Career
He have served in the German Navy as an army physician, but decommissioned in 1918 due to his ill health. After the 19th day on fasting his condition started to improve rapidly. His crippled fingers could straighten again.
He then turned with full interest and enthusiasm to the fasting as a therapy.
In 1920 he founded his small fasting clinic in Witzenhausen in Germany. He developed the fasting method and described it in his book, "The Therapeutic Fasting Cure", published in the same year.