The Lebendige Kraft Sanatorium in Zurich (1904–1994)

In 1904 Max Bircher-Benner opened a sanatorium on the Zürichberg, the wooded hill above Zurich, and called it Lebendige Kraft (“vital force”). It grew out of a seven-bed private clinic he had started in 1897, and within ten years it had room for eighty in-patients. For the next thirty-five years it was the place where his raw-food diet, his muesli and his strict order of daily life were put into practice, on patients who came from Switzerland, Germany, Sweden and much of the rest of the world. After his death in 1939 his family carried it on under a new name until it closed in 1994.

This page tells the story of the house: how it began, where it stood and how big it was, who ran it, the daily routine and the treatments, what a stay cost, the novelist Thomas Mann’s visit in 1909, the Swedish patients that the historian Motzi Eklöf has studied, its international reputation, the years after 1939, and the archive in which its records survive. It draws on the Historisches Lexikon der Schweiz, on the historians Elisabeth Meyer-Renschhausen and Albert Wirz (Medical History, 1999) and Motzi Eklöf (Lychnos, 2005; Läkartidningen, 2008), on Bircher-Benner’s own London address of 1933, on two swissinfo.ch reports of 2010 and on the German Wikipedia article, which summarises the 2010 essay collection on the sanatorium edited by Eberhard Wolff. Where the sources disagree on a date, both dates are given.

Table of Contents

  1. From Seven Beds to a Sanatorium (1897–1904)
  2. The House on the Zürichberg
  3. The Family and Staff Who Ran It
  4. The Daily Routine
  5. Diet, Water, Light and the Other Treatments
  6. What a Stay Cost, and the Ward for Those of Lesser Means
  7. Thomas Mann’s Stay in 1909
  8. The Swedish Patients
  9. An International Reputation
  10. After 1939: The Bircher-Benner Clinic and Its Closing
  11. The Archive at the University of Zurich
  12. Key Research Papers
  13. Connections
  14. Featured Videos

1. From Seven Beds to a Sanatorium (1897–1904)

Bircher-Benner began as a general practitioner. On December 1, 1891, straight after finishing his studies, he set up practice in Aussersihl, the industrial working-class district of Zurich. There, in 1895, came what the Historisches Lexikon der Schweiz calls the “decisive experience” that convinced him of the healing power of raw plant food: a woman with a long-standing stomach illness recovered on a raw diet. That story, and the raw apple that preceded it, are told on The Raw Apple Cure.

In the late autumn of 1897 he opened a small private clinic on the Zürichberg, at Asylstrasse 35. The Lexikon calls it a “private clinic for dietetics and physical healing methods”; Meyer-Renschhausen and Wirz describe “a clinic with seven beds for alternative medicine in an affluent residential part of Zurich”, opened beside “a small centre for physical- and hydrotherapy”. The German Wikipedia article adds that he also ran a “Centralbad” (central bath) in the city centre, at Waldmannstrasse 9, together with his colleague Heinrich Hotz; its 1901 prospectus described it as an institute for physical therapy, a water and light cure establishment, with an electric tannin bath and Tesla-current treatment.

The little clinic, in Meyer-Renschhausen and Wirz’s words, “proved such a success that soon he had to relocate and expand. In 1904 he moved the clinic, which he called Lebendige Kraft (vital force), further up the hill, next to the woods on the outskirts of the town, and close to the Dolder Grand Hotel.” Some English-language summaries put the opening of the “Vital Force” sanatorium in 1897; the scholarly sources separate the two: the small clinic of 1897 and the Lebendige Kraft sanatorium of 1904. The story of his early career is on Max Bircher-Benner: Life and Career.

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2. The House on the Zürichberg

Location. The sanatorium stood at Keltenstrasse 48 on the Zürichberg, “in bester Lage über dem See”, in the German Wikipedia article’s words: in the best position above the lake. It was at the edge of the town beside the forest, which mattered to the daily routine (section 4), and next to the grand hotel on the Dolder. Meyer-Renschhausen and Wirz call the move a good one, “for he could now socialize with the wealthy and famous guests at the hotel—Russian aristocrats, German and Dutch business people, and famous international artists—precisely those at whom he had originally aimed his medical ideas”. These people, they add, “had money, and they suffered from all the ailments and degenerative diseases that he believed were associated with economic growth, affluence, and overeating.”

Size. The house began with about 20 beds and was enlarged between 1906 and 1914 to 80 beds, according to the German Wikipedia article. Eklöf gives the same figure from the other direction: the larger clinic opened in 1904 “on the hill above Zurich” and ten years later had room for eighty in-patients. Many patients, she notes, were day patients rather than residents.

What it called itself. An early prospectus, from before 1907, was titled Prospekt von Dr. Bircher-Benners «Sanatorium Lebendige Kraft». Heilanstalt für die Anwendung der Diätetik und der physikalischen Heilkräfte: a healing institution “for the application of dietetics and of the physical healing forces”. Eklöf writes that it was marketed as an institution for the “energetic and psychic treatment of internal diseases and psychoneuroses” (translated from the Swedish). Bircher-Benner himself, the German Wikipedia article records, called his sanatorium a Lebensschule, a “school of life”, and an “effective instrument against the degeneration” of the population through an “unnatural” way of living.

The buildings. A 1909 photograph in the Bircher-Benner archive shows the dining room, where, in Eklöf’s caption, patients “from all corners of the world” ate according to an individually set diet plan, with raw food as the main food. When the site was sold, swissinfo.ch described it as made up of “the original Bircher-Benner clinic, its three chalets, and Bircher-Benner’s private residence”.

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3. The Family and Staff Who Ran It

Lebendige Kraft was a family house. The German Wikipedia article, drawing on the family history, lists who did what:

Bircher-Benner himself remained chief physician until his death; the Neue Deutsche Biographie describes him as chief physician of his clinic for forty-two years. He told his London audience in 1933 that he followed his diet “strictly”, and that patients in his sanatorium were “always trying to find out through nurses and servants” whether he secretly ate meat or drank wine.

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4. The Daily Routine

The sources agree that life at Lebendige Kraft was strictly ordered. The German Wikipedia article says plainly: “Der Tagesablauf im Sanatorium auf dem Zürichberg war streng geregelt” (the daily routine at the sanatorium on the Zürichberg was strictly regulated). The items the sources name are these:

What was left out mattered as much. Meyer-Renschhausen and Wirz describe a “well-ordered life in harmony with nature’s cycles, eating moderately, abstaining from stimulants, and avoiding stress”; alcohol, coffee, chocolate and tobacco had no place in the house. Bircher-Benner told his London audience in 1933, “I have not taken alcohol for forty years.” In 1937 he gave the whole system its name, Ordnungstherapie (“order therapy”), with its rules for nutrition, the skin, breathing, movement, the rhythm of life and the life of the mind. See Ordnungstherapie: Bircher-Benner’s Laws of Order for Health.

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5. Diet, Water, Light and the Other Treatments

The sanatorium described itself as a house for dietetics and the physical healing forces, and the sources name the following treatments:

Fasting cures and raw-juice courses are not described as part of his own regime in the sources consulted for this page. Where Eklöf mentions them, they belong to other practitioners and institutions of the time, such as the Swedish health-food leader Are Waerland and a university clinic in Dresden, not to Lebendige Kraft.

Later research has looked at the same kind of combined natural treatment. A 1999 cohort study at four spa clinics in Bavaria followed 363 patients through a standardised three- to four-week Kneipp cure, combining hydrotherapy, exercise therapy, herbal medicine, dietetics and Ordnungstherapie, and measured pain, quality of life and use of medicines during treatment and for a year afterwards; the authors reported that pain, complaints and drug use fell and stayed lower over the follow-up (Leuchtgens and colleagues; reference below).

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6. What a Stay Cost, and the Ward for Those of Lesser Means

Lebendige Kraft was expensive. According to the German Wikipedia article, citing the sanatorium’s own prospectus and Albert Wirz’s book Die Moral auf dem Teller (1993), the normal price of a cure was 84 to 112 Swiss francs a week, at a time when an industrial worker in German-speaking Switzerland earned about 29 francs a week.

In 1907 the house opened a Abteilung für Wenigerbemittelte, a “department for those of lesser means”: two large rooms with three beds each. There the price was cut to 35 to 56 francs a week. In return these patients served themselves and helped with the linen, the preparation of meals, and the housework and garden work.

The Swedish physician Ingeborg Kjellin, who visited in the 1930s, also found it very expensive, Eklöf writes, so that only rich people could be treated there. The junior doctors joked that they spoke not of the patients but of “the millionaires”, who usually came from countries other than Switzerland. A cheaper house followed only in 1939 (section 10).

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7. Thomas Mann’s Stay in 1909

The best-known patient of Lebendige Kraft was the German novelist Thomas Mann, who stayed in 1909. In a letter that year he called the sanatorium a hygienisches Zuchthaus, a “hygienic prison” (swissinfo.ch translates it “a hygienic jail”). The German Wikipedia article adds that he nonetheless praised the effect of the therapy as something he had never experienced before.

swissinfo.ch, reporting on the Swiss National Museum’s 2010 exhibition Zauber Berge (“Magic Mountains”), put it this way: “his regime was not for everyone, and Mann fled after a short stay there, calling it ‘a hygienic jail’.” The German Wikipedia article says the stay helped inspire his novel Der Zauberberg (The Magic Mountain, 1924). The same swissinfo.ch report places the main impressions behind the novel at a tuberculosis sanatorium in Davos, where Mann visited his wife; the two accounts can both be true, with Zurich as one of the sanatorium experiences he drew on.

A scholarly treatment of the stay appears in the 2010 essay collection on the sanatorium edited by Eberhard Wolff, under the title “Zwischen ‘Zauberberg’ und ‘Zuchthaus’” (“Between ‘Magic Mountain’ and ‘prison’”); that chapter was not read for this page.

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8. The Swedish Patients

The historian Motzi Eklöf has studied the Swedes who travelled to Zurich for treatment. In her Lychnos article (2005) she reports, from the sanatorium records:

Her shorter paper in the Swedish medical journal Läkartidningen (2008) is titled, in PubMed’s English, “They searched help across the borders. Patients from Sweden in Switzerland at Dr Bircher-Benner’s health resort in 1928–1939”. The Lychnos article gives the overall figures for 1904–1939 and notes that her first presentation of the patient files covered 1906–1939.

The house also shaped Swedish medicine. In 1936 the physician Ingeborg Kjellin published a report of a study tour in the Swedish medical journal. She visited German hospitals that used vegetable and largely raw diets, and finally Bircher-Benner’s sanatorium in Switzerland, “from which the German diet treatment had most nearly taken its pattern” (Eklöf, translated). Eklöf adds that the Swedish health-home leader Karl-Otto Aly named Bircher-Benner a main inspiration for the Swedish health homes.

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9. An International Reputation

The Historisches Lexikon der Schweiz calls Lebendige Kraft “the soon internationally known sanatorium”. The clinic’s guest book for 1904–1939, held in the Bircher-Benner archive, shows patients arriving, in Eklöf’s list, from Germany, France, North America, Russia, Sweden, Britain, South Africa, the Philippines and Italy, among other countries.

Figures from the 2010 essay collection, as summarised in the German Wikipedia article, describe the patients of 1904–1939 as a whole:

The First World War cut the number of patients sharply; the 1920s brought a new upswing. By the early 1930s, according to the front matter of his 1933 London address, a medical institute called “Les Forces Vives” had been founded in Paris “to carry out his teaching”, his son Franklin Bircher-Rey had lectured at the Sorbonne, “several clinics are working on Dr. Bircher-Benner’s lines” in Germany, and he had “recently spoke[n] to 400 doctors at Hamburg” and to the doctors, dentists and educators of Vienna. The nutrition scientist Claus Leitzmann (2014), reviewing the history of vegetarian nutrition, places him among its prominent figures beside Sylvester Graham and John Harvey Kellogg.

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10. After 1939: The Bircher-Benner Clinic and Its Closing

A new name. Bircher-Benner died on January 24, 1939, and the same year the sanatorium was renamed the Bircher-Benner Clinic (Bircher-Benner-Privatklinik) in his memory.

The family carried it on. The sources name his sons and his niece, but differ on who led it when:

A people’s sanatorium. Planning began in 1937 for a second, cheaper house. With a donation of one million francs from an industrialist, a charitable foundation was set up, land on the Zürichberg was bought in April 1938, and in June 1939, five months after Bircher-Benner’s death, a Volkssanatorium für Ordnungstherapie (“people’s sanatorium for order therapy”) opened, with room for 45 to 48 guests at nine to twelve francs a day. His sons Max Edwin, Franklin and Willy led it at first.

Closing. On May 1, 1973, the clinic passed into the ownership of the canton of Zurich, according to the German Wikipedia article. It closed in 1994 (the Historisches Lexikon der Schweiz and the German Wikipedia article) or 1995 (swissinfo.ch, “In 1995 the clinic was closed and sold”). The German article gives the reasons as several changes of chief physician and too few patients, and says the building was sold in 1998; swissinfo.ch names the lack of a suitable successor and changing times. Eklöf writes that the family carried on the work until 1994, when the buildings were sold for hotel and conference use. Today the site is an executive training centre.

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11. The Archive at the University of Zurich

The records of the sanatorium survive. The Archive for the History of Medicine (Archiv für Medizingeschichte) of the Institute of Biomedical Ethics and History of Medicine at the University of Zurich lists among its holdings:

The patient files are closed for data-protection reasons, 120 years after each file was closed, under the archives law of the canton of Zurich. Historians have nonetheless used the records in aggregate: Eklöf’s figures on the Swedish patients, the guest book of 1904–1939 and the 1909 dining-room photograph all come from this archive, and the 2010 Swiss National Museum exhibition drew on it. A centenary article in the Swiss medical journal (Furger, 2004) marked a hundred years since the founding of the sanatorium.

For his books, his journal Der Wendepunkt and the people who carried his ideas on, see Max Bircher-Benner: Books, Successors and Legacy.

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Key Research Papers

  1. Meyer-Renschhausen E, Wirz A. Dietetics, health reform and social order: vegetarianism as a moral physiology. The example of Maximilian Bircher-Benner (1867-1939). Med Hist. 1999;43(3):323-41. — PubMed PMID: 10885127
  2. Eklöf M. [They searched help across the borders. Patients from Sweden in Switzerland at Dr Bircher-Benner’s health resort in 1928-1939]. Lakartidningen. 2008;105(3):147-50. — PubMed PMID: 18290517
  3. Melzer J, Melchart D, Saller R. [Development of ‘Ordnungstherapie’ by Bircher-Benner in naturopathy of the 20th century]. Forsch Komplementarmed Klass Naturheilkd. 2004;11(5):293-303. — PubMed PMID: 15572870
  4. Furger S. Mit Rohkost gegen die Degeneration. Vor 100 Jahren: Max Bircher-Benner gründet das Sanatorium «Lebendige Kraft» [With raw food against degeneration. A hundred years ago: Max Bircher-Benner founds the sanatorium “Lebendige Kraft”]. Schweizerische Ärztezeitung. 2004;85(5):236-238. — DOI: 10.4414/saez.2004.10235
  5. Kunz-Bircher A, Liechti-von Brasch D. [Clinical significance of fresh food]. Hippokrates. 1956;27(22):705-13. — PubMed PMID: 13384929
  6. Kunz-Bircher A, Liechti-von Brasch D. [Cholesterin metabolism and arteriosclerosis]. Hippokrates. 1957;28(12):368-73. — PubMed PMID: 13448620
  7. Liechti von Brasch D. [Correction of nutrition and habits in pregnancy; the complications of pregnancy]. Munch Med Wochenschr. 1963;105:1565-71. — PubMed PMID: 13930559
  8. Koning MW. [Dr. Bircher-Benner’s diet]. Veg Bode. 1948;51(9):137-40. — PubMed PMID: 18099597
  9. Leitzmann C. Vegetarian nutrition: past, present, future. Am J Clin Nutr. 2014;100 Suppl 1:496S-502S. — PubMed PMID: 24898226
  10. Leuchtgens H, Albus T, Uhlemann C, Volger E, Pelka RB, Resch KL. [Effects of Kneippism, a standardized complex therapy, on pain, quality of life and use of medicines: cohort study with a one-year follow-up]. Forsch Komplementarmed. 1999;6(4):206-11. — PubMed PMID: 10529580

PubMed Topic Searches

  1. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/?term=Bircher-Benner
  2. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/?term=Liechti-von+Brasch
  3. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/?term=history+of+sanatoria
  4. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/?term=naturopathy+history+Switzerland

Further Reading

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Connections

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