivator that a new social order [should] be built, and it is in [person]hood of the administrator and educator from the West that we can alone find the means of helping the native to re-create a new [industrial] civilisation on his own soil.”66 Schweitzer’s views here would 63 Washington, Story, 59. Schweitzer, ‘Relations.’ 65 W.E.B. Du Bois, ‘Whites in Africa after σegro Autonomy,’ Albert Schweitzer’s Realms—A Symposium, edited by A.A. Roback, Sci-Art Publishers (Cambridge, 1962), 254. 66 Schweitzer, ‘Relations,’ ι0. Schweitzer noted that one of the things that stood in the way of African development was the sheer diversity of languages in the Congo that, together with the accompanying diversity of cultural beliefs, prevented the collective work needed to raise the people above “hunter and gatherer” societies—that is, until “a network of dedicated evangelists” began to bridge the distances between people through common language and religion—see Berman, In Africa, 46. 64 26 earn him the wrath of the South Africans and Rhodesians, who labelled him a race traitor because they clashed with the colonial agenda.67 Even if racism did not motivate his philosophy of economic self-sufficiency, what of the charge that his writings still held back the African people? The truth is that because the advice of Boas, Washington, and Schweitzer was not followed, the newly independent Gabon could not provide for its own needs. Gabon became entirely dependent upon France economically for decades after political independence. “In 1960, Gabon possessed neither the financial resources nor the personnel even to operate its economy or administration, much less develop them. … In order to keep the state, economy, and education functioning, Gabon was obliged to seek assistance from France.”68 Worse, as Gardinier points out, “few Gabonese were involved in the early years [of economic development] except as unskilled laborers. Nearly all the management and technical personnel, as well as most of the skilled workers, were Europeans and Americans with some non-Gabonese Africans.”69 A greater emphasis on the skilled trades, as Schweitzer had urged, would have benefited Gabon greatly in these early years of political independence. But because this did not happen, they were not able to operate or even participate in their own domestic economy. In a word, what happened to Gabon was neo-colonialism. The new nation became a onecommodity economy controlled by French firms aimed solely at petroleum exports. True, a small political elite in Gabon benefited from this relationship, but the majority of the population suffered greatly. By 1980, the first year when such data is available, Gabon ranked as one of the worst nations in the world in terms of the basic quality of life as measured by the Human 67 Berman, In Africa, 134. David Gardinier, ‘The Petroleum-Dominated Economy,’ Culture, Ecology, and Politics in Gabon’s Rainforest, edited by Michael Reed and James Barnes, Edwin Mellen Press (New York, 2003), 245. 69 Gardinier, ‘Petroleum-Dominated,’ 244; emphasis added. 68 27 Development Index; malnutrition also continued to plague the country,70 and life expectancy at birth was especially dismal, being less than 55 years.71 Political independence had done little to help the common person, and post-independence Gabon is still used today as a textbook example for the appalling mal-development practices of the past, including by the Nobel Prize winning economist Amartya Sen, who describes the newly independent nation as having been one of the “un-freest” places in the world.72 8. Schweitzer’s Colonialism in Context “Anyone who has once penetrated into the imaginary world of primitive man, and knows something of the state of fear in which people may live when they believe in taboos, unavoidable curses [cast by enemies] and ju-jus [magic fetishes], can no longer doubt that it is our duty to endeavour to liberate them from these superstitions.”73 Case-in-point is this quote. Such attitudes toward the religious beliefs in traditional society, which have their origin in work of Frazer, are no longer acceptable in academia. Schweitzer, as a scientific liberal Christian, accepted Frazer’s evolutionary view of culture unreservedly, which makes his own views similarly antiquated. That being said, there was some additional nuance that needs to be considered. Schweitzer saw some superstitions as generally advantageous to health and wellbeing, such as 70 James Brabazon, Albert Schweitzer: Essential Writings, Orbis Books (2005), 11; Damien Mougin and Claudine εougin, ‘Reflection on Albert Schweitzer in Africa,’ Reverence for δife Revisitedμ Albert Schweitzer’s Relevance Today, edited by David Ives and David Valone, Cambridge Scholars Publishing (New Castle, 2007), 21. 71 United σations Development Report, ‘Gabon,’ (2015), accessed January 10, 2016, http://hdr.undp.org/sites/all/themes/hdr_theme/country-notes/GAB.pdf. 72 Amartya Sen, Development as Freedom, Anchor (New York, 1999). Sen argues that economic development needs to be seen in terms of the human freedoms and economic opportunities it creates for people, and not aggregate measures of national wealth such as Gross Domestic Product. The most basic human freedoms, he continues, can be determined by literacy rates and life expectancy—the precursors for a good life. By these measures, Gabon is singled-out as a failure for producing, on the one hand, high national wealth but, on the other, dismal benefits for the people due to income inequality, horrific life expectancy, and poor literacy rates. He terms this condition as “unfreedom”—Sen, Development, 6, 47, cf. 28f. 73 Albert Schweitzer, African Notebook, Syracuse University Press (2002), 88; emphasis added. Schweitzer likewise criticizes supernatural beliefs in Europe associated with such things as horoscopes, and those European charlatans who sought to defraud the Gabonese through fortune-telling or selling them Zodiac charms for luck, success, etc. See Schweitzer, More from the Primeval Forest, 154. 28 the taboo against coming into contact with blood or infectious pus. From a medical perspective, this belief could help protect a person from contagious diseases. Other beliefs however were nonsensical to him, like the phobia about touching a chameleon. Then there were some superstitions that were outright dangerous, such the belief a fetish made from a slain enemy or powerful animal conveyed magic powers. Worst of all, he writes, was an aberrant form of shamanism called the “human leopards,” which were bands of roving killers controlled by magic, often against their own will.74 As a child of the Enlightenment, Schweitzer saw it as his duty to rid the Gabonese of these traditional beliefs when they threatened the patients under his care. For example, a traditional medicine practitioner once snuck into Schweitzer’s hospital and attempted to surgically insert “magic fetishes” made of animal bone and rawhide into the bodies of his patients to protect them from evil spirits. Schweitzer knew of this man because several patients from his private care had been rushed to Schweitzer’s hospital for life-saving intervention; some were taken too late and had died from infection caused by those foreign objects in their bodies. Schweitzer considered the fetisher nothing less than a murderer, and he physically threw him out of the hospital ward.75 Whether or not such actions can be justified is not the point to consider: it is whether it was his place to intervene, and in such a patriarchal and authoritarian way at that. This brings the discussion to the central ethical issue mentioned in the introduction. Schweitzer took on an authoritarian role at Lambaréné. Even when he intervened to stop the plague of bacillary dysentery, Schweitzer was no longer offering help, as would be expected of a humanitarian, he was administering it in ways better suited for a military hospital under triage conditions. True, it saved lives, but it also represents behavior that is ethically questionable 74 75 Schweitzer, More from the Primeval Forest, 6f. εelamed and εelamed, ‘Schweitzer in Africa,’ 1ιιf. 29 considering the colonial history of central Africa. This, coupled with his dismissive attitude toward traditional belief systems, creates an image of Schweitzer that, with historical hindsight, becomes very problematic. The question as to what extent Schweitzer should be seen in an unfavorable light today because of his archaic views and paternalistic behavior is very difficult to answer—especially when the source materials are set aside. 9. A Call for a New Evaluation It can no longer be seen as acceptable to rely on Payne, Fernandez, McKnight, and Cameron—or any of the secondary literature that base their analyses, in whole or in part, on these firstgeneration sources. While each met Schweitzer and gathered firsthand impressions that few today can claim, the presentation and interpretations they offer are now suspect in historical hindsight. Their value is in what they witnessed, not in what they wrote. Schweitzer was indeed patriarchal and authoritarian, but in ways best understood through the lens of Frazer. Because of this, advocates for a balanced position in situating Schweitzer on the hero-orvillain spectrum risk missing the mark because of the sensational distortions in these “despotic” works. Simply stated, editorial opinion is not fact, and academic inquiry must precede with the actual history. The interpretative caricatures in these source materials are little more than historical curiosities, and must be regarded as such. Otherwise, the danger here is that they will continue to be used for selective citation, resulting in the widely divergent representations of Schweitzer circulating within academia today. A new assessment must be made not dependent on these sensational and eccentric biographical sketches. To this end, the first thing to establish is what exactly is meant when Schweitzer is said to be colonial. The word itself is rife with many suggestive connotations, ranging from a hint of racism, to the insinuation that vainglorious exploitation motivated his desire to work in Africa. 30 The word itself is not helpful unless it is carefully defined. Schweitzer did not work for colonial authorities, nor was he working at a colonial hospital. So, strictly speaking, he was outside the official power structures of colonial control. His was a private hospital associated with a missionary outpost, making any role he had in relation to colonialism tangential at best. Furthermore, as noted earlier, his economic and political commentary stood opposed to the colonial agenda. Therefore, the only way Schweitzer can be considered colonial at all would be in his attitudes and behavior. In this, it has been argued that Schweitzer was indeed colonial when viewed from a postcolonial perspective. Schweitzer, following Frazer, championed empirical science over traditional beliefs, and this in turn raises certain new ethical issues about appropriateness that could not be fully answered here. These troublesome questions need to define the direction of any future research—research that cannot rely on the distorted caricatures in the first-generation “despotic” sources. Only then can the aforementioned correction of Schweitzer’s reputation be fully actualized, and his true legacy and place in African history be definitively established. 31