In 1954 a small group of motivated physicians founded a microbiological laboratory in Herborn/Dill. Its work was determined by the attempt to see man as part of a natural cyclical system, other components of which they considered to be agricultural land, agriculture and nutrition. In their thinking they accorded a special role to the ubiquitous microbes. Health and disease were seen as the result of the interplay between man and his environment, or between the inner world and the outer world. This medical way of thinking was born from a holistic way of considering things - and this at a time when the term ecology was still very much a foreign word.

 

 

Prior to the setting up of the Herborn laboratory, research work had been carried out by Arthur Becker, who had been conducting experiments with bacterial vaccines since 1922 and who had won the support of the Robert Bosch Foundation and of Ernst Leitz senior in Wetzlar in the forties.

 

Hans Kolb converted many of Becker's findings into clinical experience and joined the Wetzlar group in 1945. Shortly afterwards Hans Peter Rusch also joined it. The triple star of the bacteriologist Becker, the practising physician Kolb and the gynaecologist Rusch developed a firework display of scientific ideas, which in the course of time focussed on the core themes of healing with bacteria and biological agriculture and stimulated many others to joint work.

 

In the microbiological laboratory at Herborn attempts were made first of all and on a very simple basis to determine the states of individual stations of the soil-nutrition-man cycle. For this soil investigations, food and environment analyses and medical-microbiological diagnoses were carried out. Autovaccines (vaccines produced by the body itself) and microbiological preparations were manufactured in order to serve holistic aspects in agriculture and in the treatment of the sick.

 

Conceived to function at scientific level, the Herborn Circle promotes and supports numerous research projects in co-operation with scientific institutions and universities throughout the world and contributes to the work of the independent, international organizations in the form of the Old Herborn University Seminar (1987) and the International Study Group on New Antimicrobial Studies (1993). Scientific publications including the magazine "Microecology and Therapy" and the Old Herborn University monograph series are made possible by Herborn Litterae GmbH (1997). To intensify research and development work carried out in co-operation with external organizations, the Institute fur Integrative Biologie GmbH was founded (2000). The objectives here are the creating of ever better microbiological, immunobiological and molecular-biological diagnostic processes, further experimental and clinical studies with microbiological products and the designing of new generations of individual pharmaceuticals.

 

 

The scientific efforts of recent years have resulted in a large number of world-wide patents and new AIDS and tumour therapies. The research focal point of cancer therapies is institutionalized in SymbioTec GmbH (1988), which has been located in Saarbrücken since 1999. The medical focal points of the ideas-network have crystallized out in the form of an independent Herborn Circle practice which avails of the services of the independent Institute for Micro-Ecology (1977). In the latter microbiological analyses and above all bacteriological and mycological faecal analyses are carried out (KyberStatus). Further fields of activity are the detecting of enteropathogenic germs and parasites, the determining of classical and modern clinical parameters (KyberPlus), the differentiated system of allergy and immuno-system diagnosis (Kyberdiagnostik) and the production of autovaccines. Diagnosis is based today on the most modern methods including genetic processes, which have in addition been enriched to a significant extent with internal developments.

 

The Institut für Mikrobiologie und Biochemie GmbH as founded in 1986 took up first of all as its core thematic area biological agriculture, which had been brought into being by Hans Peter Rusch in co-operation with Hans Müller from Switzerland as the pioneers of this in the early fifties and sixties and today counts as a fixed parameter in agriculture. The result of the efforts of the institute were original analytical methods for determining the quality of soils and agricultural products, which methods permit precise differentiation between different classical and biological cultivation methods (AgricoTest). Since the time for the economic exploitation of these methods was not yet ripe, the main field of activities moved to biochemical, microbiological and molecular-biological analyses, which were used in food analyses, environmental medicine and research tasks. Applied microbiology stimulated the development of alimentary probiotics for dairy farming to a significant extent. In recent years the field of medical activity has expanded and changed the course of the institute. As a consequence of this the name was changed to Symbio Vaccin GmbH early in 2000. The institute devotes itself to an expanded spectrum of modern autovaccine analytical services as well as the production of special vaccines and individual pharmaceuticals in the field of medicine and veterinary medicine.

The future has begun.

The SymbioPharm microbial preparations fulfil the above prophesy as valuable therapeutic instruments produced by a modern pharmaceutical enterprise. The entrepreneurial activities of the Herborn Circle are today united under Symbio Herborn Group as parent company.

 

The Herborn Circle represents a unique intellectual combine of independent, private and entrepreneurial efforts, which also manifest themselves in very concrete services and production on the basis of modern biotechnology. The continuous growth in the number of employees represents part of the group's history. This led rapidly to the location in the charming old half-timbered houses in the centre of Herborn becoming too confined and required the construction of a new building on the Wacht peak above the town in 1996. On a site next to the SymbioPharm production location, the new domicile with its original architecture has been providing space for the institutes and the entrepreneurial administration since 1997.

Dr. Volker Rusch
17.02.2000