Otto Buchinger

Otto Buchinger (February 16, 1878, at Darmstadt – April 16, 1966, at Überlingen) was a German physician, credited with being the first to document the beneficial effects of fasting on some diseases.

Biography
He was born on February 16, 1878, in Darmstadt. In 1897, Buchinger studied law, later medicine, at the Ludwigs-University in Gießen, Germany. After his promotion, he went to the German Navy as an army physician. In 1917, he was discharged due to illness; he suffered from tonsillitis that never completely healed and led to rheumatism in his joints. According to his daughter, Maria Buchinger, he took the advice of a physician colleague, Gustav Riedlin, and tried fasting for the first time. After the 19th day of fasting, he said that he "could move all [of his] joints like a healthy recruit".

In 1920, he founded his small fasting clinic in Witzenhausen, Germany. Later, in 1935, he founded his first sanatorium in Bad Pyrmont. He developed a fasting method and described it in his book, The Therapeutic Fasting Cure, which was published in the same year. In 1953, he founded a new clinic at Überlingen on Lake Constance with his daughter Maria Buchinger and son-in-law Helmut Wilhelmi. His grandson, Raimund Wilhelmi, led the Buchinger Wilhelmi clinic in Überlingen with his wife and scientific director, Francoise Wilhelmi de Toledo, until their son, Leonard Wilhelmi, took over the leadership in February 2019.

Otto Buchinger died at the age of 88 on April 16, 1966, in Überlingen on Lake Constance.