News from the Schweitzer Institute

Tribute to Dr. Kurt Bergel

Dr. Kurt Bergel, co-founder of the Albert Schweitzer Institute with his late wife, Dr. Alice Bergel, passed away on March 19, 2001, after a period of illness. Dr. Bergel was a member of the Chapman University faculty for many years, and his contributions to Chapman University and the Albert Schweitzer Institute were enormous. At a memorial service in honor of Dr. Bergel, held on the university campus on April 21, 2001, Dr. Marvin Meyer, co-director of the Albert Schweitzer Institute, offered the following tribute:

Kurt Bergel, our colleague and dear friend, embodied the values of Albert Schweitzer and his ethics of reverence for life. Kurt lived a long and productive life, almost precisely long as the life of Schweitzer, and Kurt even looked and sounded a bit like Schweitzer. They both had the same sort of twinkle in the eye when they enjoyed a humorous moment, as they often did. I have suggested that Kurt might have grown a bushy white moustache and donned a pith helmet to complete the Schweitzerian image. Further, when a video on the life of Schweitzer was produced a few years ago, Kurt’s voice was used, and appropriately so, as the voice of Albert Schweitzer.
For years, Kurt lectured about Schweitzer, his work at Lambarene, and his ethical ideas, and Kurt contributed the honoraria from the lectures to Schweitzerian causes. With Alice Bergel, Kurt founded the Albert Schweitzer Institute at Chapman, and together they wrote books about Schweitzer and translated works of Schweitzer. These books include a German reader, Leben und Denken, and translations of Schweitzer’s Memoirs of Childhood and Youth and his correspondence with Alice Ehlers. Over the past months Kurt and I also have been editing a volume, Albert Schweitzer for the 21st Century: The Ethics of Reverence for Life, currently in press at Syracuse University Press.
Like Schweitzer, Kurt believed in doing things well, and he was committed to excellence. Kurt thought carefully and well, he articulated his thoughts with precision and passion, and he formulated arguments that proved to be reasonable and frequently compelling. As many of us know, he also cooked well, as a veritable gourmet cook. Who could forget his salmon mousse, blessed with a flavor that would bring a tear of bliss to the eye and served in Kurt’s inimitable style, with a delicate and genteel touch?
Like Schweitzer, Kurt believed in doing the right and responsible thing. And Kurt was usually right, in a number of senses of the word. I can testify that when Kurt and I had a point of disagreement on this or that historical fact, Kurt was usually correct. Like Schweitzer, Kurt also believed in standing up for what was right, in living a life of goodness, courage, and commitment. Kurt and Alice were forced to leave Nazi Germany, in the face of the Holocaust, and in their living and their teaching they continued to oppose all such totalitarian thought and all such expressions of injustice and intolerance. Kurt sought to live out, in his life, the ethic of reverence for life, the ethic of showing reverence and respect to all of life-plant, animal, and human.

In recent years, though a professor emeritus, Kurt continued to be extraordinarily active as co-director of the Schweitzer Institute and a guest lecturer in classes. I vividly recall his lectures on Schweitzer: they were truly memorable. Kurt was gifted in many ways, but he was mechanically challenged, so that his lectures on Schweitzer and Bach, given with a CD player, often entailed interesting mechanical maneuvers-but the lectures remained wonderful occasions. And his personal reminiscences of meeting with Schweitzer and talking with Schweitzer in Aspen and Alsace were pure magic.
Above the door inside the Bergel Room in Argyros Forum on this campus are the words printed in the invitation to this memorial service: “Everyone must work to live, but the purpose of life is to serve and to show compassion and the will to help others. Only then have we ourselves become true human beings.” Albert Schweitzer wrote that, Kurt Bergel lived that. Schweitzer found his Lambarene, and so did Kurt. Kurt found his Lambarene in his life of teaching, service, and justice and righteousness and compassion. We shall keep Kurt’s legacy alive as we, too, find our own Lambarene in our compassion and our will to help others.

Dr. Bergel is survived by his son, Peter, a political and social activist from Oregon; a grandson, Shanti; Kurt’s wife, Kitty; Peter’s companion, Alice; and other family members. Memorial gifts in honor of Dr. Kurt Bergel may be given to the Albert Schweitzer Institute or Deep Springs College.