Carlos Brandt was a Venezuelan author, historian, philosopher and naturopath.

Biography

Background

Dr. Carlos Brandt Tortolero was an author, historian, doctor of philosophy, philosopher of vegetarianism, essayist, novelist, biographer, musicologist and naturopath, who was born in Miranda, a town in Carabobo State, Venezuela

Venezuela

Venezuela , officially called the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela , is a tropical country on the northern coast of South America. It borders Colombia to the west, Guyana to the east, and Brazil to the south...

.

Early Life

He was the son of a German immigrant Don Carlos Brandt, a coffee planter and exporter, and Zoraida Tortolero, mother to Carlos, Juan Luis, Fernando, Augusto, Asteria and Mary. His younger brother (by 17 years) was the composer Augusto Brandt

Augusto Brandt

Augusto Brandt was a Venezuelan composer and violinist.-Early life:The son of German immigrants, and younger brother of writer Carlos Brandt, he had piano lessons with Ana Jhan Wittestone as a child, and composed his first pieces at the age of six. From 1903, he studied violin in Caracas...

. He studied in Puerto Cabello Elementary and was sent to Germany to join the Pro Gymnasium in Hamburg, aged 14 to 19. He toured German and France, and returned to Venezuela at 19, fluent in German, French and English. At 25, he met Leo Tolstoy

Leo Tolstoy

Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy was a Russian writer who primarily wrote novels and short stories. Later in life, he also wrote plays and essays. His two most famous works, the novels War and Peace and Anna Karenina, are acknowledged as two of the greatest novels of all time and a pinnacle of realist...

, which encouraged his literary ambitions. In 1901, his first book appeared La Belleza de la Mujer.

Exile

Under the dictatorship of Juan Vicente Gómez

Juan Vicente Gómez

Juan Vicente Gómez Chacón was a military general and de facto ruler of Venezuela from 1908 until his death in 1935. He was president on three occasions during this time, and ruled as an unelected military strongman for the rest of the era.-Early years:Gómez was a barely literate cattle herder and...

, he was imprisoned and then exiled to Spain

Spain

Spain , officially the Kingdom of Spain languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Spain's official name is as follows:;;;;;;), is a country and member state of the European Union located in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula...

, Italy

Italy

Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...

, Belgium

Belgium

Belgium , officially the Kingdom of Belgium, is a federal state in Western Europe. It is a founding member of the European Union and hosts the EU's headquarters, and those of several other major international organisations such as NATO.Belgium is also a member of, or affiliated to, many...

, Holland and then the USA. Protesting at the dictatorship, he encountered the anarchist organization Generación Consciente in Barcelona

Barcelona

Barcelona is the second largest city in Spain after Madrid, and the capital of Catalonia, with a population of 1,621,537 within its administrative limits on a land area of...

.

Writings

He promoted natural living, pacifism, free-thinking, liberty and spiritualism, in his writings, as well as being a novelist and biographer. Many of his books emerged during his time in exile. In 1913, Fundamentos de la Moral, also known as El Problema Vital (The Vital Problem), was published with a prologue by Albert Einstein

Albert Einstein

Albert Einstein was a German-born theoretical physicist who developed the theory of general relativity, effecting a revolution in physics. For this achievement, Einstein is often regarded as the father of modern physics and one of the most prolific intellects in human history...

. For his work, the American School of Naturopathy awarded him an honorary doctorate. With this and further writings, Brandt counted as one of the original founders of the Vegetarianism movement.

His books were published in Spanish

Spanish language

Spanish , also known as Castilian , is a Romance language in the Ibero-Romance group that evolved from several languages and dialects in central-northern Iberia around the 9th century and gradually spread with the expansion of the Kingdom of Castile into central and southern Iberia during the...

, Italian

Italian language

Italian is a Romance language spoken mainly in Europe: Italy, Switzerland, San Marino, Vatican City, by minorities in Malta, Monaco, Croatia, Slovenia, France, Libya, Eritrea, and Somalia, and by immigrant communities in the Americas and Australia...

, Flemish

Flemish

Flemish can refer to anything related to Flanders, and may refer directly to the following articles:*Flemish, an informal, though linguistically incorrect, name of any kind of the Dutch language as spoken in Belgium....

, Dutch

Dutch language

Dutch is a West Germanic language and the native language of the majority of the population of the Netherlands, Belgium, and Suriname, the three member states of the Dutch Language Union. Most speakers live in the European Union, where it is a first language for about 23 million and a second...

, English

English language

English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...

, French

French language

French is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the regions of Quebec and Acadia in Canada, and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts...

 and German

German language

German is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....

. His first book published in English was Hight and Right.

As well as his historic and philosophical writings, Brandt generated extensive correspondence with authors such as Bernard Shaw

George Bernard Shaw

George Bernard Shaw was an Irish playwright and a co-founder of the London School of Economics. Although his first profitable writing was music and literary criticism, in which capacity he wrote many highly articulate pieces of journalism, his main talent was for drama, and he wrote more than 60...

, Leo Tolstoy

Leo Tolstoy

Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy was a Russian writer who primarily wrote novels and short stories. Later in life, he also wrote plays and essays. His two most famous works, the novels War and Peace and Anna Karenina, are acknowledged as two of the greatest novels of all time and a pinnacle of realist...

, Benedict Lust

Benedict Lust

Benedict Lust, ND, DO, MD , was one of the founders of naturopathic medicine in the first decade of the twentieth century.-Biography:He was born in Michelbach, Germany, in the Black Forest, where he was raised...

 - one of the founders of natural medicine, Haeckel, Max Nordau, Gabriela Mistral, Garofalo, Russell Wallace and Elmer Lee.

Naturopathy

Dr Brandt, along with Arnold Ehret

Arnold Ehret

Arnold Ehret was a German health educator and author of several books on diet, detoxification, fruitarianism, fasting, food combining, health, longevity, naturopathy, physical culture and vitalism.- Background :...

, Benedict Lust

Benedict Lust

Benedict Lust, ND, DO, MD , was one of the founders of naturopathic medicine in the first decade of the twentieth century.-Biography:He was born in Michelbach, Germany, in the Black Forest, where he was raised...

 and Louis Kuhn, was one of the original pioneers of naturopathy. Brandt taught Nicolas Capo (born around 1902), who wrote his first book circa 1935. Many of Brandt's books were distributed though Capo's Instituto de Trofoterapia, in Barcelona.

Capo and José Castro (Galician naturopath) , were pioneers of dietary health and healing in Spain, during the 1920s to 1940s, opening Escuela Naturo-Trofologica in Barcelona in 1925. Capo left Spain for Argentina around 1939, fleeing from the dictatorship.

German pioneers of the nature cure and natural hygiene

Natural hygiene

Natural Hygiene can refer to:* a school of medical thought also named orthopathy, founded by Herbert Shelton* naturopathy* a reference to the hygiene hypothesis...

movements are featured in Children Of The Sun: A Pictorial Anthology From Germany to California 1883-1949 by Gordon Kennedy, Navaria Press 1998.

Brandt is listed in Who’s Who In Latin America.

Works

• Análisis Critica De La Biblia / Critical Analysis Of The Bible
• Bajo La Tiranía De Cipriano Castro / Under The Tyranny Of Cipriano Castro
• Bajo la tiranía de Cipranio Castro, Tipografía Vargas, 1952
• Beethoven, Su Vida, Su Obra, Y El Sentido De Su Música / Beethoven: His Life, His Work & The Sense Of His Music 1940, 1954
• Belleza De La Mujer, Tratado De Las Proporciones Armoniosas Del Cuerpo Humano Y De La Importancia Filosófica, Artística Y Sociológica De La Belleza Física / The Beauty Of Woman: The Harmonious Proportions Of The Human Body & The Philosophical, Artistic & Sociological Importance Of Physical Beauty 1935
• Camino De Perfección / The Way Of Perfection
• Cervantes: El Titán De La Literatura Y Su Obra Maestra: El Quijote / Cervantes: The Titan Of Literature & His Masterpiece: Don Quixote, 1942, Las Novedades, Caracas
• Colon / Columbus
• Diógenes: El Atleta De La Voluntad / Diogenes: The Willing Athlete
• El Anarquismo En América Latina / Anarchism In Latin America
• El Estado Y La Iglesia / The Estate & The Church
• El fanatismo religioso, Editorial Símbolo
• El Fundamento De La Moral / The Fundamental Basis Of Morality 1918, 1926 Librería Sintes, Barcelona
• El misterioso almirante y su enigmático descubrimiento by Carlos Brandt Ministerio de Educación Nacional, Dirección de Cultura, 1949
• El Misterioso Almirante Y Su Enigmático Descubrimiento: Biografía Caracas / The Mysterious Admiral & His Enigmatic Discovery: A Biography Of Caracas
• El Modernismo / Modernism 1994
• El Problema Económico-Social / The Social-Economic Problem
• El Problema Vital / The Vital Problem: The Path To Health, Wisdom & Universal Peace 1924, 1969, 1999, Instituto De Trofoterapi, Barcelona and Benedict Lust Publishers, New York (1924)
• El Sendero De La Salud / The Path Of Health
• El Vegetarianismo / Vegetarianism
• Filosofía Del Vegetarismo / The Philosophy Of Vegetarianism 1927, Librería Sintes, Barcelona
• Fundamentos de la Moral (The Vital Problem)
• Giordano Bruno, El Mártir Más Auténtico De La Historia / Giordano Bruno: The Most Authentic Martyr Of History Kier, 1940
• Hight and Right (in English)
• Jesús, El Filósofo Por Excelencia / Jesus: The Philosopher Par Excellence 1939
• La Belleza De La Mujer / The Beauty Of Women
• La Clave Del Misterio / The Key To The Mystery
• La Dictadura Gomecista / The Gomecist Dictatorship
• La Época Del Terror: En El País De Gómez / The Age Of Terror: In The Country Of Gomez
• La Paz Universal / Universal Peace
• La Superstición Médica / Medical Superstition
• Leonardo Da Vinci: El Profeta De Los Profetas / Leonardo Da Vinci: The Prophet Of Prophets, Editorial Latorre Caracas 1939, Simon & Schuster 1993
• Los Enigmas De La Ciencia / The Enigmas Of Science
• Naturaleza Frugivora Del Hombre / The Frugivorous Nature Of Man
• Patología Racional: Las Enfermedades, Su Origen Y Curación / Rational Pathology: Illnesses, Their Origin & Cures 1942, 1949, Ediciones Universo, Toulouse
• Pitágoras Y Vegetarianismo / Pythagoras & Vegetarianism, 1970, Instituto De Trofoterapia, Barcelona
• Pitágoras, Padre De La Sabiduría Europea / Pythagoras, Father Of European Wisdom
• Siluetas Luminosas / Luminous Silhouettes
• Spinoza Y El Panteísmo / Spinoza & Pantheism 1972
• Fundamentos de la Moral (The Vital Problem)