Memoirs of Childhood and Youth Albert Schweitzer In 1924, Albert Schweitzer published Memoirs of Childhood and Youth, from which this selection is taken (Memoirs of Childhood and Youth, trans. by Kurt Bergel and Alice R. Bergel [Syracuse: Syracuse University, 1997], 3-41). This book of reminiscences of experiences early in life is based upon Schweitzer’s sessions, in 1922, with the psychologist and pastor Oscar Pfister in Zürich, when Schweitzer was in need of counsel. The reminiscences indicate that as a young person Schweitzer may well have already been sensitive to the pains and sufferings of other living beings, both humans and animals, although the reminiscences may also reflect his adult values being projected back upon his prior experiences. The present translation is that of Kurt and Alice Bergel, and this selection is reproduced here with the permission of Syracuse University Press. I was born on January 14, 1875, in little Kaysersberg in Upper Alsace in the house with the turret, on the left side as you leave town. My father was the pastor and teacher of the small Protestant congregation of Kaysersberg, which was mainly Catholic. When Alsace became French, the small vicarage ceased to exist. The little house with the turret has now become the police station. I was the second child, following a sister who was my elder by a year. The famous medieval preacher Geiler von Kaysersberg (1445-1510), who used to give sermons at Strasbourg Cathedral, took his name from this town. Born in Schaffhausen in Switzerland, he grew up in the house of his grandfather in Kaysersberg after the death of his father. The vintage of 1875 was excellent. As a boy I took great pride in having been born in Geiler von Kaysersberg’s hometown in a year famous for its wines. Half a year after my birth, my father moved to Günsbach in the Münster Valley to be its pastor. My mother hailed from this region; she was the daughter of Pastor Schillinger in Mühlbach, farther back in the valley. When we came to Günsbach, I was a very weak child. On the day my father was inaugurated as pastor, my mother decked me out as best she could in a little white dress with colored ribbons. Despite her efforts none of the neighboring pastors’ wives who had come for the celebration dared compliment her on the scrawny baby with the little yellow face. They took refuge in embarrassed commonplaces. At that point my mother – she often told me this – could no longer control herself; she fled with me to the bedroom and shed hot tears over me. At one time they even thought I was dead, but the milk of the neighbor Leopold’s cow and the good Günsbach air worked wonders on me. From my second year on, I became healthy and grew up a strong boy. In the parsonage of Günsbach I spent a happy childhood with three sisters and a brother. A sixth child, a girl named Emma, was taken from my parents by an early death. My earliest recollection is of seeing the Devil. When I was three or four years old, I was allowed to go along to church every Sunday. I looked forward to that all week. I still feel our maid’s cotton glove on my lips when she put her hand over my mouth to stifle my yawn or when I sang along too loud. Ever Sunday I saw in a shiny frame up on the side of the organ a shaggy face moving back and forth and looking down into the church. It became visible when the organ was played and the singing began, disappeared as my father prayed at the altar, returned with the organ playing and singing, disappeared once again when my father was preaching and later reappeared once more with organ playing and singing. "This is the Devil looking into the church," I told myself. "When your father preaches the word of God, he has to make himself scarce." This theology, which I experienced every Sunday, shaped my childlike piety. Only much later, when I had been going to school for quite some time, did it become clear to me that the shaggy face which so strangely appeared and disappeared was that of Father Iltis, the organist. It appeared in a mirror which was mounted on the organ so the organist could see when my father stepped to the altar or went up to the pulpit. Another event I remember from my earliest childhood is the moment when I felt consciously ashamed of myself for the first time. I was still wearing a little skirt and was sitting on a small stool in the yard while my father was busying himself about the beehives in the garden. Soon, a pretty little creature landed on my hand. I was delighted to watch it crawling back and forth. But suddenly I began to scream. The little creature was a bee, which was justifiably angry that the pastor was taking full honeycombs from the beehive. In revenge it stung the pastor's little son. Upon my screams the whole household came rushing out. Everyone commiserated with me. The maid took me in her arms and tried to console me with kisses. My mother reproached my father for working at the beehive without first putting me in a safe place. Since my misfortune made me so interesting, I kept crying with satisfaction until I suddenly became aware that I was shedding tears without feeling pain any longer. My conscience told me to stop now; but in order to remain the center of attention, I continued my lamentation and went on accepting consolations which I no longer needed. In doing so I felt so despicable that I was unhappy for days. How often has the memory of this experience restrained me when, as a grown-up, I felt tempted to make a fuss about something that happened to me. The terror of my early childhood was the sacristan and gravedigger Jägle. On Sunday mornings after the first ringing of the bells, he came to the parsonage to pick up the numbers of the hymns that were to be sung and the baptismal vessels. He used to touch my forehead and say, "The horns are growing." I worried about the horns because I had rather pronounced bumps on my forehead. These caused me a great deal of anxiety since I had seen in the Bible a picture of Moses with horns. I don’t know how the sacristan found out about my worries, but he did know them and he fueled them. When he wiped his feet in front of the door before ringing the doorbell on Sundays, I felt like running away. But he had me in his power as the snake does the rabbit. I could not help but face him, feel his hand on my forehead and accept his damning pronouncement. After having carried the anguish about with me for a year or so, I brought Moses’ horns up in a conversation with my father and learned from him that Moses had been the only human who ever had horns. Therefore, I had nothing to fear. When the sacristan noticed that I was escaping him, he devised something new. He talked to me about soldiering. "Now we are Prussian," he would say, "and with Prussians everybody has to be a soldier. And the soldiers wear iron uniforms. In a few years you must be fitted with an iron uniform by the blacksmith up the street." From then on I sought every opportunity to stop in front of the blacksmith’s shop and see whether some soldier was coming to be fitted for such a uniform. But only horses and donkeys showed up to be shod. On a later occasion, as my mother and I were looking at a picture of a cuirassier, I asked her about the iron uniforms of soldiers. To my relief I found out that ordinary soldiers wore uniforms made of cloth and that I would be a common soldier. The sacristan, an old soldier who had fought in the Crimean War, was one of those dry jokers of whom there has never been a lack in Günsbach. He wanted to teach me how to take a joke. But he was somewhat too hard a taskmaster for me. As sacristan and gravedigger he was extremely dignified. He strode through the church with a majestic bearing, but otherwise he was known for being a bit odd. One morning in the haying season he was about to go off to the fields with a rake when a man stopped him to report the death of his father and to order a grave dug. The sacristan reacted with the words, "Why, anybody could come along and say his father had died." Once we passed by his house on a Sunday evening in midsummer. He came up to my father almost in tears and confided to him the story of his calf. He had raised a fine calf which followed him around like a dog. In the beginning of the summer, he had taken it out to graze in the hills and that Sunday he had gone to visit it. The calf did not recognize him. It acted as if he were a man like any other. This ingratitude hurt him deeply. The calf was not allowed back into its stable. He sold it right away. I did not look forward to school. When, on a beautiful October day, my father first put the slate under my arm and took me to the teacher, I cried all the way. I had an inkling that this meant the end of my dreaming and my glorious freedom. Since then, I have never allowed my expectations to be dazzled by the beautiful aura which clothes the new. I have always stepped into the unknown without illusions. The first visit of the school inspector made a deep impression on me. This was not just because the teacher’s hands trembled with excitement as she offered him the class register, and Father Iltis – who ordinarily looked so stern – kept smiling and bowing. No, what moved me so deeply was that I saw for the first time, face to face, a man who had written a book. It was his name – he was called Steinert – which appeared on the covers of the yellow intermediate reader and the green upper grade one. And now I saw before me in the flesh the author of these two books, which to me came right after the Bible. He did not look imposing. He was short, bald, had a red nose and a little potbelly and was wedged in a gray suit. To me, though, he wore a halo, for he was a man who had written a book! It seemed incomprehensible to me that the schoolmaster and mistress were talking to him as with an ordinary mortal. That first meeting with a writer of books was soon followed by a second even more significant experience. Mausche, a Jew from a neighboring village, who dealt in cattle and land, occasionally passed through Günsbach with his donkey cart. Since there were then no Jews living in our village, this was an event for the local boys each time. They ran after him and made fun of him. In order to advertise that I was beginning to feel grown-up, I felt compelled to join in one day, even though I did not really know what it was all about. So I followed him and his donkey with the other boys shouting "Mausche, Mausche!" like them. The most courageous of us folded the corner of their apron or jacket to look like a pig’s ear and jumped with it to him as close as possible. In this manner we pursued him beyond the village down to the bridge. Mausche, however, with his freckles and gray beard, continued on his way as unperturbed as his donkey. Only now and then did he turn around and look at us with an embarrassed, good-natured smile. This smile overwhelmed me. From Mausche I learned for the first time what it means to be silent in the face of persecution. He became a great educator for me. From that time on, I got accustomed to shaking hands with him and accompanying him a little way. But he never knew what he meant to me. There was a rumor that he was a usurer and unscrupulous real estate shark. I never investigated that. To me he remains Mausche with the forgiving smile, who even now forces me to be patient when I feel like fuming and raging. I did not look for fights, but I loved to match bodily strength with others in friendly scuffles. One day on my way home from school, I wrestled with George Nitschelm – he now rests beneath the earth – who was taller and considered stronger than I, and I beat him. As he was lying there under me, he hissed, "Darn it, if I got soup with meat twice a week as you do, I would be as strong as you are!" Shaken by this outcome of the game, I staggered home. George Nitschelm had expressed with shocking clarity what I had already come to feel on other occasions. The village boys did not fully accept me as one of their own. To them I was one who was better off than they, the parson’s son, the gentleman’s boy. I suffered because of this, for I did not want to be different from them or to be better off. The meat soup became loathsome to me. Whenever it was steaming on the table, I heard George Nitschelm’s voice. From then on I anxiously tried not to distinguish myself from the others in any way. For the winter I had been given an overcoat made out of an old one of my father’s. But no village boy wore an overcoat. When the tailor tried it on me and said, "My goodness, Albert, you’ll soon be a monsieur!" I could hardly hold back my tears. On the day I was to wear it for the first time – it was on a Sunday morning for church – I refused. There ensued an ugly scene. My father slapped my face. To no avail. They had to take me along without an overcoat. After that each time I was supposed to wear the coat, the same thing happened. How many blows I received on account of that piece of clothing! But I stood my ground. That same winter my mother took me with her to Strasbourg to visit an elderly relative. On that occasion she wanted to buy me a cap. In a fine store they had me try on a few. In the end, my mother and the saleswoman settled for a nice sailor’s cap, which I was to wear immediately. But they had reckoned without their host. The cap was unacceptable to me because none of the village boys wore a sailor’s cap. When they urged me to take it or another of the ones I had tried on, I made such a scene that everyone in the store rushed up to me. "Well, what kind of cap do you want, you silly boy?" the saleswoman snapped. "I don’t want any of your new-fangled ones, I want one like the ones the village boys wear." So they sent a salesgirl to get me a brown cap that could be pulled down over the ears, from the unsalable stock. Beaming with joy, I put it on while my poor mother had to endure a few "nice" remarks and scornful glances on account of her oaf. It pained me that she felt ashamed before the city folk because of me. Still, she did not scold me. She must have had an inkling that something serious lay behind my behavior. This hard struggle continued as long as I attended the village school and embittered not only my life but also that of my father. I wanted to wear mittens exclusively because the village boys did not wear any other kind of glove. On weekdays I wanted to walk only in clogs because they wore leather shoes only on Sundays. Every visitor who came rekindled the conflict, for I was supposed to present myself in clothes "befitting our social position." While at home, I gave in to all demands; but whenever I was told to go for a walk with the visitor dressed as a "gentleman’s boy," I became again the obstreperous fellow who infuriated his father – the courageous hero who endured being slapped and locked in the cellar. Nevertheless, I suffered badly from rebelling against my parents. My sister Louise, who was a year older than I, understood what I was going through and was touchingly sympathetic. The village boys did not know the cross I bore because of them. They coolly accepted all my efforts not to differ from them, but would, when the least quarrel occurred, wound me again with the terrible words "gentleman’s boy." At the beginning of my school years, I had to cope with one of the hardest lessons that life teaches us – a friend betrayed me. This is how it happened. When I first heard the word "cripple," I did not know what it meant. It seemed to me to express a particularly strong dislike. One newly arrived teacher, Miss Goguel, had not yet earned my favor, so I bestowed the mysterious word upon her. When I was guarding the cows with my best friend, I confided to him in a secretive manner, "The teacher is a cripple, but don’t you tell anybody!" He promised. On the way to school a short time afterwards, we had a falling out. Then he whispered to me on the stairs, "O.K., I’m going to tell the teacher that you called her a cripple." I did not take the threat seriously, for I did not think such a betrayal possible. But during the break he really did go up to the teacher’s desk and announced, "Miss, Albert said that you are a cripple." Nothing came of it for the teacher did not understand what the statement was supposed to mean. I, however, could not grasp the horror of it. This first experience of betrayal smashed to pieces everything that I had thought and expected of life. It took me weeks to get over the shock. I had lost my innocence about life. I bore within me the painful wound which life inflicts on us all and which it reopens again and again with new blows. Some of the blows I have received since then were harder than that first one, but none has hurt more. Even before I started school, my father had begun to instruct me in music on an old square piano. I did not play much sheet music. Rather, it was my delight to improvise and play songs and chorale melodies with accompaniments of my own invention. When the teacher in singing class repeatedly played the chorale one note at a time without accompaniment, I thought it lacked beauty, so I asked her during the break why she didn’t play it correctly with accompaniment. In my zeal I sat down at the harmonium and played from memory both melody and accompaniment for her as best as I could. Thereupon she became very friendly toward me and looked at me in a strange way. Still, she continued to pick out the chorale with one finger. Then it dawned upon me that I could do something she was unable to do, and I was ashamed for having shown off my skill, which I considered something quite natural. Usually, though, I was a quiet pupil who did not learn to read or write without effort. I remember one more thing from my first school year. Before I went to school, my father had already told me many Bible stories, among them the one about the Flood. Once when we had a very rainy summer, I assailed him, observing, "It has rained here about forty days and forty nights, yet the water has not even touched the houses, much less risen above the mountains." "Well, at that time," he answered, "in the beginning of the world, the rain didn’t just come down in drops as it does now, it came down in bucketfuls." This explanation made sense to me. Later, when the teacher at school told the story of the Flood, I waited for her to draw the distinction between rain at that time and that of ours, but she didn’t. At last I could not longer control myself. "Teacher," I called out from my seat, "you must tell the story correctly." Not allowing her to silence me, I continued, "You must say that at that time rain did not come down in drops, but in bucketfuls." When I was eight years old, my father gave me, at my request, a New Testament, which I read eagerly. One of the stories that occupied my mind most was that of the Wise Men from the East. What did Jesus’ parents do with the gold and precious things that they received from these men? I wondered how they could later have been poor again. It was completely incomprehensible to me that the Wise Men from the East never bothered about the Christ Child later on at all. I was also offended that there is no report about the shepherds of Bethlehem having become disciples of Jesus. In my second year of school, we had lessons in penmanship twice a week with the teacher who gave singing lessons to the older children just before. Sometimes we came over from the elementary school too early and had to wait in front of the older children’s classroom. When the two-part song "Down by the Mill I Was Sitting in Sweet Peace" or "Who Planted Thee, O Beautiful Forest?" began, I had to hold onto the wall to keep from falling down. The delight of the two-part music made my skin tingle and surged through my whole body. Also, when I heard brass music for the first time, I almost fainted. The violin did not sound beautiful to me, though, and I got used to it only little by little. While at the village school, I witnessed the introduction of the bicycle. We had heard several times about the carters getting angry with people who dashed about on high wheels frightening the horses. Then one morning, as we were playing in the school yard during the break, we learned that a "speed runner" had stopped at the inn on the other side of the street. We forgot school and everything else and ran over to gape at the "high wheel" which had been left outside. Many grown-ups showed up as well and waited with us while the rider drank his pint of wine. At last he came out. Everybody laughed at the grown man wearing short pants. He mounted his bicycle and, lo, was gone. In addition to the high wheels, the ones of medium height–the so called kangaroos–were introduced in the mid-eighties. Soon thereafter the first low-wheeled bicycles appeared. The first bicyclists were taunted for not having the courage to get up on high wheels. In my second to last year of high school, I myself acquired a bicycle, which I had fervently desired for a long time. It had taken me a year and a half to earn the money for it by tutoring students who lagged behind in mathematics. It was a second-hand bicycle which cost 230 marks. At that time, however, it was still considered unseemly for the son of a pastor to ride a bicycle. Fortunately, my father disregarded these prejudices. There was no shortage of those who found fault with the "arrogant" conduct of his son. The well-known orientalist and theologian Eduard Reuss, in Strasbourg, did not want theology students to ride bicycles. When, as a student of theology, I moved into the St. Thomas Institute with my bicycle in 1893, the director, Erichson, remarked that he could permit this only because Professor Reuss was dead. Today’s youth cannot imagine what the coming of the bicycle meant to us. It opened up undreamed-of opportunities for getting out into nature. I used it abundantly and with delight. I remember the first tomatoes just as I do the first bicycle. I may have been six years old when our neighbor Leopold brought us, as a great novelty, some of those red things which he had planted in his garden. The gift created some embarrassment for my mother, for she did not know how to prepare them. When the red sauce made its appearance on the table, it received such little appreciation that most of it went into the garbage. It was not until the end of the eighties that the tomato was generally accepted in Alsace. My father’s study was a very uncanny place to me. Only when I absolutely had to did I set foot in it. The smell of books that pervaded it took my breath away. It seemed terribly unnatural to me that my father was always sitting at the table, studying and writing. I could not understand how he could endure it and vowed to myself never to become a person like him who was forever studying and writing. I began to understand my father’s literary efforts a little better when I was old enough to sense the charm of his village stories, which appeared in the Church Messenger and in calendars. His model was Jeremias Gotthelf, a Swiss pastor known for his writing. However, my father was more considerate; he avoided sketching the people who served as models for the characters in his stories so accurately that they could be identified. Once a year, alas, I had to spend a day in my father’s study. That was between Christmas and New Year’s when Father declared after breakfast: "Today the letters are to be written! You accept the Christmas presents, but when the time for writing thank-you letters comes, you are too lazy. So, get to work! And I don’t want to see any sullen faces!" Oh, those hours sitting with my sisters in the study, breathing the bookish air, hearing the scratching of my father’s pen, while in my mind’s eye I was with my friends gliding down the road behind the church on their sleds . . . and I had to write letters to uncles, aunts, godparents, and other givers of Christmas presents! And what kind of letters! In a life-time of writing I have never again faced anything as difficult as that. As a matter of course, all the letters had three parts and the same content: 1. Thanks for the present given by the addressee, accompanied by the assurance that it had afforded me the greatest pleasure of all my presents. 2. Enumeration of all gifts received. 3. New Year’s wishes. Although they all had the same content, each letter was supposed to be different from all the others! And in each letter I was faced with the enormous difficulty of finding a good transition from the Christmas presents to the New Year’s wishes. I won’t even mention the challenge of finding the courteous concluding phrase suitable to the addressee for each letter. Each one had to be drafted and presented to my father. Then it had to be corrected, reworked and finally copied on a neat sheet of paper, without any mistakes or ink spots. Often it got to be time for lunch and I hadn’t even roughed out one of the six or seven necessary letters. For years I salted the meals between Christmas and New Year’s with my tears! Once I even started crying right after receiving the presents on Christmas Day thinking of the letters that had now become unavoidable. My sister Louise managed to write each letter differently and to find ever new transitions from the presents to the good wishes for the New Year. No one has ever again impressed me as much as she did with her literary dexterity. The disgust with studies and letter-writing which I acquired in my childhood because of these thank-you and New Year’s letters remained with me for years. Although I have been forced by the conditions of my life to keep up an extraordinarily voluminous correspondence, I have still not learned to write letters which end nicely with New Year’s wishes. Therefore, whenever I give Christmas presents as uncle or godfather, I always forbid the recipients to write me thank-you letters. They shall not salt their soup as I used to at that time of the year. To this day I do not feel comfortable in my father’s study. The week after Christmas was the only one in which our father was strict with us. At all other times he allowed us as much freedom as children can handle. We appreciated his kindness and were deeply grateful for it. During summer vacations he took us to the mountains two or three times a week for whole days. Thus we grew up like wild roses. In my third year of school, I was promoted to the school for older children where Father Iltis taught us. He was a very competent teacher. Without putting in much effort, I learned a lot from him. Throughout my life I have been glad that I started my education in the village school. It was good for me to compete with the village boys and to discover that they were at least as clever as I. I never shared the arrogance shown by so many boys who start in the "gymnasium" and think that the children of the educated are by nature more gifted than those who walk about in patched pants and wooden shoes. Even today, when I run into my former classmates in the village or the fields, I immediately remember where their abilities exceeded mine. This one was better in mental arithmetic, that one made fewer mistakes in dictation, a third always knew the historical dates and still another was first in geography. One–I mean you, Fritz Schöppeler–had a better handwriting than the teacher himself. To this day I recall each one as superior to me in some subject. At age nine I was sent to the secondary school in Münster. Mornings and evenings I had to walk three kilometers beside the hills. My delight was to walk alone, without the classmates who took the same route, and to indulge my thought. How deeply I experienced autumn, winter, spring, and summer in those years. When, during the vacation of 1885, it was decided that I should attend the gymnasium in Mulhouse in Upper Alsace, I cried secretly for hours. I felt that I would be cut off from nature. I tried to put my enthusiasm for the beauty of nature as I experienced it on my walks to Münster into poems; but I never got beyond the first two or three rhymes. Several times I also tried to sketch the mountain with its old castle on the other side of the road. However, I also failed at that. From then on I resigned myself to enjoying beauty simply by looking at it without attempting to translate it into art. I never again tried to draw anything or render it in verse. Only in improvising music have I been creative. At the secondary school in Münster it was Pastor Schäffer who taught religion. He was a distinguished religious personality and, in his way, an excellent speaker. The way he told the Bible stories took our breath away. I still remember how he cried at the teacher’s desk and we sobbed on our benches as Joseph revealed himself to his brothers. He nicknamed me Isaak, which means "he who laughs," for I was easily provoked to laugh, a weakness which my classmates exploited mercilessly in school. Quite often the class register read: "Schweitzer laughs." Yet I was not cheerful, but rather shy and reserved. I had inherited this reserved temperament from my mother. We lacked the gift of expressing in words the love we felt for each other. I can count on my fingers the times when we really had heart-to-heart talks, but we understood each other without words. I also had inherited from my mother a deeply passionate nature, which she in turn had inherited from her father–who was very kind, but at the same time very irascible. I became aware of my passionate disposition when playing games. I took every game very seriously and got angry when others did not play with similar devotion. When I was nine or ten, I once struck my sister Adele because she played a game carelessly and let me win an easy victory. From that time on I became afraid of my passion and gradually gave up all games. I never dared touch a playing card. I also stopped smoking on January 1, 1899, because it had become an addiction. I had to fight hard against my hot temper. I remember many events of my childhood which still humiliate me and keep me watchful in this struggle. My grandfather Schillinger, who died before I was born, had been a zealous worker for enlightenment–a man quite filled with the spirit of the eighteenth century. After the service he used to inform his congregation, who waited for him outside, of the political news and also acquainted them with the latest discoveries of the human mind. When there was something special to see in the sky, he set up a telescope in front of his house in the evening and let everyone look through it. Since the Catholic priest was also inspired by the spirit of the eighteenth century and its open-mindedness, the two clergymen lived in brotherly harmony in their neighboring vicarages. If one of them had more guests than he had space for, he would put them up in the other’s parsonage. If one of them went on a trip, his colleague would occasionally visit the sick of the other denomination so they would not lack spiritual comfort. On Easter morning when the Catholic priest was hurrying from mass to his Easter meal, my grandfather would open his window and call out to him his congratulations on the end of Lent. One night there was a great fire in the village. When the Protestant vicarage seemed threatened, it was evacuated and the contents stored in the Catholic one. That was how my grandmother’s hoop skirt came to be in the priest’s bedroom and had to be taken back into the other parsonage the next morning. My grandfather prepared his sermons meticulously. On Saturdays his house had to be very quiet. No visitor was admitted. When his son was a college student, he even had to plan to arrive for vacation on some day other than Saturday. He seems to have been an autocrat, the good Pastor Schillinger. He kept people in awe. If a person wanted to talk to the pastor, he had to appear at the parsonage in a black coat and a tall hat. Numerous anecdotes about him still make the rounds back in the valley. Two of these deal with the "Turt," the classical meat pie of the Münster Valley. As pastor, he had to cut these at the wedding and baptismal meals over which he presided. Once he is said to have asked whether it mattered where he cut the pie. When he was told it did not matter, he said, "In that case I will cut it at home." Another time he cut one piece too few by mistake. When the platter returned without a piece for him he said, "I don’t like it that much anyway, you know," even though everybody knew how fond of it he was. These and other stories about Pastor Schillinger are still told and still evoke the customary laughter at wedding and baptismal meals in our valley. The parsonage in which he lived and the church in which he preached are no more. Bombs have shattered them. A big trench was cut through the middle of the church, but the old pastor’s grave beside it remained intact as if by a miracle. When I was still so small that I hardly understood what was said to me, my mother told me I was called Albert in memory of her late brother. This brother–really a half-brother from the first marriage of my grandfather–had been the pastor of the Church of St. Nicolai in Strasbourg. In 1870, after the Battle of Weissenburg, he was sent to Paris to get medical supplies in preparation for the expected siege of Strasbourg. There, instead of receiving the medicines urgently requested by the Strasbourg physicians, he was given the runaround. When he finally started home with a small portion of what had been requested, the fortress was already completely surrounded. General von Werder, the commander of the German besieging army, allowed the medical supplies to get through to Strasbourg, but made my uncle prisoner of war. Living through the siege among the besiegers, he worried that his congregation would think he had left them in the lurch in those difficult times of his own free will. Because he had a heart ailment, he never got over the stress of those months. In the summer of 1872 he collapsed and died, surrounded by his friends, in Strasbourg. The idea of continuing the existence of a person who had been so dear to my mother gave me a lot to think about, especially since I was told so much about his kindness. When for a while milk was very scarce after the siege of Strasbourg, he took his milk to a poor old woman every morning. After his death, this woman told my mother how she had gotten her morning milk at that time. As far back as I can remember, I have suffered because of the misery I saw in the world. I never really knew light-hearted youthful enjoyment of life, and I believe this is true of many children even though they seem quite cheerful and carefree. What especially saddened me was that the poor animals had to suffer so much pain and misery. The sight of a limping old horse being dragged to the slaughter-house in Colmar by one man while another beat it with a stick haunted me for weeks. Already before I started school it seemed quite incomprehensible to me that my evening prayers were supposed to be limited to human beings. Therefore, when my mother had prayed with me and kissed me goodnight, I secretly added another prayer which I had made up myself for all living beings. It went like this: "Dear God, protect and bless all beings that breathe, keep all evil from them, and let them sleep in peace." I had an experience during my seventh or eighth year which made a deep impression on me. Heinrich Bräsch and I had made ourselves rubber band sling-shots with which we could shoot small pebbles. One spring Sunday during Lent he said to me, "Come on, let’s go up the Rebberg and shoot birds." I hated this idea, but I did not contradict him for fear he might laugh at me. We approached a leafless tree in which birds, apparently unafraid of us, were singing sweetly in the morning air. Crouching like an Indian hunter, my friend put a pebble in his slingshot and took aim. Obeying his look of command, I did the same with terrible pangs of conscience and vowing to myself to miss. At that very moment the church bells began to ring out into the sunshine, mingling their chimes with the song of the birds. It was the warning bell, half an hour before the main bell ringing. For me, it was a voice from Heaven. I put the slingshot aside, shooed the birds away so that they were safe from my friend, and ran home. Ever since then, when the bells of Passiontide ring out into the sunshine and the naked trees, I remember, deeply moved and grateful, how on that day they rang into my heart the commandment "Thou shalt not kill." From that day on I have dared to free myself from the fear of men, and when my innermost conviction was at stake, I have considered the opinions of others less important than before. I began to overcome my fear of being laughed at by my classmates. The way in which the commandment not to kill and torture worked on me is the great experience of my childhood and youth. Next to it, all others pale. Before I began attending school, we had a yellow dog named Phylax. Like many dogs, he could not stand uniforms and always attacked the mailman. Therefore, I was given the job of restraining Phylax when the mailman was due, for Phylax was apt to bite and had once assaulted a policeman. Wielding a switch, I used to drive Phylax into a corner of the yard and keep him there until the mailman had left. What a proud feeling it was to stand in front of the barking, snarling dog like a lion tamer and master him with blows when he wanted to break out of the corner! That proud feeling did not last, however. When we were later sitting together again as friends, I reproached myself for having beaten him. I knew I could keep him away from the mailman by holding his collar and stroking him. Nevertheless, when the critical hour approached, I yielded again to the intoxication of playing a tamer of wild beasts. During vacations I was allowed to play the coachman for our next-door neighbor. His brown horse was already somewhat old and short-winded. He was not supposed to trot much. Nevertheless, in my driver’s passion I again and again let myself be carried away. I forced him into trotting even when I knew and felt he was tired. The pride of controlling a trotting horse bewitched me. The neighbor allowed it "in order not to spoil my fun." What became of the fun, though, when I unharnessed the horse at home and saw how hard he was breathing, which I had not noticed from the seat on the wagon? What good was it to look into his tired eyes and ask him silently for forgiveness? Once, when I was in high school and home for Christmas vacation, I drove a sleigh. The neighbor’s dog, Löscher, who was known to be vicious, came out of the house and lunged, yelping, at the horse. I thought I was within my rights when I gave him a well-aimed blow with my whip, although it was clear that he was only attacking the sleigh playfully. Alas, I had aimed all too well. Hit in the eye, he howled and wallowed in the snow. His wailing haunted me. I could not free myself from it for weeks. Twice I went fishing with other boys. Then, horrified by the maltreatment of the skewered worms and the tearing of the fishes’ mouths, I did not go along with them any longer and even found the courage to prevent others from fishing. From such experiences, which moved my heart and often put me to shame, there slowly arose in me the unshakable conviction that we may inflict death and suffering on another living being only when there is an inescapable necessity for it and that we must all feel the horror of thoughtlessly killing and causing pain. This conviction has driven me ever more powerfully. I have become more and more certain that in the depths of our hearts we all feel this. We do not dare admit it and act accordingly because we are afraid of being smiled at condescendingly by others who would consider us as "sentimental." We allow our feelings to be blunted. I, however, vowed to myself never to become emotionally blunted and never to fear the reproach of sentimentality. Back to readings

My earliest recollection is of seeing the Devil.

Another event I remember from my earliest childhood is the moment when I felt consciously ashamed of myself for the first time.

The terror of my early childhood was the sacristan and gravedigger Jägle.

I have always stepped into the unknown without illusions.

From Mausche I learned for the first time what it means to be silent in the face of persecution.

The village boys did not fully accept me as one of their own.

I suffered badly from rebelling against my parents.

At the beginning of my school years, I had to cope with one of the hardest lessons that life teaches us – a friend betrayed me.

Before I went to school, my father had already told me many Bible stories, among them the one about the Flood.

It was completely incomprehensible to me that the Wise Men from the East never bothered about the Christ Child later on at all.

While at the village school, I witnessed the introduction of the bicycle.

Today’s youth cannot imagine what the coming of the bicycle meant to us. It opened up undreamed-of opportunities for getting out into nature.

In a life-time of writing I have never again faced anything as difficult as that.

Therefore, whenever I give Christmas presents as uncle or godfather, I always forbid the recipients to write me thank-you letters.

I resigned myself to enjoying beauty simply by looking at it without attempting to translate it into art.

I was not cheerful, but rather shy and reserved.

I had to fight hard against my hot temper. I remember many events of my childhood which still humiliate me and keep me watchful in this struggle.

When I was still so small that I hardly understood what was said to me, my mother told me I was called Albert in memory of her late brother.

What especially saddened me was that the poor animals had to suffer so much pain and misery.

"Dear God, protect and bless all beings that breathe, keep all evil from them, and let them sleep in peace."

I remember, deeply moved and grateful, how on that day they rang into my heart the commandment "Thou shalt not kill."

The way in which the commandment not to kill and torture worked on me is the great experience of my childhood and youth.

Twice I went fishing with other boys. Then, horrified by the maltreatment of the skewered worms and the tearing of the fishes’ mouths, I did not go along with them any longer and even found the courage to prevent others from fishing.