Weleda between 1933 and 1945

At Weleda, we condemn the atrocities of National Socialism in the strongest possible terms. Fascism, antisemitism, racism, or right-wing extremist ideology have no place with us. Weleda is a place of humanity. “Never again” expresses our conviction. Today Weleda is active in 50 countries worldwide, and we stand for tolerance, diversity, and humanity. 

We remember with deep compassion and sorrow the many thousands of people who suffered or were killed in the Dachau concentration camp and at other sites of Nazi terror. It deeply shocks and horrifies us that references to these atrocities also exist in the context of our company’s history. 

Weleda was founded in 1921 and looks back on a long history. This includes the years of the National Socialist dictatorship from 1933 to 1945. Like many other companies, we enable scholars to study, in our company archives, the circumstances Weleda faced at that time and how those responsible acted. In 2023, we ourselves commissioned the Society for Corporate History (GUG) to conduct an expert report on the years 1933 to 1945, which was published in 2024. In 2025, we commissioned the GUG to carry out a new, comprehensive study of our history and role during the Nazi dictatorship. 

The GUG’s research focused on Weleda’s connections to the Dachau concentration camp doctor Sigmund Rascher, as well as the activities of former Weleda gardener Franz Lippert in the Dachau camp’s herb garden. The GUG also examined, in various archives, questions concerning the employment of forced laborers, “Aryanization” measures, and the political stance of the company’s leadership at the time. The results are presented in the 2024 report. Key findings include: 

• There is no evidence that Weleda profited from “Aryanization,” i.e. the expulsion of Jews from economic life in Germany. 
• Weleda did not employ forced laborers. 
• Weleda ordered plants from the Dachau concentration camp herb garden, and company management may have been aware that prisoners were used there. 
• Concentration camp doctor Sigmund Rascher ordered 20 kg of frostbite cream from Weleda. It is unclear whether he used it in his experiments at the camp, or whether that was ever his intent. 
• In 1941, former Weleda head gardener Franz Lippert began working in the Dachau concentration camp herb garden. He had not been employed by Weleda since April 1940. 
• The management of Weleda AG did not join the NSDAP or its affiliated organizations. 
• Up until its discontinuation in 1938, Weleda’s company magazine Weleda Nachrichten did not adopt any Nazi rhetoric or symbols. 

In early September 2025, the study “The Herb Garden in Dachau: History and Aftermath of the Agricultural Experimental Estates of the Dachau Concentration Camp” by historian Anne Sudrow was published on behalf of the Dachau Concentration Camp Memorial Site. Der SPIEGEL had released details prior to the publication of Sudrow’s study. The article suggests that aspects of our history may still not have been fully examined. We will now investigate this further. 

Here you can find our statement on the Spiegel article. 

Previously in the 1990s, historian Uwe Werner conducted research in the Weleda AG archives regarding the Nazi period, publishing his book Anthroposophists in the Time of National Socialism in 1999. A few years later, his book Weleda from 1921–1945 appeared, in which Werner described the company’s founding and its vision of a social, ecological, and economic idea. He characterized the Nazi years as “survival in an inhumane environment.” While not an active form of resistance, Werner argued, it could be described as passive resistance. Other scholars, however, have contradicted Werner’s portrayal of anthroposophists as entirely uninvolved or even victims of the Nazi era. 

Weleda has also granted repeated archive access to historians Peter Selg, Susanne H. Gross, and Matthias Mochner. The first volume of their three-part study appeared in 2024: Anthroposophy and National Socialism. The Anthroposophical Medical Profession. The second volume, Anthroposophy and National Socialism. Weleda and Wala, the Anthroposophical Pharmaceutical Companies 1933–1945, deals in part with Weleda’s complex history during the difficult years of the Nazi dictatorship and was published in August 2025. 

ased on the expert reports and studies available to us (as of August 2025), the following findings emerge: 

The situation from 1933 to 1945 
As an anthroposophically oriented company, Weleda repeatedly faced the risk of a production ban during the Nazi dictatorship. The Anthroposophical Society in Germany was banned by the Nazis on November 1, 1935, and anthroposophists were a marginalized group in the Third Reich. Especially in the postwar period, they therefore primarily saw themselves as victims. More recent research, as outlined above, paints a more nuanced picture, concluding that within anthroposophic circles there were indeed victims, but also followers and perpetrators. 

Was Weleda’s frostbite cream used in experiments on Dachau prisoners? 
In 1943, Weleda delivered 20 kilograms of frostbite cream to the Wehrmacht. The shipment went to the Munich private address of Sigmund Rascher, then a Luftwaffe staff doctor, who was later revealed to have conducted secret experiments on prisoners in Dachau for the SS. In these experiments, inmates were subjected to hypothermia. Both the GUG and the research team led by Peter Selg conclude that there is no evidence Rascher used the frostbite cream in his experiments. Nor did those responsible at Weleda have knowledge of Rascher’s human experiments at Dachau. However, Selg and colleagues speculate that individual Weleda employees, due to personal contacts with Rascher, may possibly have known about his experiments despite the high level of secrecy. This cannot be proven from the sources. 
At the end of the 1990s, Rascher’s experiments were exposed. At that time, Weleda learned of them and subsequently issued a written apology to the organization Children of the Holocaust (AKdH). 

What was Franz Lippert’s connection to Weleda? 
Franz Lippert, who had created and managed Weleda’s medicinal plant garden in Schwäbisch Gmünd, ended his employment there in autumn 1940 after 16 years. From September 1941, he headed biodynamic cultivation at the German Research Institute (DVA) facilities in Dachau. The “herb garden” was part of the Dachau concentration camp. Lippert remained until March 1945. After the war, Lippert had a consultancy contract with Weleda from April 1, 1947, to March 1948. The denazification tribunal against Lippert was dropped in September 1948 on the grounds that he was “not incriminated at all.” According to sworn statements by former prisoners, Lippert repeatedly tried to ease the situation of inmates. He died in 1949 following illness.