He was born in Miranda, Venezuela, the son of a German immigrant Karl Brandt, a coffee planter and exporter, and Zoraida Tortolero, mother to Carlos, Juan Luis, Fernando, Augusto, Asteria and Mary.[3] His younger brother (by 17 years) was the composer Augusto Brandt. He studied in Puerto Cabello Elementary School and was sent to Germany to join the Pro Gymnasium in Hamburg, aged 14 to 19. He toured Germany and France, and returned to Venezuela at 19, fluent in German, French and English. At 25, he met Leo Tolstoy, which encouraged his literary ambitions. In 1901, his first book was published, La belleza de la mujer (The Beauty of Women).[4]
Under the dictatorship of Juan Vicente Gómez, he was imprisoned and then exiled to Spain, Italy, Belgium, the Netherlands and then the United States. Protesting the dictatorship, he encountered the anarchist organization "Generación Consciente" in Barcelona. Brandt promoted natural living, pacifism, free-thinking, liberty and vegetarianism, in his writings, as well as being a biographer and novelist. Many of his books emerged during his time in exile. In 1913, Fundamentos de la Moral, also known as El problema vital (The Vital Problem), was published with a prologue by Albert Einstein. For his work, the American School of Naturopathy awarded him an honorary doctorate.[3] With this and further writings, Brandt counted as one of the original founders of the vegetarianism movement. He founded the Venezuelan Naturist Society and promoted a pantheistic philosophy.[3]
His books were published in Spanish, Italian, Flemish, Dutch, English, French and German. As well as his historic and philosophical writings, Brandt had an extensive correspondence with authors such as George Bernard Shaw, Leo Tolstoy, Albert Einstein, Benedict Lust (one of the founders of naturopathy), Ernst Haeckel, Max Nordau, Gabriela Mistral, Raffaele Garofalo, Alfred Russel Wallace and Elmer Lee. In 1901, he translated Tolstoy's Church and State into Spanish.[3]
Brandt returned to Venezuela in 1958 where he lived in anonymity and extreme poverty. He died from complications of hemiplegia in Caracas after refusing surgery, aged 88.[3]
Brandt, along with Arnold Ehret, Benedict Lust and Louis Kuhn, was one of the original pioneers of naturopathy. Brandt taught Nicolás Capó[5] (born around 1902), who wrote his first book circa 1935. Many of Brandt's books were distributed through Capo's Instituto de Trofoterapia, in Barcelona. Brant published the naturopathic magazine Cultura.[6]
Capó and José Castro (Galician naturopath),[7] were pioneers of dietary health and healing in Spain, during the 1920s to 1940s, opening Escuela Naturo-Trofologica in Barcelona in 1925. Capo left Spain for Argentina around 1939, fleeing from Francoist Spain.
Brandt is listed in Who’s Who In Latin America.
