An inspiring walk in Alsace

It is in Kaysersberg, a charming little town in Haut-Rhin camped in the middle of the vines and dominated by an imposing medieval keep, that our ride begins. The city saw the birth of Albert Schweitzer in 1875, of French parents who became German because of the annexation of Alsace in 1871. In twelve stages and two kilometers, an urban course allows to discover, at the same time as the half -timbered facades typical of the region and the fortified bridge of the 16th century which spans the Weiss, some aspects of the rich and diverse thought of the country, For forty-four years (until 1919) then French for forty-six years (from 1919 to his death in 1965).

“He never wanted to choose between these two countries,” explains the historian Matthieu Arnold who is dedicating this year a big biography (Read box at the end of the article). Through his books and concerts, he even played a role of cultural passer between the two “hereditary enemies”. It was in this double heritage that the commitment to peace was rooted which earned Albert Schweitzer the Nobel Prize in 1952.

Inaugurated in 2023 in his native house attached to the temple where his father preached, Protestant pastor, the interpretation center which bears his name offers an exciting dive “on the steps of the Nobel Prize”. “We compare the fights that were his – against nationalism and the proliferation of nuclear weapons – and the life of the world in his time and in ours,” explains Théophile Litzler, the director. He was very pioneering! The idea is to invite reflection and action: and we, today, do we do? »»

Ecologist before time

It doesn’t take long to leave Kaysersberg behind you and find yourself in the great outdoors. We have just taken the “Doctor Schweitzer” hiking trail, direction Gunsbach, where young Albert lived a childhood close to nature. Twenty-four kilometers of large forest paths, with a few more steep passages, offer splendid views of the Vosges blue line.

Halfway through, Labaroche is a nice stopover for a night if you go on the way in two days. The path also carries the memory of the First World War, at the Wihr cross or the Linen Memorial. The opportunity to discover that Albert Schweitzer was an ecologist before the time. A great admirer of creation, he extended his ethics of “respect for life” to plants and animals, anticipating the development of vegetarianism. He even wrote a book on Parsifal, his tamed pelican!

Going down to Gunsbach, you can see the bell tower of the church in which the young man learned to play the organ, before discovering on a hillside a sandstone statue representing him in the position of Rodin’s thinker, work of his friend, the sculptor Fritz Behn.

Passing the door of the big house that Albert Schweitzer had Gunsbach built in 1928, now transformed into a museum, the impression of entering him is striking. The kitchen remained “in its juice”, with its stone sink and the wood stove. In the room, in front of his bed, an imposing African head fixes the visitor, reproduction of a fragment of a statue of Auguste Bartholdi.

“It was in Colmar, in front of this allegory of Africa, that the young Albert, touched by the suffering that we read on this face, wanted to leave for Gabon,” explains Jenny Litzelmann, the director of the house. He was not at all favorable to colonialism. Putting himself at the service of the population was for him a way of repairing something. »»

By wandering among the objects, books, busts and photos, in these pieces all imbued with the mind of the doctor, we also discover a portrait of the charcoal of Jean-Sébastien Bach who recalls that Schweitzer was a great specialist in the composer, to whom he devoted a biography in 1905 and which he helped to rediscover.

A child, visiting that day with his parents, plays a few hesitant notes on the organ pedals piano that Schweitzer had been delivered by Pirogue in Lambaréné, where he had opened a hospital.

Opponent of atomic weapons

Direction Strasbourg (Bas-Rhin), where he lived twenty years before his departure for Africa in 1913. We think of him by strolling through the immense university palace where he was a student, then a teacher in philosophy. The neo-Renaissance building, inaugurated by the Emperor Guillaume I of Prussia in 1884, was then brand new.

Going out, we pass along the Ill, in front of two churches which carry the memory of Albert Schweitzer: Saint-Guillaume, of which he was the organist, and Saint-Nicolas, where he was vicar for fourteen years. And we arrive on the other bank, at the STIFT, a center of students of which he was director, and who organizes this year a cycle of conferences on Schweitzer.

Right next to it, a sculpture on a human scale immortalizes it, seated on a wall decorated with words “respect for life”, translated into many languages. A Japanese couple poses. “In our country traumatized by the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, his commitment against the atomic weapon made him very famous,” they confide. Dr Schweitzer’s memory is not just a Alsatian story.