A.Vogel

A.Vogel is a Swiss health brand built on the work of the naturopath and writer Alfred Vogel (1902–1996). Its range centres on herbal medicines made from fresh plants, alongside foods and food supplements, and the brand also publishes health information, a long-running magazine and books. The operating company, A.Vogel AG, is based in Roggwil in the canton of Thurgau, where production has been concentrated since the 1960s. Its best-known product is Echinaforce, a preparation made from purple coneflower (Echinacea purpurea).

The brand dates itself to 1923, when Vogel began running a health food store in Basel; the company now known as A.Vogel AG was founded in 1963 under the name Bioforce AG. Vogel is one of the better-known figures of Swiss natural medicine, and also a contested one: his use of the title "Doctor", his views on blood transfusions and the origin story of Echinaforce have all drawn public criticism.

Alfred Max Vogel was born on 26 October 1902 in Aesch, in the canton of Basel-Landschaft. His father, Achilles, was a hairdresser and barber. Vogel trained in commerce, and at the age of 21 he moved to Basel to manage a health food store, known in German-speaking countries as a Reformhaus. The Swiss historical dictionary dates this period to 1923–1932 [6], which matches the company's own motto, "A.Vogel hilft – seit 1923" ("A.Vogel helps – since 1923") [2]. A 2020 business profile in the Swiss daily Blick instead says Vogel opened the Basel shop in 1920 [7].

In 1927 Vogel married Sophie Sommer, a teacher; the couple had two daughters. He began writing early. A short guide to life reform, Kleiner Wegweiser für die Lebensreform, appeared in 1926, and in 1929 he started a monthly magazine called Das Neue Leben ("The New Life"). The magazine was later renamed A. Vogel Gesundheits-Nachrichten ("A. Vogel Health News"). Sources disagree on when the new title began: Wikipedia gives 1941 [5], while the Historical Dictionary of Switzerland says Vogel published Gesundheits-Nachrichten from 1943 [6].

In 1933 Vogel was recognised as a Naturarzt, a Swiss term for a practitioner of natural medicine. Two years later he took over a spa guesthouse in Trogen, where he began producing plant extracts, and from 1937 he ran a similar establishment in Teufen, in the canton of Appenzell Ausserrhoden. He also opened health food stores in Zürich, Solothurn and Bern.

The company still frames its identity around Vogel's personal credo, quoted on its website: "Die Natur war meine liebste Universität" – "Nature was my favourite university." It describes him as a pioneer of natural healing whose work helped win recognition for the role of herbal medicines in the modern world.

### Travels and the Echinaforce story

From the 1950s Vogel travelled widely through Africa, North America, Oceania and South America, with a particular interest in meeting Indigenous peoples who lived close to nature. The best-known story from these journeys concerns a stay with the Sioux in the United States. According to the account Vogel told, he befriended Ben Black Elk, son of the medicine man Nicholas Black Elk, who taught him about Native American herbal traditions and gave him a handful of purple coneflower seeds as a farewell present. Back in Switzerland, Vogel cultivated and studied the plant and eventually created Echinaforce, which became his flagship product.

Wikipedia treats this origin story with some scepticism. It notes that Ben Black Elk earned his living posing for photographs with tourists near Mount Rushmore and appeared as an actor in the 1962 film How the West Was Won, and it describes the gift of seeds as "allegedly" given [5]. Blick gives a shorter version, saying Vogel developed Echinaforce after returning from America and calling it the best-known product of his company.

### The Nature Doctor

In 1952 Vogel published Der kleine Doktor, a home health guide later issued in English as The Nature Doctor. According to the Historical Dictionary of Switzerland, it was translated into twelve languages and sold more than two million copies [6]. The book became one of the main channels through which his ideas about diet, plants and self-care reached a wide audience. Older editions also contained passages on blood transfusions that later drew criticism (see Controversies).

Vogel wrote a number of other books over the following decades, among them works on the liver as a regulator of health (1960), a health guide for travel to southern countries (1972) and a book on cancer as a "disease of civilisation" (1982). An earlier title from 1938, Erblehre und Rassenkunde in bildlicher Darstellung ("Heredity and Racial Science in Images"), also appears in lists of his publications.

### Bioforce and industrial production

The move from guesthouse workshop to factory came in 1963. That year Vogel founded Bioforce AG in Roggwil, Thurgau, to produce his preparations at scale. According to the Historical Dictionary of Switzerland, he aimed to make natural products that were as unaltered as possible, mainly juices and extracts from fresh plants, and from 1963 these were made in large quantities at Bioforce [6]. Vogel continued adjusting his recipes to keep pace with changing pharmaceutical standards into the early 1990s.

This is the source of the brand's two founding dates. A.Vogel itself counts from 1923 and the Basel health food store, and it has marked a centenary under the banner "100 Jahre A.Vogel" ("100 years of A.Vogel") [3]. Wikipedia and Blick, by contrast, place the foundation of the company in 1963, with Blick writing that this was the year Vogel "laid the foundation stone" of the business [7]. The two dates describe different things – the start of Vogel's commercial career and the creation of the manufacturing company – rather than a true contradiction. The company later traded as A.Vogel AG; Bioforce AG is its former name.

### Later life and legacy

In 1983 Vogel married his second wife, Denise Rütimann. A foundation bearing his name, the Alfred-Vogel-Stiftung, was set up in 1984, and in 1991 the Alfred-Vogel-Museum opened in Teufen, the village where he had run his guesthouse. Exhibitions in his birthplace, Aesch, also document his life. Vogel died in Feusisberg on 1 October 1996, aged 93.

His name has travelled further than his own company. The New Zealand bakery and cereal company Vogel's is named after him.

A.Vogel presents itself as a health brand with three strands: information and preventive health, food from organic farming, and natural medicines made from fresh medicinal plants. The company says that fresh, organically grown raw materials form the basis of both its herbal medicines and its foods and supplements. Blick reported in 2020 that most of the raw materials for the company's medicines, supplements and food products come from organic cultivation.

Fresh plants are the brand's central idea. A.Vogel says it has always worked with fresh rather than dried plants because of what it describes as their demonstrably higher effectiveness, and states that it scientifically verifies the efficacy of its products. These statements are the company's own.

The company sets out its ambition in broad terms: it aims to be "the reconciling bridge between traditional and modern medicine" [4]. That aim echoes the historical record on Vogel himself. The Historical Dictionary of Switzerland notes that, unlike some other naturopaths of his time, Vogel sought recognition for natural healing from academic medicine.

On its brand pages A.Vogel groups its values under five headings: love of nature, science, health, curiosity and freshness. It also speaks of an "ecologically sustainable approach" to plants. No third-party certifications are documented.

Information has been part of the brand since Vogel's early writing, and it still is. The company's Swiss portal offers health topics ranging from colds and the immune system to sleep, stress, digestion and menopause, along with a medicinal plant encyclopedia, healthy recipes and a book shop run by its own publishing arm. Gesundheits-Nachrichten continues to appear: the Historical Dictionary of Switzerland put its circulation at 26,417 copies in 2011, and Blick reported in 2020 that it was published ten times a year with a print run of almost 30,000.

Echinaforce, the purple coneflower preparation that grew out of Vogel's travels, is the brand's signature product. Histories of Swiss complementary medicine credit Vogel with helping to popularise echinacea, the plant he first encountered on his North American travels. The same accounts describe him as a figure who advanced industrial-scale herbal medicine based on fresh plants.

In 2020 Echinaforce attracted press attention when it was tested at Labor Spiez in Switzerland for possible use against the coronavirus. Blick noted that the effect had so far been shown only in laboratory cell cultures, and that the Swiss medicines regulator Swissmedic had stressed that the product is expressly not approved as a "Corona medicine" [7].

Beyond its herbal medicines, the brand's range includes foods and food supplements. The company describes its foods as coming from organic farming.

In 1982 Vogel received the Priessnitz Medal, and in 1984 he was made an honorary member of SAGEM, according to Swiss biographical references cited by Wikipedia. Both honours recognised Vogel personally rather than any product.

The most substantial external assessment comes from the Historical Dictionary of Switzerland. Its entry on Vogel, written by Hubert Steinke, describes him, alongside the priest Johannes Künzle, as the most successful Swiss naturopath of the 20th century [6].

Much of the criticism of Vogel has centred on the title "Doctor". For years he was known as "Doctor Vogel" or "Dr. Vogel", although he was not a physician. Some sources say he received an honorary doctorate in botanical studies from the University of California, Los Angeles, in 1952, which would allow the style "Dr. h.c.". Jan Willem Nienhuys, however, claimed that the degree came from the California University of Liberal Physicians, a long-dissolved institution whose diplomas are of disputed legitimacy. Because Vogel sold natural medicines but was not a physician, critics argued that the title implied an association he did not have. After a complaint to the Dutch Advertising Standards Authority (Reclame Code Commissie) in 1981, Vogel and his products gradually stopped being called "Doctor" [5].

The following year, on 14 October 1982, the Dutch teacher, presenter and comedian Ivo de Wijs published an article in the science section of the newspaper NRC Handelsblad in which he branded Vogel a quack.

Vogel was a member of Jehovah's Witnesses and preached that God prohibited blood transfusions. Older editions of Der kleine Doktor were criticised for justifying this opposition with the claim that transfusions could change a person's character.

The origin of Echinaforce has also been questioned, as described above. In November 2014 an episode of the Dutch satirical television programme Zondag met Lubach criticised and mocked Vogel's "invention" of the product.

A.Vogel is active. A.Vogel AG remains based in Roggwil, and its Swiss health portal continues to publish health and nutrition content and to promote visits to its two historic sites: the garden in Roggwil and the museum in Teufen. In autumn 2026 it was advertising a museum night in Teufen on 24 October and a winter day in Roggwil on 20 November.

The most recent published company figures date from 2020. That year Blick reported that A.Vogel AG employed around 500 people worldwide, generated revenue of about 130 million Swiss francs and exported 80 percent of its products [7]. The company had subsidiaries in France, the Netherlands, Belgium, the United Kingdom and Ireland, and Denmark. No parent company or acquisition history is documented.