Schroth Pioneers

Katharina Schroth

Katharina Schroth was born in 1894 in Dresden, Germany, and by the age of 16 was suffering from moderate scoliosis herself. After undergoing treatment with a steel brace and finding it heavy and cumbersome she began to develop her own more functional approach, with corrective breathing and over corrective positioning in front of a mirror.

By 1921, Schroth’s new method of treatment involving specific postural correction, corrective breathing patterns and postural perception, was being carried out along with rehabilitation exercises in her own clinic.

She and her daughter Christa Lehnert-Schroth opened an institute in Bad Sobernheim in West Germany which eventually expanded with a capacity to treat 150 inpatients at a time. The institute became the Asklepios Katharina Schroth Klinik in the 1980s. By the end of the 1930s, Schroth treatment had become widely accepted in Germany as the best form of conservative treatment to treat curvature of the spine.