Friedrich Schwab

German physician, theosophist and astrologer, who was initially a piano maker, but then studied medicine on the advice of Rudolf Steiner and practised as a homeopathic doctor in Berlin. He was a board member of the German Society for Occultism, founder of the Heidelberg Theosophical Lodge and, according to Dr. Herbert Fritsche, "the clairvoyant esoteric and superior connoisseur of the occult training path". In Franz Hartmann he had a friend and teacher on his spiritual path. His astrological interest was mainly medical, and he was one of the first to try to prove astrological claims statistically, for example about longevity in relation to certain signs of the zodiac (Sternenmächte und Mensch/ English: Star Powers and Man). Together with Dr. Fritz Quade and others, he founded the "Academic Society for Astrological Research" in 1924 to fight against the popularisation of astrology, which in the view of the founders would only lead to charlatanism and superstition. Possibly this association is identical with the later "Society of Academic Astrologers", of which Schwab was also a member. In his essay on The Chakras, he reflected on the nature of the influence of the stars on human destiny, and concluded that the stars have a direct effect on the subtle body of man, which he saw as a "mediation between the cosmos and the physical body", and whose most famous expression is the chakras. In assigning the planets to the chakras he also referred to Gichtel. He died on 18 June 1946 at Heidelberg at age 68. Link to AstroWiki (german)