He was a member of the Academy of Sciences Leopoldina and received the Officer's Cross of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany in 1976 for services to medical microbiology.

His great-grandfather was the prominent philosopher Christian August Brandis, who was tutor to the young King Otho of Greece.

His great-great-grandfather Joachim Dietrich Brandis was a professor of medicine and moved to Denmark in 1810, where he became personal physician to Queen Marie of Denmark, a Danish Privy Councillor and a member of both the Royal Danish Academy of Sciences and Letters and the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.

In late 1945 he became an assistant professor in Schlossberger's research group at the Institute for Medical Microbiology and Infection Control at the Goethe University Frankfurt.

Brandis was editor-in-chief of the journal Zeitschrift für Immunitätsforschung (now Immunobiology) and is also known for his textbook Medizinische Mikrobiologie.