Rudolf Fritz Weiss — Father of Modern German Phytotherapy

Table of Contents

1. Deep-Dive Articles
2. 1. Who Rudolf Fritz Weiss Was
3. 2. From Folk Remedy to Teachable Science
4. 3. The Plants at the Centre of His Work
5. 4. Commission E and German Regulation
6. 5. Timeline at a Glance
7. 6. Why He Still Matters
8. Key Research Papers
9. Connections

Deep-Dive Articles

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1. Who Rudolf Fritz Weiss Was

Weiss was born in Berlin on 28 July 1895 and was already enthusiastic about botany and medicinal plants as a boy. In the First World War he served as a volunteer orderly with the Red Cross, an experience his biographers link to his decision to study medicine. At the University of Berlin he studied medicine and botany side by side and wrote a dissertation in each; during the inflation of the early 1920s only the medical one, on how syphilis influences the onset and course of tuberculosis, was accepted as the dissertation, while the botanical study of the gypsum flora of the southern Harz appeared in a botanical journal. He was licensed as a physician in 1922 and trained in internal medicine at the Charité under Professor His.

After the Charité he directed a sanatorium in the Harz mountains, where he could work with medicinal plants, and from 1931 he was lecturer for scientific plant medicine at the Berlin Academy for Continuing Medical Education. The sources record the following for the years 1933 to 1945: he held that teaching post through the period; his lectures were published in 1944 by the Hippokrates publishing house in Stuttgart; and in the Second World War he served as a reserve medical officer at Reserve Military Hospital 124 in Berlin-Britz, where he founded a rehabilitation department and directed internal medicine. No source consulted for this wing records a party membership or a role in the regime’s health programmes, and none rules one out.

Taken prisoner by the Soviet army, he was held until 1952, about seven years. He worked as a camp doctor, supplied fellow prisoners with medicinal plants he gathered himself and, on Soviet instructions, lectured on plant medicine in a camp near Küstrin. After his return he wrote on the deficiency diseases of returned prisoners of war, settled in Hannover as a specialist in internal medicine, and became a fixture of the Freudenstadt congresses of Germany’s association of physicians for naturopathy, where he was known affectionately as “Papa Weiß”. In old age he moved to a forest hamlet near Aitrach in the Allgäu, took a teaching post at the University of Tübingen, was named honorary professor in 1985, and died in Aitrach on 27 November 1991 at the age of ninety-six. The full story is told in Rudolf Fritz Weiss: Life and Career.

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2. From Folk Remedy to Teachable Science

Weiss’s central contribution was a change of framing. Herbal medicine in the early twentieth century was largely an art passed on by experience. His aim, as a later tribute put it, was to lead medicinal plants away from being judged by experience alone and toward a therapy explained by science and backed by analysis. In the preface to his first edition, as quoted in that tribute, the prerequisite was “die Kenntnis der Heilpflanzen aus der Anschauung der Natur” — knowledge of medicinal plants from observing nature — while for the doctor’s use he demanded “den Boden der klinischen Medizin”, the ground of clinical medicine. German Wikipedia summarises the result: he turned phytotherapy from an experience-based healing art into a systematic science that could be taught and learned.

He traced the word and the idea of phytotherapy to the French physician Henri Leclerc (1870–1955). Within it he called for plant remedies to be classed by the strength of their action, into forte (strong) and mite (mild) phytotherapeutics, and distinguished whole natural substances from purified compounds. As a general point of pharmacology, the classic strong plant drugs, such as the foxglove that William Withering studied, have active principles that are dosed precisely, whereas gentle teas sit at the other end of the scale; the sources consulted do not give Weiss’s own list of which plants he placed in each class. In later years he increasingly demanded proof of action and efficacy, and he kept reporting new research in a long series of organ-by-organ reviews in the journal Hippokrates, on topics from rheumatoid arthritis to arteriosclerosis. The English phrase “rational phytotherapy” became the name of the evidence-minded movement that grew from this approach; it is the title of a later textbook by other authors rather than a term the sources show Weiss using. See Lehrbuch der Phytotherapie.

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3. The Plants at the Centre of His Work

The natural thread of this wing is the plants themselves. Weiss wrote a 1963 paper on the mechanism of action of hawthorn (Crataegus), long used in Europe as a heart remedy, as well as papers on bitters such as gentian and wormwood (1966), on cough teas and other antitussive plant drugs (1961), and on Indian snakeroot (Rauwolfia), whose alkaloid reserpine had just entered medicine (1958). Those papers have no abstracts in PubMed, so this wing describes them by subject rather than putting conclusions in his mouth.

Modern research has since measured several of these plants. A 2008 Cochrane review pooled ten trials with 855 patients and found that hawthorn extract, added to conventional treatment for chronic heart failure, improved maximal workload, exercise tolerance and symptoms, with infrequent, mild and transient adverse events. For valerian the meta-analyses disagree: a 2006 analysis found improved sleep quality with evidence of publication bias, while a 2010 analysis found a subjective improvement but no measurable change in time to fall asleep. For chamomile, a 2009 randomised trial in generalized anxiety disorder reported a modest reduction in anxiety scores. The details and limits of each finding are set out in Hawthorn, Valerian, Chamomile and the Plants Weiss Wrote About.

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4. Commission E and German Regulation

West Germany’s Drug Law of 24 August 1976 required finished herbal medicines to meet the same standards of quality, safety and efficacy as other finished drugs. Products already on the market were given provisional authorization until April 1990, and their medical evaluation, largely from published and empirical data, was assigned to an expert committee, Commission E, which recorded its judgements in monographs. Weiss sat on the commission from its beginning in 1978 into his last years. Its monographs appeared in the federal gazette from 1984 to 1995; of roughly 380 plant drugs reviewed, 186 single drugs and 66 combinations received positive monographs and 118 drugs and 8 combinations negative ones. Hawthorn leaf with flower, for example, was approved for heart failure of NYHA stage II.

By 1998 German physicians were routinely prescribing herbal products and medical schools had reintroduced the subject; a 1999 overview counted more than 300 clinical studies of standardized plant medicines in Germany since 1980. Weiss was also a founding member and first chairman (1971–1973) of the Society for Phytotherapy and the founding editor of its Zeitschrift für Phytotherapie in 1980. See Commission E, German Herbal Medicine Regulation and the Weiss Legacy.

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5. Timeline at a Glance

• 1895 — Born in Berlin on 28 July.
• 1914–1918 — During the First World War, serves as a volunteer Red Cross orderly.
• 1922 — Licensed as a physician; medical dissertation on syphilis and tuberculosis; botanical study of the Harz gypsum flora.
• 1920s — Internal-medicine training at the Charité; later directs a sanatorium in the Harz.
• 1931 — Begins lecturing on scientific plant medicine at the Berlin Academy for Continuing Medical Education.
• 1940s — During the Second World War, reserve medical officer at Reserve Military Hospital 124, Berlin-Britz.
• 1944 — Publishes Die Pflanzenheilkunde in der ärztlichen Praxis, his Berlin lectures.
• 1945–1952 — Soviet captivity; works as a camp doctor using plants he gathers.
• 1954 — Joins the Central Association of Physicians for Naturopathy (ZÄN); its chairman 1959–1961.
• 1960 — Second edition appears as Lehrbuch der Phytotherapie.
• 1971 — Founding member and chairman (to 1973) of the Society for Phytotherapy.
• 1978 — Commission E is set up; Weiss is a member from the start.
• 1980 — Founding editor of the Zeitschrift für Phytotherapie.
• 1985 — Sixth edition, the last he edited; named honorary professor.
• 1987 — Federal Cross of Merit, 1st class, for his work as a camp doctor in captivity.
• 1988 — English translation Herbal Medicine (translated by A. R. Meuss).
• 1991 — Dies in Aitrach on 27 November, aged 96.

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6. Why He Still Matters

Weiss’s textbook outlived him. Volker Fintelmann took over the Lehrbuch after 1985 and later editions continued well into the 2010s, while Heinz Schilcher and Max Wichtl — both, like Weiss, members of Commission E — wrote the guides that a later generation of German doctors and pharmacists learned from. The Society for Phytotherapy named a prize after him, the Rudolf-Fritz-Weiss-Preis, since succeeded by its Phytotherapie-Preis. Through his edition of a Kneipp book and his continuation of an older Swiss herbal, he also tied the scientific movement back to the German nature-cure tradition of Sebastian Kneipp.

The evidence base he called for has grown in both directions. A 2008 Cochrane review found St John’s wort extracts superior to placebo in major depression and similar to standard antidepressants with fewer side effects, while noting that trials from German-speaking countries gave more favourable results than others. Other plants, valerian among them, have shown subjective benefits that are harder to confirm with objective measures. That mixed picture — some plant medicines confirmed, others unproven — is the kind of sorting his demand for proof of action and efficacy anticipated.

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Key Research Papers

1. Weiss RF. [Phytotherapy - today]. Hippokrates. 1975;46(2):143-57. PubMed PMID: 1213908
2. Weiss RF. [The mechanism of action of Crataegus oxycantha]. Hippokrates. 1963;34:602-5. PubMed PMID: 14046338
3. Weiß R. Die Amara in der heutigen Therapie [Bitters in current therapy]. Planta Med. 1966;14(S 01):128-32. DOI: 10.1055/s-0028-1100090
4. Weiss RF. [Antitussive teas and other antitussive plant drugs]. Hippokrates. 1961;32:14-8. PubMed PMID: 13784093
5. Weiss RF. [The present status of the Rauwolfia problem]. Hippokrates. 1958;29(10):315-9. PubMed PMID: 13548843
6. Weiss RF. [Deficiency diseases in recently returned POW's; definition of concepts, treatment & expert evaluation]. Medizinische. 1958;41:1610-6. PubMed PMID: 13599906
7. Keller K. Legal requirements for the use of phytopharmaceutical drugs in the Federal Republic of Germany. J Ethnopharmacol. 1991;32(1-3):225-9. PubMed PMID: 1881161
8. Harrison P. Herbal medicine takes root in Germany. CMAJ. 1998;158(5):637-9. PubMed PMID: 9526483
9. Wagner H. Phytomedicine research in Germany. Environ Health Perspect. 1999;107(10):779-81. PubMed PMID: 10504142
10. Pittler MH, Guo R, Ernst E. Hawthorn extract for treating chronic heart failure. Cochrane Database Syst Rev. 2008;2008(1):CD005312. PubMed PMID: 18254076
11. Bent S, Padula A, Moore D, Patterson M, Mehling W. Valerian for sleep: a systematic review and meta-analysis. Am J Med. 2006;119(12):1005-12. PubMed PMID: 17145239
12. Fernández-San-Martín MI, Masa-Font R, Palacios-Soler L, Sancho-Gómez P, Calbó-Caldentey C, Flores-Mateo G. Effectiveness of Valerian on insomnia: a meta-analysis of randomized placebo-controlled trials. Sleep Med. 2010;11(6):505-11. PubMed PMID: 20347389
13. Amsterdam JD, Li Y, Soeller I, Rockwell K, Mao JJ, Shults J. A randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial of oral Matricaria recutita (chamomile) extract therapy for generalized anxiety disorder. J Clin Psychopharmacol. 2009;29(4):378-82. PubMed PMID: 19593179
14. Linde K, Berner MM, Kriston L. St John's wort for major depression. Cochrane Database Syst Rev. 2008;2008(4):CD000448. PubMed PMID: 18843608
15. Erinnerung an Professor R. F. Weiß – Altmeister der modernen Phytotherapie. Z Phytother. 2020;41(04):191-192. DOI: 10.1055/a-1126-9219

PubMed Topic Searches

1. Weiss RF in Hippokrates
2. Commission E monographs
3. Crataegus and heart failure
4. Valerian and sleep meta-analyses
5. Chamomile and anxiety trials

Further Reading

• Weiss RF. Die Pflanzenheilkunde in der ärztlichen Praxis: Vorlesungen an der Berliner Akademie für ärztliche Fortbildung. Stuttgart: Hippokrates; 1944.
• Weiss RF. Lehrbuch der Phytotherapie. 2nd ed. 1960 onward; 6th ed. 1985 (the last he edited).
• Weiss RF. Herbal Medicine. Translated by A. R. Meuss. 1988.
• Weiss RF, Fintelmann V. Herbal Medicine. 2nd ed. Stuttgart/New York: Thieme; 2000.
• Schilcher H. Nachruf für Prof. Dr. med. Rudolf Fritz Weiss. Ärztezeitschrift für Naturheilverfahren. 1992;33(3):185-186.

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Connections

• Pharmacology
• Life and Career
• Lehrbuch der Phytotherapie
• Hawthorn, Valerian and Chamomile
• Commission E and Legacy
• William Withering
• Dioscorides
• Sebastian Kneipp
• Hawthorn
• Valerian
• Chamomile
• St John’s Wort
• Gentian
• Wormwood
• Milk Thistle