Oskar Schmiedel

Oskar Schmiedel (1887 to 1959) was a Vienna-born pharmacist and anthroposophist who helped turn the medical ideas of Rudolf Steiner into working remedies. Born to a paper manufacturer's family, he studied chemistry in Munich, joined the Theosophical Society in 1907 and became a personal pupil of Steiner. From 1914 he worked at the building of the Goetheanum in Dornach, where he prepared plant-based paints, protective varnish and modelling wax, and made pigments for the colour-chamber therapy of the physician Felix Peiper as well as medicines for physicians following Steiner's indications. After the First World War he devoted himself to producing medicines and made the first mistletoe preparation for Ita Wegman. In 1920 he organized the Dornach course in which Steiner spoke on medicine to about forty mostly homeopathic physicians. His laboratory work grew into the firm that took the name Weleda in 1928, and from 1935 he gave much of his time to the German company, which he ran at Schwäbisch Gmünd with Wilhelm Pelikan and others until his death there in 1959.