Heilpraktiker, or non-medical healing practitioner, is recognized as an alternative and complementary health care profession by German law.
[2] The lîbarzet Jörg Radendorfer from Vienna received around 1496[3] rights in Frankfurt that were otherwise restricted to academic physicians, which were withdrawn in 1499 after protests of doctors and pharmacists, and the death of a patient.
In 1933, the Nazi Reichsministerium des Innern appointed the heilpraktiker Ernst Heinrich as commissioner of the profession.
[5][6] Alternative medicine researcher Edzard Ernst have written about the links between heilpraktiker and Nazism,[7] and described it as "a relic from the Nazis that endangers public health" in a series of blog posts,[8] also arguing against extension of the practice.
[10] A law regarding the profession of heilpraktiker was issued on 18 February 1939, named "Erste Durchführungsverordnung zum Gesetz über die berufsmäßige Ausübung der Heilkunde ohne Bestallung" (First regulation implementing the law on the professional practice of medicine without bestowal), or short: Heilpraktikergesetz.