Long after the death of Schweitzer and Hélène, their daughter Rhena was going through an old box in an attic and came upon a bunch of letters – so unlike anything else in the history of her father that she felt she should reveal them as an important part of our understanding of the way his thoughts and ambitions developed.

In them he pours out his innermost feelings, his fears, his exhaustion, his unfulfilled hopes, his tenderness for nature, his jokes, his complex feelings about Hélène, his struggle to find his true path in life.

They have been translated by Prof. Antje Bultman-Lemke, with an introduction by Rhena Schweitzer-Miller, and are published by the Syracuse University Press under the title Albert Schweitzer – Hélène Bresslau, The Years Prior to Lambarene, Correspondence 1902-1912.