Franz H. Behncke

Franz Heinrich Behncke (1868 – March 1964) was a German-American naturopath and physical culture teacher.

Biography

Behncke was born in Germany in 1868. As a young man he fought in the Second Boer War in South Africa where he was captured and exiled by the British. He travelled to Abyssinia and Siam. He later became an alternative health lecturer and immigrated to the United States where he attended the Lindlahr College of Natural Therapeutics from 1914 to 1917. He also worked at the Sun-Diet Sanitarium in East Aurora, New York from 1929 to 1939 and at Bergholz Institute in Milwaukee from 1940. In 1933 whilst lecturing for the Sun-Diet Sanitarium he promoted food combining. In 1940s he became interested in vegetarianism. He was a speaker at a vegetarian convention with George Hebden Corsan, Scott Nearing and Geoffrey L. Rudd at Geneva, Wisconsin hosted by the Vegetarian News Digest in 1949.

Behncke died in March 1964. They had four children.

Selected publications