¹ For partial exceptions see Mühlstein, Verena, Helene Schweitzer Bresslau. Ein Leben für Lambarene (Munich: Beck, 1998) 22–28 and 225–33Google Scholar; Oermann, Nils Ole, Albert Schweitzer. Eine Biographie (Munich: Beck, 2009) 213–21CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Suermann, Thomas, Albert Schweitzer als “homo politicus”. Eine biographische Studie zum politischen Denken und Handeln des Friedensnobelpreisträgers (Berlin: BWV, 2012) 165–90Google Scholar. In the main, these discussions, the most thorough of which is Suermann's (his work came out after I had completed this article), are taken up with Schweitzer's reaction to the rise of Nazism and do not concern themselves with his writings, their implications for his understanding of Judaism, or the extent to which these might have affected his reaction to the Nazis’ anti-Semitic policies.

² See n. 4 below for full references to these works.

³ Particular attention might be drawn to Heschel, Susannah, Abraham Geiger and the Jewish Jesus (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998)Google Scholar, the conclusion of which formed the inspiration for her The Aryan Jesus: Christian Theologians and the Bible in Nazi Germany (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2008), which addresses the question of New Testament scholarship and anti-Judaism more directly. An extensive response to this latter work, encompassing many of the major issues relating to the subject, was written by Morgan, Robert, “Susannah Heschel's Aryan Grundmann,” JSNT 32 (2010) 431–94Google Scholar. Heschel in turn responded to Morgan in “Historiography of Antisemitism versus Anti-Judaism: A Response to Robert Morgan,” JSNT 33 (2011) 257–79. Another important and recent contribution to the subject is Gerdmar, Anders, Roots of Theological Anti-Semitism: German Biblical Interpretation and the Jews, from Herder and Semler to Kittel and Bultmann (Studies in Jewish History and Culture 20; Leiden: Brill, 2009)Google Scholar, which contains a detailed bibliography.

⁴ These publications include Das Abendmahlsproblem auf Grund der wissenschaftlichen Forschung des 19. Jahrhunderts und der historischen Berichte (Heft 1 of Das Abendmahl im Zusammenhang mit dem Leben Jesu und der Geschichte des Urchristentums; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1920; ET The Problem of the Lord's Supper according to the Scholarly Research of the Nineteenth Century and the Historical Accounts [ed. John Reumann; trans. A. J. Mattill; vol. 1 of The Lord's Supper in Relationship to the Life of Jesus and the History of the Early Church; Macon, Ga.: Mercer University Press, 1982]); Das Messianitäts- und Leidensgeheimnis. Eine Skizze des Lebens Jesu (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1901; ET The Mystery of the Kingdom of God: The Secret of Jesus’ Passion and Messiahship [ed. and trans. Walter Lowrie; London: A&C Black, 1925]); Von Reimarus zu Wrede. Eine Geschichte der Leben-Jesu-Forschung (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1906; 2nd ed. 1913; ET The Quest of the Historical Jesus: A Critical Study of Its Progress from Reimarus to Wrede [trans. W. Montgomery; London: A&C Black, 1910]; 2nd ET The Quest of the Historical Jesus: First Complete Edition [ed. and trans. John Bowden et al.; London: SCM, 2000]); Geschichte der paulinischen Forschung von der Reformation bis auf die Gegenwart (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1911; ET Paul and His Interpreters: A Critical History [trans. W. Montgomery; London: A&C Black, 1912]); Die psychiatrische Beurteilung Jesu. Darstellung und Kritik (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1913; ET The Psychiatric Study of Jesus: Exposition and Criticism [trans. Charles R. Joy; Boston: Beacon, 1948]); and Die Mystik des Apostels Paulus (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1930; ET The Mysticism of Paul the Apostle [trans. W. Montgomery; New York: Macmillan, 1955]). The fact that Schweitzer's final work that was exclusively on the New Testament, Die Mystik des Apostels Paulus, was published in 1930 can be misleading. In fact Schweitzer had arrived at most of his thoughts on this subject by 1910, and probably before that. That this work was only published in 1930 was the result of the course that Schweitzer's life took once he became a medical missionary in Africa in 1913. On this see Paget, James Carleton, “Schweitzer and Paul,” JSNT 33 (2011) 223–56Google Scholar. Schweitzer did continue to write on the New Testament, in works not exclusively devoted to this subject, after 1930 but such writings generally repeat what he had argued before. See, for instance, Albert Schweitzer, Reich Gottes und Christentum (ed. Ulrich Luz, Ulrich Neuenschwander, and Johann Zürcher; Werke aus dem Nachlass; Munich: Beck, 1995; ET The Kingdom of God and Primitive Christianity [ed. Ulrich Neuenschwander; trans. L. A. Garrard; New York: Seabury, 1968]). In this work Schweitzer changes his opinion on the role of Deutero-Isaiah as a motive behind Jesus's decision to die, but much remains the same (see 154). All works that have been translated will be cited in their English versions.

⁵ “Wrestling with the fact that the Kingdom of God still fails to appear there dawns on Him the perception that it can only come when He, as the Messiah-to-be, has by suffering and death made atonement for those who have been elected to the Kingdom, and thereby saved them from the necessity of going through the pre-Messianic Tribulation” (Albert Schweitzer, Out of my Life and Thought [trans. C. T. Campion; New York: Holt, 1949] 39). (For the original see Albert Schweitzer, Aus meinem Leben und Denken [Leipzig: Meiner, 1931].)

⁶ For slightly different versions of Schweitzer's reconstruction of the history of Jewish eschatology, see, inter alia, Schweitzer, Quest (2nd ET), 242–61 and Schweitzer, Reich Gottes, 36–149.

⁷ See Schweitzer, Quest (2nd ET), 242. Schweitzer is not as schematic as some have thought, and he is clear, for instance, that the eschatology of the Psalms of Solomon is not reflective of the synthesis we find in 4 Ezra and 2 Baruch.

⁸ “The picture of the future in the preaching of Jesus has the same basic character as that depicted by the authors of the Apocalypses of Ezra and Baruch, and in some way this will have corresponded to the views of the scribes and also of the people” (Schweitzer, Quest [2nd ET], 238). It was in part the view that Jesus reflected, as well as interacted creatively with, the Jewish culture of his time that was crucial to the argument of Schweitzer's medical dissertation that Jesus was not, contrary to some views, mad. See Schweitzer, Psychiatric.

⁹ See Schweitzer, Quest (2nd ET), 243–61.

¹⁰ See ibid., 253, where Schweitzer suggests the possibility that the righteous of the last generation will perish in the final tribulation.

¹¹ See ibid., 249.

¹² Schweitzer argues that what Jesus did to previous expectations was to simplify them (ibid., 257). For hyperbolic language about Jesus's achievements in interacting with previous traditions, see ibid., 259.

¹³ See especially his comments in ibid., 248–53, where the character of the problems Jesus solved is discussed.

¹⁴ See Heschel, Abraham Geiger, 127, where she states that “Schweitzer neglected to note the terrible problem that arose when Christians discussed the religious life of the historical figure of Jesus: he was Jewish.” The point is only half true—Schweitzer is not concerned with this issue per se but because of his own interests with presenting Jesus as an eschatological prophet the matter is discussed intermittently.

¹⁵ See Schweitzer, Quest (2nd ET), 211, where he mentions Julius Wellhausen's Israelitische und jüdische Geschichte (Berlin: Reimer, 1894), and an extended footnote on 505 (n. 12), where he refers to Einleitung in die drei ersten Evangelien (Berlin: Reimer, 1905).

¹⁶ Bousset, Wilhelm, Jesu Predigt in ihrem Gegensatz zum Judentum. Ein religionsgeschichtlicher Vergleich (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht, 1892)Google Scholar.

¹⁷ “Is it historically permissible to treat the leading ideas of the preaching of Jesus which so clearly bear the marks of the contemporary mould of thought as of secondary importance for the investigation, and so endeavour to trace Jesus’ thought from within outwards and not from without inwards?” (Schweitzer, Quest [2nd ET], 206). See also ibid., 481 and 483 for further objections to such an approach. Bousset's work, some of whose conclusions were to be revised in his Die Religion des Judentums im neutestamentlichen Zeitalter (Berlin: Reuther and Reichard, 1903), to which Schweitzer does not refer, was in part a response to a trend Bousset saw in contemporary theology, exemplified especially in Weiss's, JohannesDie Predigt Jesu vom Reiche Gottes (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht, 1892)Google Scholar, of drawing too close a comparison between Judaism and Jesus and so losing sight of his uniqueness (on the relationship between Weiss and Bousset, the importance of Weiss's book for Bousset's Gegensatz, and their different positions on Judaism, see Gerdmar, Theological Anti-Semitism, 146–47). Schweitzer also notes that von Harnack is wrong to proceed in such a way but devotes little space to von Harnack's very popular work, Das Wesen des Christentums. Sechzehn Vorlesungen vor Studierenden aller Fakultäten im Wintersemester 1899/1900 an der Universität Berlin (ed. Claus-Dieter Osthövener; 2nd ed.; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2007), even though the reaction to it was much more significant than the reaction to Bousset's work.

¹⁸ See esp. Schweitzer, Quest (2nd ET), 207, where Schweitzer discusses Bousset's view that Jesus opposed eschatology because of its world-denying attitude, and ibid., 206, where he discusses particularism and eschatology.

¹⁹ See Heschel, Abraham Geiger, 160–61, and her chapter entitled “Fixing the Theological Gaze: The Reception of Geiger's Work” (ibid., 186–228). Interestingly, she records an exchange between Geiger and Holtzmann, resulting from Holtzmann's response to Geiger's Das Judentum und seine Geschichte in vierunddreißig Vorlesungen (Breslau: Jacobsohn, 1910), in which Geiger presents Jesus as a Pharisee (for Holtzmann's response see Heinrich Julius Holtzmann, “Jüdische Apologetik und Polemik,” Protestantische Kirchenzeitung 10 [1865] 225–37). Responding to Holtzmann, Geiger notes: “You would like to save for Christianity something new, something hardly guessed at before, and you cannot do so in any other way than by again placing Judaism low down, not only in the temporal expression of its appearance but also in its essence and its deepest sentiment” (quoted in Heschel, Abraham Geiger, 208). Note also Christian Wiese, Challenging Colonial Discourse: Jewish Studies and Protestant Theology in Wilhelmine Germany (trans. Barbara Harshav and Christian Wiese; Studies in European Judaism 10; Leiden: Brill, 2005), esp. 159–216, where he describes the debate that both von Harnack's comments on Judaism in Das Wesen des Christentums and Bousset's work devoted to ancient Judaism elicited among members of the Wissenschaft des Judentums movement. Note esp. pp. 190–204 for a discussion of typical features of “Late Judaism” (Spätjudentum) under the titles, in the original German edition, of “Religion des Partikularismus” and “Gesetzliche Ethik.” (For the German edition see Wiese, Christian, Wissenschaft des Judentums und protestantische Theologie im wilhelminischen Deutschland. Ein Schrei ins Leere? [Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1999]Google Scholar.) The desire both of Heschel and of Wiese to expose the relationship between liberal Protestant Christianity and anti-Jewish sentiment was anticipated by George Foot Moore in his “Christian Writers on Judaism,” HTR 14 (1921) 197–254, esp. 242–43 and 253.

²⁰ See Schweitzer, Quest (2nd ET), 215.

²¹ Ibid. See also ibid., 277, where Schweitzer gives voice to what might in part at least be deemed the other side of the coin of this issue, namely the desire to turn Jesus into a figure acceptable to German culture. But discussion of this form of modernization, though highly critical, does not engage directly with the problem of the Jewishness of Jesus as a theme of historical Jesus research.

²² Heschel, Abraham Geiger, 3.

²³ See n. 19 above for Geiger's exchange with Holtzmann on the liberal Protestant portrait of Jesus, as recorded by Heschel.

²⁴ Interestingly, this sentiment comes out best in the introduction to Paul and His Interpreters, written a couple of years before the second edition of Quest. There Schweitzer writes: “The teaching of Jesus does not in any of its aspects go outside the Jewish world of thought and project itself into a non-Jewish world, but represents a deeply ethical and perfected version of the contemporary Apocalyptic. Therefore the Gospel is at its starting-point exclusively Jewish-eschatological” (Paul and His Interpreters, ix).

²⁵ This point is made by Glasson, T. Francis, “Schweitzer's Influence—Blessing or Bane?,” JTS 28 (1977) 289–302CrossRefGoogle Scholar, but had already been made in Schweitzer's own time by such scholars as R. H. Charles (see A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life in Israel, in Judaism, and in Christianity; or, Hebrew, Jewish, and Christian Eschatology from Pre-Prophetic Times till the Close of the New Testament Canon [London: A&C Black, 1913), viii).

²⁶ See Quest (2nd ET), quoted above.

²⁷ See Schweitzer, Albert, Gespräche über das Neue Testament (ed. Döbertin, Winfried; Munich: Beck, 1994) 72–73CrossRefGoogle Scholar, esp. 72, where he describes the piety of the Pharisees in harsh terms, noting that “through this obduracy the Pharisees had wounded Jesus's heart, and consequently he showed them no leniency. Instead he denounced them, and with them, any form of exaggerated externalization in the religious realm for all time.” (Durch diese Härtigkeit hatten die Pharisäer Jesu Herz verwundet, darum kannte er keine Nachsicht mit ihnen, sondern er hat sie, und damit jede übertriebene Veräußerlichung in der Religion, für alle Zeiten gebrandmarkt.) See also Schweitzer, Mystery of the Kingdom, 270: “With all their learning they are blind leaders of the blind, who, instead of making the people receptive for the Kingdom, harden their hearts, and instead of drawing out from the Law the higher morality which renders men meet for the Kingdom, labour against it with their petty outward precepts.” But Schweitzer is not absolute in his condemnation. As he notes in the same section in Gespräche from which we have quoted, the form of Pharisaism Paul attacked was a fossilized version of what the movement had been at the beginning of its history, and the Pharisees were, in any case, sincere in their attempts to make the Jews more pious, and that should not be forgotten (see Gespräche, 73). Moreover, Schweitzer notes that his readers have no right to judge the Pharisees, leaving that to the great figures of history, for their faults are the readers’ faults, and over and above them (the readers) the Pharisees were sincere and enthusiastic (ibid., 73). See also Schweitzer's comments in his unfinished essay, “Die Ethik des Judentums,” printed in Schweitzer, Albert, Kultur und Ethik in den Weltreligionen (ed. Körtner, Ulrich and Zürcher, Johann; Werke aus dem Nachlass; Munich: Beck, 2001) 311–13Google Scholar, and dated November 1919, where he seems to go to greater lengths to soften the sense of the Pharisees as externalizers of religion, stating: “Even the Pharisees are not the spiritless externalizers of morality, given the devastating claims of Jesus” (Selbst die Pharisäer sind nicht die geistlosen Veräußerlicher der Moral, als welche sie, nach den vernichtenden Aussprüchen Jesu, gelten [311]). He goes on then to explain why, in the face of hellenization, the Pharisees placed so much emphasis on the observance of the law. But that they were more than just “narrow-minded zealots for ceremonial prescriptions” (engherzige Eiferer für zeremonielle Bestimmungen [311]) is clear from the fact that Hillel was one of their number.

²⁸ Schweitzer, Quest (2nd ET), 234. He goes on to argue that rabbinic literature cannot, therefore, shed light on the period of Jesus's ministry.

²⁹ See Schweitzer, Gespräche, 131; and Schweitzer, Reich Gottes, 106–9, for a more detailed engagement with this question.

³⁰ Schweitzer, Quest (2nd ET), 257. Also see ibid., 347–49.

³¹ For Schweitzer, Jesus thought creatively within Jewish categories. See Schweitzer, Psychiatric, 60–64.

³² See Schweitzer, Quest (2nd ET), 481 and 485, where he talks about allowing the compelling force of Jesus's personality and his preaching of the kingdom their full expression and so enabling the offensive and alien elements to be recognized calmly. Something of the complex relationship between specificity and universalism is also conveyed in Schweitzer, Quest (2nd ET), 212, in a passage we have already quoted where Schweitzer questions the validity of separating Jesus from Judaism, asking instead whether “the very essence of Jesus’ creative power does not consist in taking out one or other of the parts of the eschatological machinery, but in doing what no one had previously done, namely, in setting the whole machinery in motion by the application of an ethical and religious motive power” [italics mine]. On this same complex point, see Schweitzer's essay, written in 1919, entitled “Ethik und Kultur im Denken Jesu,” in Kultur und Ethik in den Weltreligionen (ed. Ulrich Körtner and Johann Zürcher; Werke aus dem Nachlass; Munich: Beck, 2001) 134–45, at 139: “The timelessness of Jesus's ethics is based on its strange time-bound particularity. Because it reckons with the end of the world and ignores the ongoing questions of the organization of society thrown up by the world of that time, it does not grow obsolete and retains its meaning in every time. No longer predicated on any length of time, it can be applied to any time.” (In ihrer einzigartigen zeitgeschichtlichen Bedingtheit ist die Zeitlosigkeit der Ethik Jesu begründet. Weil sie mit dem Weltende rechnet und von allen in der damaligen Welt bestehenden Fragen der Organisation der Gesellschaft absieht, veraltet sie nicht und behält in jeder Epoche ihre Bedeutung. Keine Zeit mehr voraussetzend, läßt sie sich in jede Zeit einsetzen.) Here universalism emerges in a complex way out of particularity. For similar comments see “Albert Schweitzers Selbstdarstellung,” in Schweitzer, Albert, Vorträge, Vorlesungen, Aufsätze (ed. Günzler, Claus, Luz, Ulrich, and Zürcher, Johannes; Munich: Beck, 2003) 360–74Google Scholar, at 369.

³³ See esp. Schweitzer, Quest (2nd ET), 405–6, 479.

³⁴ On this see Paget, James Carleton, “Albert Schweitzer's Second Edition of The Quest of the Historical Jesus,” BJRL 88 (2006) 3–39Google Scholar, at 26–37.

³⁵ There are many places in Schweitzer's writings where he uses grandiose language to describe Jesus. See Schweitzer, Mystery of the Kingdom, 274–75 and Schweitzer, Quest (2nd ET), 479, 487.

³⁶ Schweitzer, Mystery of the Kingdom, 274–75.

³⁷ See Schweitzer, Quest (2nd ET), 481–83 and Carleton Paget, “Second Edition,” 30–34, and relevant secondary literature cited there. See also citations in n. 30 above.

³⁸ Schweitzer, Out of My Life, 54. See also 58, where Schweitzer seeks to endorse the central tenet of liberal Christianity: that the ethical is the essence of religion.

³⁹ For this point about liberal theological presentations of Jesus, see Heschel, Abraham Geiger, 160–61, 226–27, though she does not mention Schweitzer in this context.

⁴⁰ Interestingly, Johannes Weiss, who also lays particular emphasis on Jesus's eschatological message in his Predigt Jesu (see n. 17 above), is also strikingly free of anti-Jewish sentiment. See also Gerdmar, Theological Anti-Semitism, 171–76.

⁴¹ “Particularity” (Bedingtheit) is a term used by Schweitzer (see n. 32 above) but never in the negative way that it was often used by Protestant New Testament scholars to describe Jewish legalism and nationalism (see the reference to Wiese's discussion of this in n. 19 above). Particularity is something specifically bound up with historical existence and, in his discussion of Jesus, with eschatology.

⁴² See n. 34 above. While Schweitzer can describe the historical Jesus as an enigma and a stranger (Schweitzer, Quest [2nd ET], 478), this is bound up with Jesus's eschatological view, which seems alien to the modern world, and not with what one might term his Jewishness, understood in some abstract way. As I have stated, Schweitzer is not concerned with Jesus's Jewishness as a problem, either for himself, or, at least in any consistent way, for other German theologians who form a part of his narrative of the quest of the historical Jesus.

⁴³ Schweitzer, Paul and His Interpreters, v.

⁴⁴ It is precisely Paul's achievement that he has ethicized the concept of living proleptically in Christ.

⁴⁵ Schweitzer, Mysticism, 189.

⁴⁶ For a helpful discussion of these factors in Schweitzer's thought, see Sanders, E. P., Paul and Palestinian Judaism: A Comparison of Patterns of Religion (London: SCM, 1977) 476–81Google Scholar.

⁴⁷ Schweitzer, Paul and His Interpreters, 176.

⁴⁸ Ibid., 177.

⁴⁹ Ibid., 49 and 51. Roland Deines states that Schweitzer fails in Paul and His Interpreters to deal with the question of Paul and Pharisaism as a theme in Pauline research (Die Pharisäer. Ihr Verständnis im Spiegel der christlichen und jüdischen Forschung seit Wellhausen und Graetz [Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1997] 16 n. 40). We should, however, note that in the preface to Mysticism Schweitzer draws attention to the fact that he has attempted to deepen his knowledge of “Late Judaism” through consultation with Gerhard Kittel, an acknowledged expert on ancient Judaism and rabbinics (at this point in Kittel's life he had not shown himself publicly to be an anti-Semite—this was to manifest itself in 1933 with his infamous lecture “Die Judenfrage,” on which see Horbury, William, Herodian Judaism and New Testament Study [WUNT 193; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2006] 178–79Google Scholar). Deines states that Kittel criticized Schweitzer in his review of Fiebig's, PaulAltjüdische Gleichnisse und die Gleichnisse Jesu (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1904)Google Scholar for claiming that Fiebig's work had brought the study of the New Testament and rabbinics to an end, when in fact neither Fiebig nor indeed Kittel believed that to be the case (Pharisäer, 429). Perhaps Schweitzer read this passage in Kittel and sought his advice, though Kittel's expertise on Judaism was well known at the time and so consultation with him on this matter would have seemed natural. In a positive review of Mysticism the Jewish scholar Ernst Jacob, while castigating Schweitzer for his continued adoption of what he terms Kittel's word, “Late Judaism” (Spätjudentum), preferring “Early Judaism” (Frühjudentum) himself, is clear that in this work Schweitzer takes more account of rabbinic material than he does in Paul and His Interpreters, though such material plays very little role (“Neue Literatur über Paulus und das Urchristentum,” MGWJ 75 [1931] 328–35, at 329–33). W. D. Davies, while generally very positive about Schweitzer's work on Paul, criticizes him for his attitude to rabbinic Judaism, specifically for his stark distinction between it and apocalyptic (“Paul and Judaism,” in The Bible and Modern Scholarship: Papers Read at the 100th Meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature, December 28–30, 1964 [ed. J. Philip Hyatt; Nashville: Abingdon, 1965] 178–86, esp. 184–86; repr. in W. D. Davies, Paul and Rabbinic Judaism: Some Rabbinic Elements in Pauline Theology [4th ed.; Philadelphia: Fortress, 1980] vii–xvi). Sanders is clear that Schweitzer had little knowledge of rabbinic literature and was largely dependent for his account on Ferdinand Weber, Jüdische Theologie auf Grund des Talmuds und verwandter Schriften (ed. Franz Delitzsch and Georg Schnedermann; Leipzig: Dörffling and Franke, 1897), mentioned, somewhat negatively, by Schweitzer at Schweitzer, Paul and His Interpreters, 48 (for Sanders's comments see Paul, 39 n. 22).

⁵⁰ Schweitzer, Paul and His Interpreters, 227. For further bold assertions of the same see Schweitzer, “Selbstdarstellung,” 373–74.

⁵¹ For a discussion of this work and its origins see Marchand, Suzanne L., German Orientalism in the Age of Empire: Religion, Race, and Scholarship (Publications of the German Historical Institute; Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 2009) 284–91Google Scholar.

⁵² Broadly speaking it would be right to argue that Schweitzer's own approach to Paul is a “history of religions” approach, as he himself admits. It is simply that the religion with which he seeks to compare Paul's thought is Judaism. When he writes in the passage quoted above on p. 374 about “true exponents of ‘Comparative Religion’” (see Schweitzer, Paul and His Interpreters, 177), the word translated as “comparative religion” is Religionsgeschichte.

⁵³ See Stegemann, Ekkehard, “Der Jude Paulus und seine antijüdische Auslegung,” in Auschwitz—Krise der christlichen Theologie. Eine Vortragsreihe (ed. Rendtorff, Rolf and Stegemann, Ekkehard; Abhandlung zum christlich-jüdischen Dialog 10; Munich: Kaiser, 1980) 117–39Google Scholar, at 123–25. Further discussion of this and related points is found in Gerdmar, Theological Anti-Semitism, 98–120, esp. 103–9. For a discussion of the persistence of anti-Jewish interpretations of Paul, see Sanders, Paul, 2–12, 33–69.

⁵⁴ Schweitzer was not the first to question the centrality of justification for Paul. William Wrede had already done the same, but Wrede had not done this as part of a more Jewish portrayal of Paul. In fact Wrede is clear about Paul's opposition to Judaism and sees the doctrine of justification as bound up with that concern rather than with a theory of redemption. See Wrede, William, Paulus (2nd ed.; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1907) 72–79Google Scholar. For Schweitzer's comments on Wrede, see Paul and His Interpreters, 166–70.

⁵⁵ For Schweitzer's thoughts on justification see Schweitzer, Mysticism, 205–26.

⁵⁶ See Davies, “Paul and Judaism,” esp. 184–86.

⁵⁷ Schweitzer, Paul and His Interpreters, 227.

⁵⁸ “Schweitzer . . . had not sought to deal thoroughly with the question of the relation of Pauline theology to that of Judaism. Jewish apocalypticism serves, rather, as the point of departure for his description of Paul's thought” (Sanders, Paul, 8) [italics in original].

⁵⁹ I say “explicitly” because Schweitzer does go on to show how it was that Paul's Jewish-eschatological message came to be hellenized, but this account of the hellenization of Christianity does not lead to any reflections on the so-called “parting of the ways.”

⁶⁰ Schweitzer, Paul and His Interpreters, x.

⁶¹ Ibid.

⁶² It would be wrong, however, to think that Mysticism is less taken up with exploring the Jewish background of Paul than Paul and His Interpreters.

⁶³ “A faith of the present arises within the faith of the future. Paul connects the expectation of the Kingdom and of the redemption to be realised in it with the coming and the death of Jesus, in such a way that belief in the redemption and in the Coming of the Kingdom becomes independent of whether the Kingdom comes quickly or is delayed. Without giving up eschatology, he already stands above it” (Schweitzer, Mysticism, 380). Schweitzer goes on to assert that Paul thinks out so thoroughly belief in Jesus as the coming Messiah that it becomes freed from its temporal limitations and valid for all time.

⁶⁴ Ibid., 376.

⁶⁵ See Schweitzer, Paul and His Interpreters, x, quoted above.

⁶⁶ Stegemann holds Schweitzer's avoidance of an anti-Jewish interpretation of Paul to be singular (“Paulus,” 130), though he does not discuss why Schweitzer may have come to the apparently exceptional views he did. See also Erich Gräßer's assertion: “Today one writes such sentences lightly. At that time they were audacious sentences and they stood in sharp contrast to prevailing opinions about Paulinism among liberals, who had pushed what was Jewish as far into the distance as possible and had placed at the forefront of Pauline theology the moral, purely spiritual, personal conception of religion.” (Solche Sätze schreibt man heute leicht. Damals waren sie kühne Sätze. Sie waren der liberalen Vorstellung vom Paulinismus stracks zuwider. Denn diese hatte das Jüdische möglichst zurückgeschoben und in den Vordergrund der paulinischen Theologie die sittliche, rein geistige, persönliche Auffassung des religiösen Verhältnisses gestellt [Albert Schweitzer als Theologe [Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1979] 171–72]) [italics in original].

⁶⁷ See Schweitzer, Albert, Das Christentum und die Weltreligionen (Munich: Beck, n.d.Google Scholar; ET Christianity and the Religions of the World [trans. Johanna Powers; London: Allen and Unwin, 1923]).

⁶⁸ See Schweitzer, Albert, Die Weltanschauung der indischen Denker. Mystik und Ethik (Munich: Beck, 1935Google Scholar; ET Indian Thought and Its Development [trans. Lilian M. Rigby Russell; New York: Holt, 1936]), and, for further discussion of the same, see the series of chapters in Albert Schweitzer's Kultur und Ethik in den Weltreligionen designated “Kultur und Ethik in den Weltreligionen” (ed. Ulrich Körtner and Johann Zürcher; Werke aus dem Nachlass; Munich: Beck, 2001) 13–175.

⁶⁹ See Schweitzer, Albert, Geschichte des chinesischen Denkens (ed. Kaempf, Bernard and Zürcher, Johann; Werke aus dem Nachlass; Munich: Beck, 2002)Google Scholar.

⁷⁰ He did not take a developed interest in Islam, though he was fearful of its advance through Africa, commenting at some length as to why it might be appealing to some Africans and why he found the prospect of such an advance uncongenial. See his “Von der Mission. Gedanken und Erfahrungen,” in Schweitzer, Albert, Vorträge, Vorlesungen, Aufsätze (ed. Günzler, Claus, Luz, Ulrich, and Zürcher, Johann; Werke aus dem Nachlass; Munich: Beck, 2003) 316–59Google Scholar, at 333–34.

⁷¹ Schweitzer, Religions of the World, 24–25.

⁷² Ibid., 25.

⁷³ Ibid., 36–37.

⁷⁴ See Schweitzer, Reich Gottes, 36–150, as well as Schweitzer, Albert, Wir Epigonen. Kultur und Kulturstaat (ed. Körtner, Ulrich and Zürcher, Johann; Werke aus dem Nachlass; Munich: Beck, 2005) 376–78Google Scholar. In the latter passage Schweitzer engages in a detailed discussion of the qualities required of a Kulturstaat. He notes that there are some such states in the history of the world whose real achievement has never been properly appreciated because that achievement, moral in its content, came with little outward success as measured, for instance, in military victories or the attainment of empires. Schweitzer contends that one of the best examples of such a Kulturstaat is that of the Jews. He then delineates how the prophetic, ethical vision exemplified in Amos, Hosea, and Isaiah began to influence the Jewish hierarchy and how the small and insignificant nation of Judea became a proper Kulturstaat. He states that it did not lose its character as such after the Jewish nation ceased to be a state in territorial and political terms. He then concludes: “Through Christianity, which emerged from it, it [Judaism]—in combination with Greco-Roman thought—laid the foundation for our culture and our ‘culture-states’” (Durch das aus ihm hervorgegangene Christentum hat er [der jüdische Staat] mit dem griechisch-römischen Denken den Grund zu unserer Kultur und unseren Kulturstaaten gelegt [ibid., 377]); and he attributes indirectly to Judaism the idea that all cultures are spiritually members of the one culture of humanity. Such a view is easy to arrive at when one recalls that the idea of the kingdom of God, first articulated among Jews, is precisely the foundation of all Kulturstaaten. He continues more forcefully: “In this way the ‘culture-people’ that became such through the simplest of processes is at the same time the one that has produced the greatest stimuli and the only one that has not declined. This is explained by the fact that its ascent was an inward one and was accompanied by no other external circumstances. . .. Judaism survived because it was only a ‘culture-people’ spiritually and therefore could adapt to all conditions of life.” (So ist das in dem einfachsten Prozeß gewordene Kulturvolk zugleich dasjenige, das die größten Anregungen gegeben hat, und das einzige, das nicht unterging. Das liegt daran, daß sein Aufstieg ein innerlicher und von keinen äußeren Umständen begleitet[er war]. . .. Es [das Kulturvolk] blieb erhalten, weil es nur geistig Kulturvolk war und sich daher allen Lebensbeding[ungen] anpassen konnte [ibid., 377]). But again little real interest is shown in Judaism (he goes on to make some comments about the way in which Jewish concentration on morality has meant that the aesthetic dimension of life has been forgotten, and that this constitutes the major difference between Jewish and non-Jewish culture), even though Schweitzer vows to take his discussion further.

⁷⁵ See the following comment from Schweitzer, Paul and His Interpreters: “The picture [of Judaism in an earlier period] which they [rabbinic scholars] draw for us shows only a sun-scorched plain, but this yellow, wilted grass was green and fresh once” (49); see also n. 49 above.

⁷⁶ Something close to a supersessionist position might be found in Gespräche, 59: “Everything had to turn out as it in fact did in order that this people [the Jews] could bequeath to the world that for which we must be grateful to it: Christianity. It is with these thoughts in mind that one must examine the picture of Israel's history in the time before the birth of Jesus and during his youth, if one wants to understand its higher sense.” (Alles mußte kommen, wie es kam, damit dieses Volk [die Juden] der Welt das schenken konnte, was wir ihm verdanken: das Christentum. Mit diesen Gedanken muß man das Bild der Geschichte Israels in der Zeit vor Jesu Geburt und während seiner Jugend aufrollen, wenn man ihren höheren Sinn verstehen will [italics in original].) But this sentiment, found in a set of popular addresses on Jesus and the New Testament, is expressed benignly, however one might understand its implications. It may, however, hint at why Schweitzer ceased to take much of an interest in Judaism beyond the New Testament. In many ways for him Christianity embodied Judaism's greatest thoughts.

⁷⁷ See, for instance, his sermon dated January 10, 1904 (Albert Schweitzer, Predigten, 1898–1948 [ed. Richard Brüllmann and Erich Gräßer; Werke aus dem Nachlass; Munich: Beck, 2001] 512–15), where, in asking why it was that the Jews rejected Christ, he avoids a vituperative answer, asserting that the Jews, though immensely pious and honest, were “sated” (satt) and so not aware that there were other dishes to taste. He likens this state to a condition found among many contemporaries. The answer might not be found acceptable now, but it avoids the usual Christian polemic that might have been elicited by such a question.

⁷⁸ For classic expressions of supersessionism among German Protestant scholars see Franz Delitzsch as discussed in Gerdmar, Theological Anti-Semitism, 228–30.

⁷⁹ Schweitzer, Paul and His Interpreters, 227.

⁸⁰ The conference was connected with the journal Kreatur, which promoted dialogue between Jews, Catholics, and Protestants. Its theme was to be “reality and responsibility” (Wirklichkeit und Verantwortung). Schweitzer was unable to attend. The men first met in 1929 in Frankfurt at a conference at which both gave papers.

⁸¹ See Vermes, Pamela, “The Buber-Schweitzer Correspondence,” JJS 37 (1986) 228–45CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Schweitzer, Albert, Theologischer und philosophischer Briefwechsel, 1900–1965 (ed. Zager, Werner in collaboration with Erich Gräßer, with the assistance of Markus Aellig et al.; Werke aus dem Nachlass; Munich: Beck, 2006) 133–49Google Scholar. See also Stiehm, Lothar, “Martin Buber und Albert Schweitzer. Geben, Nehmen, Miteinander 1901–1965,” in Den Menschen zugewandt leben. Festschrift für Werner Licharz (ed. Lilienthal, Ulrich and Stiehm, Lothar; Osnabrück: Secolo, 1999) 97–116Google Scholar.

⁸² Buber's engagement with Schweitzer's oeuvre goes back to 1902, when he read Abendmahl.

⁸³ Buber, Martin, Zwei Glaubensweisen (2nd ed.; Gerlingen: Lambert Schneider, 1994) 17Google Scholar.

⁸⁴ For expressions of enthusiasm for and strong interest in Schweitzer's work on Paul see the letter dated December 5, 1932. Here Buber notes that the effect of Schweitzer's book on Paul has increased since he last wrote to him and that he wants to discuss the matter with Schweitzer further.

⁸⁵ See n. 83 above for full bibliographic reference.

⁸⁶ Buber, Zwei Glaubensweisen, 17: “Ich kann jedoch die paulinische Lehre vom Glauben, die ich hier behandle, nur mit einem randhaften Judentum in Verbindung sehen, das eben ein ‘hellenistisches’ war.”

⁸⁷ On this see Vermes, “Correspondence,” 229–30.

⁸⁸ Martin Buber, Zwiesprache (Berlin: Schocken, 1932). The letter where both these works are mentioned is dated December 3, 1932.

⁸⁹ Buber, Martin, Das verborgene Licht (Frankfurt-am-Main: Rütten and Loening, 1924)Google Scholar.

⁹⁰ Buber, Martin, Die Frage an den Einzelnen (Berlin: Schocken, 1936)Google Scholar.

⁹¹ Letter dated April 4, 1951.

⁹² Letter dated December 3, 1932. See Vermes's comment: “Schweitzer for his part did not extend his zone of concern with the Bible so that it entered the preserves of the Judaism, let alone the Hasidism, of Buber the ‘arch-Jew’” (“Correspondence,” 229). If Schweitzer had read this material, and we have no evidence that he did, he would probably have had little sympathy for Buber's attempt to appreciate the magical, mystical, and ecstatic side of Hasidic culture, or his attempts to use elements of that tradition to revivify Judaism. Such emphases would probably have offended Schweitzer's liberal sensitivities, though whether, as has been suggested to me by Prof. Ruth Harris of New College, Oxford, he would have found aspects of Buber's Hasidism resonant with aspects of African culture that his mission was seeking to disenchant is not clear.

⁹³ In the copy of Die Mystik des Apostels Paulus (Mysticism) that Schweitzer gave Buber, there was an inscription in which Schweitzer notes the fact of his Jewish portrait of Paul. It is more surprising, then, especially given Buber's disagreement with this thesis, that he does not discuss the matter at greater length. However, this could have happened in conversations the two had in their rare meetings.

⁹⁴ Before the annexation of Alsace-Lorraine by the Prussian state in 1870, Jews from that area accounted for 57% of French Jewry (see Vicki Caron, Between France and Germany: The Jews of Alsace-Lorraine, 1871–1918 [Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1988] 12).

⁹⁵ See Caron, Jews, 119. Also see Raphaël, Freddy, Le judaïsme alsacien. Histoire, patrimoine, traditions (Strasbourg: La Nuée Bleue, 1999)Google Scholar and Harris, Ruth, The Man on Devil's Island: Alfred Dreyfus and the Affair that Divided France (London: Penguin Allen Lane, 2010) 43–45Google Scholar.

⁹⁶ See Caron, Jews, 27–30.

⁹⁷ The majority of Jewish optants were from the wealthier classes.

⁹⁸ See Caron, Jews, 92.

⁹⁹ Of the 2,012 Jews recorded as living in Strasbourg in 1902, 1,052 were so-called Altdeutsche.

¹⁰⁰ See Caron, Jews, 110–17.

¹⁰¹ On his background see Harris, Devil's Island, 42–45.

¹⁰² See Caron, Jews, 132–35.

¹⁰³ Anti-Semitic feelings were, however, still a presence within Alsatian society.

¹⁰⁴ Caron quotes a passage from Michel Huisman in which it is stated that Strassburg University had up to that point (the quotation comes from 1898) been able to avoid the anti-Semitism of which in many German towns more than one scholar had been the victim (Jews, 143). For more on the liberal spirit of the university see Craig, John E., Scholarship and Nation Building: The Universities of Strasbourg and Alsatian Society, 1870–1939 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984) 84Google Scholar.

¹⁰⁵ One of the most distinguished of these was the baptized Jew Georg Simmel, whose work was to influence Schweitzer in various ways.

¹⁰⁶ Caron cites a figure of 8.7% of the student population as being Jewish, though she notes that a high proportion of these were German Jews who had immigrated to Alsace (Jews, 173–75).

¹⁰⁷ The well-known historian Friedrich Meinecke, who was appointed to the university's faculty of history in 1901, comments on the strikingly large number of Jews on the staff, among whom he mentions Harry Bresslau, Schweitzer's father-in-law (on whom see below) and Hermann Bloch, describing the institution as “friendly to Jews” (judenfreundlich) (see Friedrich Meinecke, Erlebtes, 1862–1919 [Stuttgart: Koehler, 1964] 166). For an assessment of Meinecke's view, see Roscher, Stephan, Die Kaiser-Wilhelms–Universität, Straßburg 1872–1902 (Tübingen: Lang, 2006) 186–89Google Scholar; Roscher seeks to correct, at least in part, Meinecke's impression.

¹⁰⁸ Schweitzer, Albert, Aus meiner Kindheit und Jugendzeit (Munich: Beck, 1924Google Scholar; ET Memoirs of Childhood and Youth [trans. Kurt Bergel and Alice R. Bergel; Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse University Press, 1997]).

¹⁰⁹ It has been suggested to me that “Mausche” might be related to the German word mauscheln, which means to engage in shady wheeling and dealing, and so a kind of nickname carrying negative overtones. But such a view seems an over-interpretation—Mausche was a well-known form of the Jewish name Moses.

¹¹⁰ Schweitzer, Memoirs, 13–14.

¹¹¹ For the typicality of the kind of prejudices expressed in this story, see Harris, Devil's Island, 44, with relevant bibliography.

¹¹² This is the case, though, with many of Schweitzer's anecdotes as they appear in this book.

¹¹³ See Schweitzer, Memoirs, 44–45.

¹¹⁴ See Schweitzer, Out of My Life, 22–23.

¹¹⁵ On Théodore Reinach and his brothers Salomon and Joseph, see Harris, Devil's Island, especially 161–63 and 187–93. Schweitzer first refers to having dinner with Théodore in Paris in a letter to his future wife, Helene, dated June 29, 1908. He notes that Reinach had invited him to dinner so that he could confirm that the man who wrote The Quest of the Historical Jesus also wrote the book on Bach (here referring to the shorter French edition, published in 1905: J. S. Bach. Le musicien-poète [with the collaboration of Hubert Gillot; Paris: Costallat, 1905]; Théodore had strong musicological interests and had sought to reform the synagogal chants of eastern Jews). It seems that Reinach, in his capacity as a deputy (he was one of the so-called bloc des gauches representatives from 1906–1914), helped smooth Schweitzer's attempts to go to Gabon as a German and not a French citizen, something that had become a sticking point between Schweitzer and members of the Paris Missionary Society, the organization in whose mission station Schweitzer had chosen to work.

¹¹⁶ There are numerous references to meetings between Fanny and Schweitzer, and then Helene, in letters between the latter two, dating from 1910 (references found in Schweitzer, Albert and Bresslau, Helene, Die Jahre vor Lambarene. Briefe 1902–1912 (ed. Miller, Rhena Schweitzer and Woytt, Gustav; Munich: Beck, 1992Google Scholar; ET The Albert Schweitzer–Helene Bresslau Letters, 1902–1912 [ed. and trans. Antje Bultmann Lemke with the assistance of Nancy Stewart; The Albert Schweitzer Library; Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 2003]). It seems that Schweitzer accompanied Fanny to concerts (May 5, 1911; November 18, 1911), played the organ to her (August 9, 1911), and even used her as a confidante with whom to discuss his relationship with Helene (August 23, 1911). For her support of the Lambaréné hospital see a letter dated November 18, 1911, promising a thousand francs a year, discussed by Mühlstein, Helene Bresslau, 139 (see also 133 and 142). The closeness of Schweitzer and his wife to Fanny is shown in their decision to give their only child, Rhena, Fanny's second name. On this see Oermann, Schweitzer, 183.

¹¹⁷ While the Reinachs were liberal Jews who were strongly assimilated, they remained committed to the reform of Judaism and the study of its history. In 1884, Théodore wrote his Histoire des Israëlites, depuis l’époque de leur dispersion jusqu’à nos jours (Paris: Hachette, 1884), in which he describes the role of the prophets in transforming Judaism from an animistic religion to one imbued with moral universalism. He goes on to trace a line of Jewish development running from the same prophets to Moses Maimonides and Moses Mendelssohn, seeing the emancipation of the Jews as marking a new point in their history. This emphasis on Jewish rationality over against the mystical and more obscurantist traditions of the Jews (for all of the above see Harris, Devil's Island, 191) is not totally dissimilar to Schweitzer's own understanding of the Christian tradition with its heavy emphasis on the prophets and later the Enlightenment, and it is difficult to imagine that Théodore and his younger Alsatian friend did not discuss their similar visions of religion, exchanging opinions about the history of their own traditions—the fact that Théodore had read or at least heard of Schweitzer's Von Reimarus zu Wrede (Quest) is evidence of some interest and would have provided ample topics for conversation. But if their conversations touched on the history of Judaism beyond the second century, Schweitzer gives no evidence of this in his written work, never as far as I have discovered referring to Reinach's Histoire.

¹¹⁸ Schweitzer mentions a conversation with a Jewish student in the medical faculty in Schweitzer, Albert, Die Weltanschauung der Ehrfurcht vor dem Leben. Kulturphilosophie III (ed. Günzler, Claus and Zürcher, Johann; 2 vols.; Werke aus dem Nachlass; Munich: Beck, 1999–2000) 2:200Google Scholar.

¹¹⁹ For a brief account of Bresslau's life see Mühlstein, Helene Bresslau; and Fuhrmann, Horst, “Sind eben alles Menschen gewesen.” Gelehrtenleben im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert (Munich: Beck, 1996) 104–8Google Scholar. Also note Bresslau's own account of his life in Die Geschichtswissenschaft der Gegenwart in Selbstdarstellungen (ed. Sigfried Steinberg; 2 vols.; Leipzig: Meiner, 1925–1926) 2:29–83.

¹²⁰ In this text, von Treitschke argues that German society was being invaded by eastern Jews, who, while quickly assimilating themselves and indeed becoming successful, were bringing about the ruin of German society through their materialist tendencies. Von Treitschke feared that after one thousand years of what he termed “German culture,” a new period of German-Jewish mixed culture would follow with disastrous results. See von Treitschke, Heinrich, “Unsere Aussichten,” Preußische Jahrbücher 44 (1879) 559–76Google Scholar.

¹²¹ At one point in his response to von Treitschke, Bresslau notes how shocked he was when for the first time, as a seven-year-old boy, he was mocked as a Jew on the streets by other children.

¹²² For the relevant texts see Krieger, Karsten, Der “Berliner Antisemitismusstreit” 1879–1881. Eine Kontroverse um die Zugehörigkeit der deutschen Juden zur Nation. Eine kommentierte Quellenedition im Auftrag des Zentrums für Antisemitismusforschung (2 vols.; Munich: Saur, 2003)Google Scholar. Bresslau's text is found at 1:195–216, and is an “open letter” (Sendschreiben) to von Treitschke. For brief comments on this see Fuhrmann, Gelehrtenleben, 106–7.

¹²³ See Mühlstein, Helene Bresslau, 21 for the effect of this event, and German anti-Semitism more generally, on the family.

¹²⁴ See ibid., 79, and literature cited there.

¹²⁵ Schweitzer and Bresslau, Briefe.

¹²⁶ She had contracted tuberculosis on their first trip to Africa and never recovered fully.

¹²⁷ See Schweitzer and Bresslau, Briefe, 88: “Your father has had to endure a great deal from people and has had to tolerate setbacks and injustices inflicted on him by our race” (Dein Vater hat viel von den Menschen zu leiden gehabt und Zurücksetzungen und Ungerechtigkeiten von unserer Rasse erdulden müssen). “Our race” (unsere Rasse) may refer to Gentiles or Germans (Jews in this period would often refer to themselves as a race).

¹²⁸ In a letter dated January 26, 1908 (Schweitzer and Bresslau, Briefe, 198), Schweitzer recalls a conversation with Friedrich Curtius, the well-known Prussian official, who was the so-called Kreisdirektor of Strasbourg. In a discussion about rationalism, the latter had asserted that this was a strong feature of Schweitzer's intellectual make-up, claiming that it was one that he shared with the Jews: “For the foundation of the Jewish spirit consists in a simultaneously superficial and yet penetrating rationalism” (Denn die Grundlage des jüdischen Geistes besteht in einem zugleich oberfächlichen und tiefgehenden Rationalismus). Schweitzer goes on to note that he is aware of the presence of such rationalism in Helene and comments, “It is that which gives you peace, and me also” (Er ist es, der Ihnen diese Ruhe gibt, wie auch mir). While viewing this rationalism positively, Schweitzer fails to comment on the view that it is in some sense Jewish, though his reference to Helene in this context might be significant.

¹²⁹ In his own account of his life, which appeared in the series entitled Die Geschichtswissenschaft der Gegenwart in Selbstdarstellungen (for full bibliographic reference see n. 119 above), published in the year of his death, 1926, Bresslau never refers to his Jewish origins, not even to his role in the Antisemitismusstreit. This might be seen as a sign of his assimilationist tendencies and as a desire to exclude almost any sense of his Jewishness from his personal life. But it may have had more to do with a sense of hurt at his treatment and a reluctance to go over sad terrain. Bresslau, though assimilated, was keen to promote the cause of Jews in Germany, a fact not only seen in his participation in the Antisemitismusstreit, but also in his role in the founding of the short-lived journal Zeitschrift für die Geschichte des Judentums in Deutschland, his authorship of a number of articles on the history of the Jews in Germany, and his membership in the Historische Kommission der Geschichte des Judentums in Deutschland. Such activity was not, of course, incompatible with the development on Bresslau's part of a strongly patriotic spirit, and in the same autobiographical essay he records how he went around Alsace lecturing as a representative of the government, and his sadness at the return of Alsace to France at the end of the First World War. He was expelled from Strasbourg on December 1, 1918, as a “pan-Germanist militant.”

¹³⁰ Mühlstein, Helene Bresslau, 22.

¹³¹ Helene took her Protestantism seriously, and she and Schweitzer appear from their letters to have shared a genuine liberal Protestant piety.

¹³² See Oermann, Schweitzer, 213–14. In the speech Schweitzer refers to the political and social ferment of the time, noting that “spiritual existence is threatened by material existence” (mit der materiellen Existenz ist die geistige bedroht). He then continues: “So much of what might be done for culture and education can no longer be continued . . . so great is the distress and concern in which this day falls” (So vieles, was für Kultur und Bildung getan wurde, kann nicht mehr fortgesetzt werde . . . so gross sind die Not und die Sorge, in die dieser Tag fällt). He goes on to delineate, again in general terms, the way in which terrible material developments have influenced economic, social, and ethical life. A more detailed discussion of this speech is now found in Suermann, Schweitzer als “homo politicus”, 165–68, where the author gives a helpful description of the tense context in which the speech was delivered, noting that the police were on hand in case the room in which Schweitzer was talking was stormed by the SA. Suermann makes it clear that Schweitzer could not have been unaware of anti-Semitic disturbances before this date caused by the Nazis. Schweitzer had sensed the way Germany was drifting as early as 1930, as a letter where he inveighs against the weakness of German democracy indicates (quoted by Mühlstein, Helene Bresslau, 239).

¹³³ For especially negative comments about Nietzsche in these volumes, written between 1931 and 1945, see Schweitzer, Kulturphilosophie III, 1:332–41; 2:322–27 and 345; and the sentence: “With him European thought lost its soundness” (Bei ihm verliert das europäische Denken seine Gediegenheit; ibid., 345). But, in spite of a growing sense of the difficulty of Nietzsche's views, Schweitzer is clear that the philosopher, whom he never explicitly associates with the Nazis, was not properly understood by those who were now intent upon using him. To assume that he provided some kind of template for society's organization was, according to Schweitzer, quite wrong—Nietzsche's genius lay in the questions he asked, not the answers he gave. But people now, Schweitzer notes, were making of him what he never was, precisely because he did not speak to them but rather to Schweitzer's own generation (see Schweitzer, Kulturphilosophie III, 1:437). Something of this critique is conveyed in the unglossed statement: “Not what Nietzsche and Kierkegaard thought and said but what one makes of it! Today's thought moves backwards to it.” (Nicht was Nietzsche und Kierkegaard gedacht und gesagt haben sondern was man daraus macht! Das heutige Denken führt sich auf sie zurück [Kulturphilosophie III, 1:450].) For a helpful account of Schweitzer's changing views on Nietzsche, see Claus Günzler, Albert Schweitzer. Einführung in sein Denken (Munich: Beck, 1996) 46–54. While Günzler is clear that “the misuse of Nietzschean thought forced him [Schweitzer] finally to part company with Nietzsche” (die Mißbrauchbarkeit des Nietzscheschen Denkens nötigt ihn letztlich zur Absage an Nietzsche selbst), he is adamant that Nietzsche was central to Schweitzer's own ethical development, a point illustrated by the large number of references to the philosopher in Schweitzer's Kulturphilosophie III. Similar comments are found in Günzler's introduction to Kulturphilosophie III, 1:27, but he does not develop these at any length.

¹³⁴ See especially Schweitzer, Kulturphilosophie III, 2:298–330, 311–13, and 426–32.

¹³⁵ Letters quoted in Mühlstein, Helene Bresslau, 228. The letter Mühlstein quotes comes from the middle of November 1932. Schweitzer's despair at the situation in Germany, deepened by a visit to Berlin, is captured in such words as the following: “Now I almost no longer have the strength to hope. Again and again I say to myself, Why write this? [that is, his third volume on cultural philosophy] . . . Before the new spirit can come, the peoples’ madness will have destroyed everything.” (Jetzt habe ich fast nicht mehr die Kraft zu hoffen. Immer sage ich mir, wozu dies schreiben . . . Ehe der neue Geist kommen kann, hat der Wahnsinn der Völker alles zerstört [ellipsis in source].)

¹³⁶ See Kulturphilosophie III, 2:200 and 219. In the latter passage, Schweitzer castigates the failure of a number of unnamed states to allow Jews, fleeing from persecution, to immigrate into their lands, so condemning them to horrendous suffering and destruction. Note also ibid., 303–4 for Schweitzer's reference to the presence of state-sponsored torture but again without any reference to the authorities to whom he is referring.

¹³⁷ His opposition to nationalism is seen most clearly in Schweitzer, Wir Epigonen, 77–92, but is present throughout his work. For a discussion of this opposition see Suermann, Schweitzer als “homo politicus”, 119–31.

¹³⁸ It appears that Schweitzer was invited by Joseph Goebbels to Germany after 1933 to give concerts and lectures. Apparently Goebbels concluded his letter to Schweitzer in his customary way with the words “with German greeting” (mit deutschem Gruss). Schweitzer replied signing off “with central African Greeting” (mit zentralafrikanischem Gruss). The story is retold by Theodor Heuss in his paean to Schweitzer on the occasion of the presentation to the latter with the Friedenspreis des Deutschen Buchhandels in 1951. Heuss, then President of the Bundesrepublik and a friend of Schweitzer from their student days in Strasbourg, attributes the story to Werner Picht, one of Schweitzer's many biographers and a personal friend. The correspondence has, sadly, never been found. For a discussion of the matter see Oermann, Schweitzer, 219.

¹³⁹ See Mühlstein, Helene Bresslau, 231. The letter, dated July 2, 1933, is now quoted in Suermann, Schweitzer als “homo politicus”, 172. The plea is strong in its tone: “I would like to express my feeling that here in the middle of European ‘civilization’ a situation has developed that needs a man of your clout. You are a man to whom the world's conscience would listen! . . . I believe that here in this very moment a more important obligation awaits you than in Africa.” (Ich möchte nur dem Gefühl Ausdruck geben, dass hier im Zentrum der europäischen ‘Zivilisation’ eine Lage enststanden ist, die ein [sic] Mann von Ihrem Schlage braucht. Sie sind ein Mann, auf den das Weltgewissen hört! . . . Ich glaube, dass im Augenblick hier Ihrer eine wichtigere Aufgabe wartet, als in Afrika [ellipses in source].)

¹⁴⁰ “And yet I sometimes ask myself what sort of effect you would have if you wanted to make Europe your center of operations; certainly no fewer blessings would come forth than do in Lambaréné” (Ich muss mich doch manchmal fragen, welche Art von Wirksamkeit Sie wohl entfalten würden, wenn Sie sich in Europa Ihr Arbeitsgebiet einrichten wollten; sicherlich würde daraus nicht weniger Segen entspringen als in Lambarene [Schweitzer, Briefwechsel, 611]). Note also the possibly conscience-pricking words of Planck in another letter to Schweitzer, dated September 29, 1938: “Sometimes I envy you your quiet life, lived out in peace and harmony, notwithstanding all your work. And yet each of us must fight as well as he can in the particular places that fate has assigned him.” (Manchmal beneide ich Sie um Ihr bei aller Arbeit doch geruhiges Leben in Frieden und Harmonie. Und doch muss jeder von uns auf seinem ihm vom Schicksal bestimmten Posten kämpfen so gut er kann [Schweitzer, Briefwechsel, 611].)

¹⁴¹ Mühlstein, Helene Bresslau, 231.

¹⁴² One instance of such help relates to Herbert Spiegelberg who, though a Christian, was deemed to be Jewish under the Nuremberg Laws. Spiegelberg, who had originally attended Schweitzer's confirmation classes in Strasbourg, informed Schweitzer in 1933 that because of his origins, he was unable to habilitate. Schweitzer wrote letters of recommendation for him to the U.S. where he was able to immigrate in 1938. See Schweitzer, Briefwechsel, 644–99 for the correspondence between the two, and for more evidence of his attempts to help Jews get out of Germany and be repatriated elsewhere, see Suermann, Schweitzer als “homo politicus”, 177–78.

¹⁴³ On the complex role of resignation in Schweitzer's thought see Ara Paul Barsam, Reverence for Life: Albert Schweitzer's Great Contribution to Ethical Thought (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008) 18–21. Schweitzer understands the concept positively, as a way of overcoming the apparently inevitable conflict of wills to live. Although Schweitzer never applies the concept politically, one can see how it might be applied in such a way, especially where political issues are so obviously ethical as they are in any consideration of the Holocaust.

¹⁴⁴ These views, associated, respectively, with Johann Zürcher, a follower of Schweitzer who had spent much of his life editing the latter's Nachlass, and with Erich Gräßer, another follower who has written at length about Schweitzer and similarly edited some of his Nachlass, are reported in Suermann, Schweitzer als “homo politicus”, 173, but without comment from the author.

¹⁴⁵ For a helpful discussion of Schweitzer as a homo politicus, see ibid. It is notable that Schweitzer never spoke out explicitly against the evils of Communism, in spite of the fact that he was aware of its appalling record on human rights (ibid., 499).

¹⁴⁶ Hochhuth, Rolf, Der Stellvertreter (Reinbeck bei Hamburg: Rowohlt, 1963)Google Scholar. My decision to discuss Hochhuth's work in connection with Schweitzer's silence about Nazi persecution of Jews was made independently of Suermann, who now has a similar discussion in Schweitzer als “homo politicus”, 173–75.

¹⁴⁷ For a discussion of the play and the controversy it ignited see Ward, Margaret E., Rolf Hochhuth (Twayne's World Author Series 463; Boston: Twayne, 1977) 25–47Google Scholar.

¹⁴⁸ Hochhuth, Rolf, The Deputy (trans. Richard and Clara Winston; Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 1997)Google Scholar.

¹⁴⁹ For a detailed and early account of the controversy stimulated by the play, see The Storm over “The Deputy” (ed. Eric Bentley; New York: Grove Press, 1964).

¹⁵⁰ Suermann supports the case I have made above, at least indirectly, by drawing attention to Schweitzer's correspondence with Pastor Martin Niemöller, now available in Schweitzer, Briefwechsel, 471–500 (see Suermann, Schweitzer als “homo politicus”, 175–77). In a letter dated July 24, 1960, and quoted by Suermann (Schweitzer als “homo politicus”, 177), Schweitzer castigates Niemöller, who, like Schweitzer, was a strong opponent of the nuclear arms race, for not opposing Nazism energetically enough, or at least restricting his objections only to Hitler's actions against the church. Elsewhere, in a celebratory volume on the occasion of Niemöller's 70th birthday, Schweitzer, by contrast, questions his criticism of Niemöller for being too ecclesio-centric in his attacks on Nazism—explicitly mentioning persecution of the Jews as an omission—by noting his own distance from those events in Africa and wondering whether he would have been as brave as Niemöller had been (see Bis an das Ende der Erde. Ökumenische Beiträge zum 70. Geburtstag von Martin Niemöller [ed. Hanfried Krüger; Munich: Beck, 1962] 26–28).

¹⁵¹ Note the following comments from his “Selbstdarstellung”: “Jesus and Paul can both be explained as having arisen out of Jewish thought” (Jesus und Paulus sind beide ganz aus jüdischen Gedanken zu erklären [Schweitzer, “Selbstdarstellung,” 374]).

¹⁵² A read through Gerdmar, Theological Anti-Semitism, with its detailed delineation of the different forms of supersessionism and the standard views about Judaism found in a range of 19^th- and 20^th-cent. Old and New Testament scholars, would make this clear; see especially 580. Interestingly, Schweitzer is not discussed by Gerdmar, though, as I have already suggested, he might have been considered in the same broadly positive light as Weiss and Gressmann.

¹⁵³ “What surprised and dismayed the theology of the last forty years was that, despite all forced and arbitrary interpretations, it could not keep Him [Jesus] in our time, but had to let Him go. He returned to His own time, not owing to the application of any historical ingenuity, but by the same inevitable necessity by which the liberated pendulum returns to its original position” (Schweitzer, Quest [2nd ET], 478–79).

¹⁵⁴ Schweitzer, Paul and His Interpreters, 49.

¹⁵⁵ Suermann quotes from an article in the Berliner Tageblatt, published to commemorate the thirtieth anniversary of the death of Émile Zola, Dreyfus's great defender, in which the anonymous author notes that the present times in Germany cry out for a new Zola. Suermann observes that Schweitzer could have been just that person, but he chose not to be (Schweitzer als “homo politicus”, 173).

¹⁵⁶ See n. 150 and his comments on this matter to Martin Niemöller.

¹⁵⁷ For the relationship between exegesis and anti-Semitism, see Gerdmar, Theological Anti-Semitism, 593–609.

¹⁵⁸ In this context it is important to note that Schweitzer was not like some theologians and indeed many others, who spoke out against Nazi oppression more generally but failed to mention the Jewish persecution. He simply failed to speak out against Nazi oppression publicly at all. Again this should not be taken as an exculpatory observation, but one that may show that Schweitzer had no particular problem with Judaism. In this context reference should be made to n. 150 above and Schweitzer's criticism of the specific character of Niemöller's attack on the Nazis.