Hélène Bresslau was the daughter of a distinguished professor of history at Strasbourg University, who later became Chancellor. (Schweitzer jokingly called him “His Magnificence”)

Professor Bresslau was Jewish, but had his children baptised as Christians. He was not baptised himself, perhaps because he didn’t want to be accused of doing it for expediency.

Hélène was four years younger than Schweitzer. Her social conscience was almost as highly developed as Schweitzer's and in addition she had enthusiasm, efficiency, and a fine disregard of social convention. She worked among verminous children at a state orphanage. She helped to found and run a home for unmarried mothers, which was not at all a proper thing for nice young ladies to do. She was one of the first women skiers. She played the organ. At a time when young women were taking eagerly to emancipation all over northern Europe, she was as liberated a woman as Strasbourg could offer. And she had decided, like Schweitzer, that she must one day devote herself entirely to social service.

All the girls adored Schweitzer, we are told. But Hélène, with her practicality and zeal, had more to offer him than most. She offered him criticism instead of flattery. At the dinner party at which it seems they met she asked, "What gives you the courage to go into the pulpit every Sunday and preach in that awful Alsatian dialect? The accent's ugly and the grammar's dreadful."

So began an extraordinary secret relationship, conducted for ten years almost entirely by letters, many of which we now have. Schweitzer needed someone who could treat him with this kind of objectivity, and he knew it. He had recently lost an aunt who had been to him a “guardian angel”, a wise counsellor, and Hélène seemed miraculously to fill that gap.

In a way, the fact that she was also a beautiful, unmarried young woman meant that Schweitzer felt great confusion about her place in his life. And she was confused because she had normal desires for a home and family and yet this very desirable young man wanted something different, something greater and more idealistic.

In the end her idealism meant that he was able to carry her with him. Her medical training fitted in with his decision to go to Africa as a doctor, and finally, as partners in this great adventure, they married.

But her physical strength was not as great as her will. During the ten years of their pre-marriage correspondence she suffered a mild attack of tuberculosis, from which she recovered but which left her weakened. And she had a bad fall while skiing, which permanently damaged her back.

The strain of nearly five years working in the tropics, plus months of internment in France, brought on a recurrence of the tuberculosis, from which she never fully recovered. (See Andende, the first hospital, and War.)

She also had to bring up their daughter Rhena, conceived in the internment camp and born in 1919. So she was never able to go back and work at the hospital, except for one heroic episode during World War Two, when she managed to reach Africa despite war-time restrictions, and help out when Schweitzer had lost nearly all of his staff.

But she went on lecture tours to help raise money for the hospital, and she accompanied Schweitzer when he went to America after World War Two and when he went to collect his Nobel Peace Prize.

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