Albert Schweitzer Collection

Collection

Identifier: MC 190

Staff Only

Scope and Contents

These materials were collected over several decades by Mrs. Murphy Pound, Jr. Barbara Ann Golden was born on November 29, 1925 and died 26 June, 2003. In 1953 she married Murphey Pound, Jr. (July 25, 1925-November 23, 2012). She developed an interest in the life and work of Albert Schweitzer and collected information by and about him, including publications of the Albert Schweitzer Center, lecture and film programs, newspaper and magazine clippings, and correspondence principally with Gibson O. Etchison of Valley, Alabama.

Dates

Creation: 1970s-1994

Biographical / Historical

According to the Wikipedia article on him, Albert Schweitzer was born 14 January 1875 and died on 4 September 1965. His birthplace was in Alsace-Lorraine, then a part of the German empire. He was a theologian, organist, philosopher, physician, and medical missionary. Schweitzer, a Lutheran, challenged both the secular view of Jesus as depicted by historical-critical methodology current at his time in certain academic circles, as well as the traditional Christian view. He received the 1952 Nobel Peace Prize for his philosophy of "Reverence for Life", expressed in many ways, but most famously in founding and sustaining the Albert Schweitzer Hospital in Lambaréné, now in Gabon, west central Africa (then French Equatorial Africa). As a music scholar and organist, he studied the music of German composer Johann Sebastian Bach and influenced the Organ reform movement (Orgelbewegung).

Schweitzer sought to discover a universal ethical philosophy, anchored in a universal reality, and make it available to all of humanity