Personal and Professional Background
Ryke Geerd Hamer was born on May 17, 1935, in Mettmann (near Düsseldorf), Germany, and grew up in the Frisia/East Frisia region. At age 18, he completed his Abitur (high school diploma) and began studying medicine and theology in Tübingen. During this period, he met Sigrid Oldenburg, who later became his wife.
At age 20, he passed a preliminary examination in medicine. He married the following year and the couple went on to have four children (two girls and two boys). The author Birgit Hamer is his daughter.
Alongside his medical training, Hamer pursued formal theological studies and completed theological examinations at age 22: a milestone he later referenced as part of his early academic formation. At age 24, he passed the medical state examination in Marburg (April 1962). After residency, he received a professional license (Approbation) as a physician in 1963, and was described as the youngest medical doctor in Germany. He spent years working at the University Clinics in Tübingen and Heidelberg, and in 1972 he completed a specialization in internal medicine. He also worked at times in a joint medical practice with his wife, Dr. Sigrid Hamer.
Dr. Hamer held patents for several medical and technical devices, including a “Hamer scalpel” used in plastic surgery, a bone saw, a massage table designed to adjust to body contours, and a device for transcutaneous serum diagnosis. In 1976, on the couple’s 20th engagement anniversary, he wrote a song titled “Mein Studentenmädchen” for Sigrid.
In August 1978, his son Dirk was shot while asleep on a boat anchored near the island of Cavallo. Dirk survived for several months but died on December 7, 1978. Hamer later associated this event with his own subsequent diagnosis of testicular carcinoma and developed the terminology “Dirk Hamer Syndrome (DHS),” which he defined as “an unexpected biological conflict-shock.”
Dr. Hamer discovered the five biological laws of what he initially patented as “Germanic New Medicine” (he was not able to patent the term “New Medicine”) between 1981 and 1994. Almost as soon as he presented his work as a post-doctoral thesis, Dr. Hamer began suffering legal persecution throughout Europe, had his medical license taken away, and was imprisoned multiple times. He also lost his wife Sigrid, who he felt died from sorrow over the loss of her son, Dirk.
In 1989, he underwent a voluntary psychiatric examination by Dr. Catherine Bataille de Longprey in Brussels. In 1999, he traveled to Toronto for a two-week seminar hosted by llsedora Laker, launching the Germanic New Medicine in Canada and the English-speaking world. In 2000, he met Bona García Ortín, who later became his second wife. In 2007, he emigrated to Sandefjord, Norway.
Hamer died of stroke on July 2, 2017, in Sandefjord, Norway, at the reported time of 22:10. He was buried on July 14, 2017, in Erlangen, Germany.
Some Insight Into Dr. Hamer’s Psyche
The manslaughter of his son Dirk was perpetrated by Vittorio Emanuele di Savoia, a son of the last king of Italy (Umberto II). From Dr. Hamer’s perspective, the Savoy family used intimidation tactics during Dirk Hamer’s hospitalization and after his death. But after that, life became increasingly difficult as he was pursued in a coordinated international legal attack instigated by the medical community and/or the Savoy family of Italy.
Dr. Hamer’s repeated attempts to open a hospital or clinic were prevented by what he saw as coordinated opposition. His habilitation effort to present his initial findings about the Dirk Hamer Syndrome and the Iron Rule of Cancer was rejected out of hand by the University of Tubingen.
Later, after presenting his findings of the first four biological laws of what he later called, “Germanic New Medicine,” Dr. Hamer was deeply upset that the medical board removed his license for “malpractice,” when it was actually because he refused to renounce his findings. From his perspective, the international legal aggression toward him that followed amounted to a “witch hunt.”
His arrest and imprisonment were disproportionate to the alleged offense, but Dr. Hamer used the circumstances to study fellow prisoners as samples of “the criminal mind.” Dr. Hamer was then placed in unjustified solitary confinement, which impeded his ability to continue research while incarcerated. He continued to be pursued with legal aggression after his release, including through fabricated criminal charges in France.
Based on these and many related experiences that continued for the rest of his life, Dr. Hamer developed broader allegations about mainstream clinical medicine and its personnel, as well as those who incorporated Germanic New Medicine into other modalities or teachings without proper attribution. He was deeply saddened by what he felt was completely unnecessary and cruel loss of life due to the conventional medical model of cancer treatment and the treatment of all serious idiopathic illness.
Germanic New Medicine
A few months after Dirk’s death, Dr. Hamer received a diagnosis of testicular carcinoma/testicular cancer. He was certain that the biological conflict-shock of losing his son was connected with this diagnosis. This is how he introduced the term “Dirk Hamer Syndrome” (DHS), defining it as a “biological conflict-shock,” and the initiating event required in the first biological law, the “Iron Rule of Cancer.”
In October 1981, he submitted his work to the University of Tübingen as a post-doctoral thesis in connection with qualification as a university lecturer. The thesis topic was given as “Das DIRK HAMER SYNDROM und die EISERNE REGEL DES KREBS.” In May 1982, the University rejected the work. Court proceedings later included an acknowledgment that the University did not test a single case for reproduction.
In 1987, in “The Documents of the New Medicine,” he set out his system in four “natural laws,” citing observations from approximately 10,000 cases. In 1990, he founded a “Zentrum für Neue Medizin” in Burgau (Austria), and a conference there discussed 20 cases in the presence of 30 doctors from different countries. In 1994, he introduced a fifth biological natural law (“Quintessenz”) and expanded the system to five biological laws. He linked this expansion to research on over 20,000 cases; (elsewhere, the number of case studies was also given as “over 40,000”).
In 1995, he stated on public television that there is no AIDS and no HIV virus. That same year, Olivia Pilhar, age six, was diagnosed with a Wilms tumour (nephroblastoma). Her parents, who were students of the five biological laws of the Germanic New Medicine, refused chemotherapy and an operation. As a result, custody was withdrawn. The family went to Spain but when they were later required to return to Austria, Olivia’s tumour was removed and she was treated with conventional oncology. In 1997, her parents were convicted of negligent bodily harm and received an eight-month suspended prison sentence.
In 1998, the University of Trnava (Slovakia) committed to conduct habilitation proceedings. In that year Dr. Hamer was also released (early) from prison. The habilitation thesis was rejected, and a verification was signed by a university commission.
In 2008, Dr. Hamer founded “Universität Sandefjord” at his home address in Sandefjord and used it as a publisher.
Germanic New Medicine controversy
Conventional medicine rejects Germanic New Medicine because its core assertions directly contradict established medical theory.
The central discord between Germanic New Medicine and conventional medicine is that the former recognizes the brain as the central coordinator between the psyche and the body, seeing the three as levels within a single, cohesive system. The latter (the dominant medical model) sees disease – psychological or physical – as purely the product of mechanical forces.
For example, Germanic New Medicine attributes all so-called “diseases” that are not a result of injury, poisoning, or malnutrition, to biological conflicts. (A testicular carcinoma as Dr. Hamer experienced would begin with a profound loss conflict: the death of his son, Dirk). Conventional medicine, expressly attributes the cause of diseases to “identifiable physical, chemical, or biological disruptions to normal bodily function.”
As a result, conventional medicine also expressly rejects the idea of the Dirk Hamer Syndrome, the biological conflict, the Iron Rule of Cancer (the first biological law), the Law of the Two Phases (the second biological law), the ontogenetic systems of special biological programs and of microbes (the third and fourth biological laws). (For example, Conventional medicine is firmly invested in Germ Theory as a founding principle and has no way to reconcile the Germanic New Medicine assertion that there is no AIDS and no HIV virus)
Finally, conventional medicine expressly rejects the meaningful adaptation which is the basis of biological evolution (the fifth biological law and the quintessence of the Germanic New Medicine). Instead, biological evolution is attributed to random genetic “accidents” which accumulate due to “natural selection” over large scales of time.
Legal Challenges
In May 1982, the University of Tübingen rejected Dr. Hamer’s submitted work, his post-doctoral thesis on the first two biological laws of what he would later patent as the Germanic New Medicine. In 1986, a court order required the University to continue the post-doctoral (habilitation) proceedings. A later statement dated April 22, 1994 recorded the University’s position that a verification within the habilitation framework was not planned. Another date appears in the record as January 3, 1994 in connection with a judgment described as validating the thesis.
Hamer’s Approbation (license to practice medicine) was revoked in 1986, and the revocation was reconfirmed in 2003. Beginning in 1986, actions were initiated to stop him from practicing medicine, and he was not allowed to speak with patients from that time onward.
By 1997, arrest warrants existed in Austria and Germany. In 1997, he was arrested and jailed in Cologne, Germany on a charge of “practicing medicine without a license” based on claims that licensed physicians had consulted him about their cases. His imprisonment is variously reported as nine months in a Cologne cell, twelve months in Germany from 1997 to 1998, and a sentence of nineteen months for providing medical information without a license. Dr. Hamer was placed in solitary confinement while in prison.
In 1998, an international warrant for his arrest was issued by German authorities. On January 31, 2000, court proceedings against him began in France. Proceedings took place in Chambéry. Dr. Hamer was tried in absentia, and he was found guilty of illegal practice of medicine in connection with an alleged 1993 event.
On September 9, 2004, Dr. Hamer was arrested at gunpoint in Málaga, Spain, and transferred to France, where he was held in Fleury–Mérogis near Paris. He received a sentence of three years’ imprisonment, and one account lists charges of fraud and complicity in the illegal practice of medicine. In February 2006, following action by his lawyer at the High Court of Justice in The Hague regarding his unjustifiable imprisonment, Dr. Hamer was released immediately and unconditionally eighteen months after his arrest. He returned to Spain after his release, then left Spain in March 2007 and went to Norway.
Dr Hamer’s attempts to obtain an Approbation in Norway were rejected. In February 2017, he applied to regain his Approbation in Germany, and the request was rejected by the Verwaltungsgericht Frankfurt am Main. Dr. Hamer passed away from stroke soon after.