Famous personalities of the valley in Alsace

ALBERT SCHWEITZER

Doctor, musician and French theologian born in Alsace in 1875 in Kaysersberg of a Pastor father who taught him the piano at a very early age. He began a musical and pastoral university career before finishing with a doctorate in philosophy then in theology. Driven by a deep humanism, he decided to become a doctor.

Partisan of a dogmatic liberalism, he was concerned with African misery and decided to found the hospital of Lambaréné in Gabon.

His departure in 1913 enabled him to fulfil his dream until the outbreak of war. Returned to France in an internment camp, he will return to Africa only in 1924. That was the time when he built a larger hospital there, finally able to dedicate himself to humanitarian medicine which he held so much to heart. It was while performing at the time of piano concerts that he obtained funds to provide for the requirements of his hospital.

First doctor without borders, he obtained amongst other things the Nobel Prize for peace in 1952. He died in Africa in 1965.