Goodbye Columbus, Schweitzer, and Lindbergh

Updated and corrected on May 30, 2021

By Donald H. Harrison

SAN DIEGO — For many years, performing any of Richard Wagner’s orchestral works was verboten in Israel.  Wagner was a virulent antisemite and Hitler’s favorite composer.  In a country that had taken in so many victims of the Holocaust, performing any of Wagner’s works would have been like pouring  burning oil onto an open flesh wound.

However, as years passed, musicians and audiences felt a need to perform and hear such works of Wagner as “Tristan and Isolde,” “The Ring Cycle (Die Rheingold, Die Walkurie, Siegfried, Gotterdammerung);” “Tannhauser,” and “Parsifal,” just to name a few.  And so, amid controversy, the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra scheduled such works., but cancelled them after protests. After a while, however, Israelis  listened to the music as performed on radio and by other orchestras and tried to forget about the personally hateful aspects of the composer.

I thought of how important it is to separate a person’s good works from his evil ones as I read earlier this week in the San Diego Union-Tribune about three very flawed high achievers, whose legacies are now being devalued — Christopher Columbus, Albert Schweitzer, and Charles Lindbergh.

Columbus was celebrated on a statue in Discovery Park in the City of Chula Vista.  When I grew up in New Rochelle, New York,  Christopher Columbus was known as the Great Discoverer, about whom all schoolchildren learned the poem that began, “In 1492, Columbus sailed the ocean blue…”  Every year the Italian-American community celebrated Columbus for sailing west across the Atlantic Ocean to the North American continent, discovering lands previously unknown to Europeans.  Columbus Day in many states was a holiday.  The District of Columbia, seat of our nation’s capital, is named for him as is Columbus, Ohio, and the Columbia River that courses through British Columbia, Washington and Oregon.

However much bravery and foresightedness one might attribute to  the explorer Columbus, his arrival in North America was a disaster for the indigenous peoples, both through intentional violence and the unintentional spread of European diseases.  As governor of some of the lands that he claimed for Spain, he put down rebellions, enslaved many, and sought to impose on the indigenous people the values and culture of Spain, denigrating indigenous culture in the process.

So, Columbus was a man about whom the world has mixed feelings.  One of the foremost explorers in the history of western civilization, yet a man guilty of exceptional cruelty to the people of the Caribbean.

Albert Schweitzer was another man whose biography I remember devouring as a child in the 1950s.  He was a musician, philosopher, theologian, and most importantly a medical missionary who built a hospital in  Lambaréné, French Equatorial Africa (today Gabon) and successfully treated many thousands of patients who otherwise were unexposed to western medicine.  For his work, he won a Nobel Prize.

But he was not perfect.  While he was an opponent of colonialism, he adopted a paternalistic attitude toward Africans, suggesting that while they were his brothers, they were definitely “junior brothers” and not yet capable of self-governance.

Schweitzer’s name was linked with that of aviator Charles Lindbergh at the Lindbergh-Schweitzer Elementary School in the San Diego Unified School District.  This past week the school board voted to change the name of the school, so as not to honor either Schweitzer of Lindbergh.

Like Columbus, Lindbergh was an important person in the annals of human exploration and achievement.  He was the first pilot to ever fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean, a tremendous achievement in 1927, heralding the possibility of commercial intercontinental flight.

San Diego took special pride in Lindbergh because the airplane with which he achieved that feat was built in San Diego by Ryan Aircraft. It was called “The Spirit of St. Louis” because folks in Missouri raised the money for the flight, but it was here in San Diego that Lindbergh watched over the construction,  demanding again and again that the airplane be made lighter so it could carry extra fuel tanks.  What today is known as the San Diego International Airport was known in its earlier incarnation as Lindbergh Field.

Although Lindbergh was lionized for his bravery and aeronautical prowess, he, like Wagner, was an antisemite.  He frequently spoke in favor of the Nazis and became one of Hitler’s biggest supporters in the United States, arguing against American entry into World War II.   When we look back on the Holocaust, we shudder that a man who supported its perpetrators could be honored with a school named after him.

And so, Columbus, Schweitzer and Lindbergh have all been degraded –“cancelled” to use the current argot.  However, I believe in time we will have another reckoning.  Just as the Israelis are able to enjoy Wagner’s music, while hating the man’s antisemitism, so too will we Americans come to realize that achievements may be celebrated for themselves, even if the achievers were flawed or even evil.

What we need to do is to achieve educational balance in recalling the lives and accomplishments of the people whose statues we erect and whose names we memorialize on our public buildings.  Plaques should not shy from describing the controversial aspects of an honoree’s life and career, while still pointing out his or her achievements.

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Donald H. Harrison is editor of San Diego Jewish World. He may be contacted via donald.harrison@sdjewishworld.com