Abtei

Abtei is a German health brand founded in 1897 in Bielefeld by the tea and spice merchant Oskar Sarhage [2]. Its name, the German word for "abbey", points to the idea the brand has been built on for well over a century: remedies inspired by traditional monastery medicine, known in German as Klostermedizin. Today Abtei sells over-the-counter remedies and food supplements, among them vitamins, minerals and cold remedies, alongside a line of ingestible products for skin, hair and nails that the company presents as beauty "from within".

The brand has changed hands several times. It came under SmithKline Beecham's consumer-health business in 1996, passed to a subsidiary of the Belgian group Omega Pharma in 2012, and became part of Perrigo when that company's takeover of Omega Pharma took effect in 2015. Abtei's own account of when it joined Omega Pharma differs from other published accounts by 25 years. The brand is active, managed from Stuttgart and sold mainly in Germany, Austria and Switzerland.

According to the company, Sarhage was fascinated by the healing powers of nature. Through a monk he had befriended, he came into contact with the teachings of monastery medicine, and the monk passed on his first remedy recipes. Abtei describes that exchange as the moment the brand was born. The German-language Wikipedia article on the brand adds that the name Abtei itself grew out of this connection [9].

The first preparations Sarhage offered his customers, the company says, were made from two familiar plants: ribwort plantain, a common meadow herb, for skin problems and respiratory complaints, and fennel to calm inflamed mucous membranes. As his knowledge of natural remedies grew, so did the range. In Abtei's telling, Sarhage became a sought-after adviser on health questions and his business flourished.

That founding story still frames how the brand talks about itself. Its anniversary material calls the enthusiasm for the healing power of nature "the essence" of the traditional brand, and the history page on its websites is titled as the story of a heritage brand.

The early decades of the brand are thinly documented beyond the founding story. One product offers a longer trail: according to Wikipedia, Abtei fennel honey (Fenchelhonig) was already on sale in 1948 under the name "Biene Maja", and it remained in the range until the Omega Pharma takeover in 2012.

In 1996 Abtei came under the roof of SmithKline Beecham Consumer Healthcare GmbH & Co. KG in Bühl, the company later known as GlaxoSmithKline Consumer Healthcare [9]. The years that followed brought two developments that tied the brand more closely to both scholarship and the pharmacy counter. From 1999, alongside its conventional product research, Abtei worked with the Institute for the History of Medicine at the University of Würzburg and its research group on monastery medicine, a cooperation that Wikipedia says lasted until the takeover by Omega Pharma and Perrigo. From 2003, and for some years afterwards, products sold only in pharmacies were made under the label "Abtei Apotheken exklusiv", originally called "Abtei Pharma".

In the summer of 2012 the brand was taken over by Abtei OP Pharma GmbH, a newly founded subsidiary of the Belgian pharmaceutical company Omega Pharma [9]. Two years later Omega itself changed owner. In November 2014 the German trade paper Lebensmittel Zeitung reported that Perrigo was buying Omega Pharma for 3.6 billion euros, describing the Belgian group in its headline as the maker of Abtei [13]. The acquisition took effect on 31 March 2015 [10].

The brand's 125th anniversary in 2022 was marked with a large-scale campaign. Together with the creative agency Werbewelt, Abtei developed a new brand claim, "Zeit für Gesundheit" ("Time for health"), and built a 360-degree campaign around it [11]. At its centre was a 15-second anniversary spot, broadcast from the end of June 2022 on major public and private television channels in Germany and Austria. Social media and digital advertising, point-of-sale promotions, print advertisements and internal and external challenges completed the campaign. The website gained an anniversary section with a health guide that presented 125 ideas and tips over the course of the jubilee year, from yoga exercises for calm to care tips for nails.

Dr. Stefanie Häfele, then marketing director for Germany, Austria and Switzerland at Omega Pharma Deutschland GmbH, presented the new claim as a call to attention: time and health, she said, are the two most precious goods people have. The trade magazine Kosmetiknachrichten, reporting on the campaign, described Abtei as one of the best-known health brands in the German-speaking region.

The new claim replaced earlier slogans. Wikipedia lists "Weil ich weiß, was mir gut tut" ("Because I know what is good for me") and, before that, "107 Naturrezepte für Ihre Gesundheit" ("107 natural recipes for your health").

The last major corporate change came at the end of 2023, when Omega's German company completed its renaming to Perrigo Deutschland [12]. Brands including Abtei have since been offered under that name, and packaging was being switched over gradually as of early 2024.

Abtei belongs to Perrigo, which Lebensmittel Zeitung described as a US health-products maker based in Ireland. The brand is held through Perrigo Deutschland GmbH, the former Omega Pharma Deutschland GmbH. Because the German company has been renamed along the way, sources from different years name different legal owners within the same chain: the Wikipedia article names Abtei OP Pharma GmbH, the 2022 trade report names Omega Pharma Deutschland GmbH, and the brand's own legal notice names Perrigo Deutschland GmbH.

The date on which Abtei joined Omega Pharma is reported in two ways. The brand's about page states that Abtei has belonged to Omega Pharma since 1987, and that Omega Pharma has been part of the Perrigo group since 2015 [2]. Wikipedia instead places the brand with SmithKline Beecham from 1996 and records the Omega takeover in the summer of 2012. The year 1987 is also the year Omega Pharma itself was founded in Belgium, by the pharmacist Marc Coucke [12].

Omega's German business has its own long lineage. According to the pharmacy trade outlet APOTHEKE ADHOC, it goes back to Deutsche Chefaro, founded in 1972 as a subsidiary of the chemicals group Akzo Nobel and taken over by Omega in 2001. Coucke took Omega off the stock exchange in 2012, after 13 years as a listed company. In 2022 the French manufacturer HRA Pharma was bought, and Perrigo's German managing director Tobias Geiger later described the integration of the Compeed and EllaOne brands as an important milestone in the company's realignment as "Perrigo DACH", covering pharmacies, mass-market retail and e-commerce in Germany, Austria and Switzerland.

Under the same owner Abtei sits alongside brands such as Wartner, Granu Fink, Compeed and EllaOne.

The location of the owning company is also given in two ways. The legal notice on Abtei's Swiss website lists Perrigo Deutschland GmbH at Königstraße 26 in Stuttgart, while the terms-of-use clause on the same page still names Herrenberg as the company's seat [5]. APOTHEKE ADHOC refers to the Stuttgart headquarters, from which Switzerland and Austria are also managed.

Abtei describes its brand core as traditional knowledge from monastery medicine combined with the latest technologies and findings of modern science, and says that this has remained unchanged to the present day. The company presents itself as a health expert with more than 125 years of experience, whose aim is to help people stay healthy and feel well. It says it believes everyone can actively support their own health, in every situation and at every age, and it frames its work as a considered, holistic approach to health rather than a set of single remedies.

The values the brand names are high quality standards, naturalness and effectiveness. According to Abtei, these have earned it the trust of consumers for generations. Its websites pair the product range with an advice section covering topics such as health, colds, inner calm, beauty and gut health.

Abtei is a health brand first and a beauty brand second. Its overall range is built around self-medication and everyday wellbeing, and its beauty offer consists mainly of supplements taken by mouth, with a small number of creams and ointments alongside. Within that offer, the company describes its nutrients for skin, hair and nails as providing natural beauty from within.

Distribution follows the same everyday logic. The company says its products are sold in drugstores and pharmacies and are also available in grocery retail, while some newer lines, such as the Abtei EXPERT Zaffranax products, are sold only in drugstores and pharmacies. Wikipedia, citing a reference work on German brands, reports that more than 80 percent of German adults who practise self-medication know the brand [9].

The Abtei range spans vitamins and minerals, remedies for colds, immunity and allergies, and products for children. Further categories cover rest and sleep, joints and mobility, digestion, heart, circulation and veins, energy and nerves, muscles and bones, and men's and women's health. The company also lists remedies for bladder and kidney complaints and products for calming and general strengthening. A magnesium product for the night, Abtei Magnesium Stark für die Nacht, is featured among the brand's bestsellers.

The skin, hair and nail category is where Abtei touches the beauty market. The brand's homepage names four primary ingredients for this category: biotin (vitamin B7), silica, zinc and collagen peptides. Abtei Beauty Kollagen Intensiv 5000 is a liquid supplement with marine collagen peptides, which the company calls a beauty recipe that complements a daily care routine. The same category also includes a few products applied to the skin, such as a zinc cream, an arnica ointment and Abtei Ringelblumen Salbe, a calendula ointment sold for skin protection and care.

More recently the brand introduced a beauty edition built on two capsule products. Abtei ProAging Hyaluron Komplex contains a hyaluronic acid ingredient sold under the trade name ExceptionHYAL Star. Abtei SkinGlow Leuchtkraft Komplex is built around a formula called SkinAx², which the company describes as patented and says has been confirmed in a scientific study; its components include vitamin C, zinc, enzymes taken from melon and extract of champagne grape seeds. Sea-buckthorn oil also appears among the actives named for the line. Abtei states that the capsules are vegan, gluten-free and lactose-free and are taken once a day.

The company supports both products with study claims [8]. According to Abtei, 60 women who took 200 milligrams of ExceptionHYAL Star a day for four weeks noticed a fresher, more even complexion, and 35 women who took 150 milligrams of SkinAx² a day for eight weeks noticed a more radiant complexion. As worded, both studies concern the ingredient at a set daily dose rather than the finished Abtei products.

Beyond these, Abtei's historical link to research is more scholarly than technical. The years-long cooperation with the University of Würzburg's medical historians examined the monastery-medicine tradition that the brand draws on, rather than developing new active ingredients.

Abtei has been honoured several times by Reader's Digest with its Pegasus Award as the most trusted brand in its field, a comparison that covered around 200 brands [9]. The Wikipedia article supports this with references to Reader's Digest press releases from 2004, 2006, 2008 and 2010.

The brand also describes itself as a "Brand of the Century", a title it says was awarded by an expert jury. Wikipedia lists Abtei in that category and cites the reference work Deutsche Standards – Marken des Jahrhunderts, edited by Florian Langenscheidt and published by Gabler in 2006.

More recently, the company states that it was recognised in 2025 by the German Society for Consumer Studies (Deutsche Gesellschaft für Verbraucherstudien) in the categories of quality and customer satisfaction [1].

Abtei is an active brand. Its websites for Germany, Austria and Switzerland, the last in German and French, are live and carry Perrigo Deutschland GmbH as the responsible company. The homepage reports the 2025 consumer-studies award and promotes the beauty edition with ProAging Hyaluron Komplex and SkinGlow Leuchtkraft Komplex as new products. The brand is managed from Perrigo's German headquarters in Stuttgart, which also oversees the Swiss and Austrian markets.