Friedrich Eduard Bilz (1842 - 1922) was a German businessman who promoted naturopathy in Saxony through his life's work - he is also known as the father of folk naturopathy.
Bilz did an apprenticeship as a weaver from 1856 to 1859, as did Sebastian Kneipp, and after a period of wandering settled in Meerane as a journeyman weaver in 1860. Until 1867 he worked there in a factory. After his father-in-law bought a house for the family, Bilz opened a colonial goods shop in 1872. In the same year there was a smallpox epidemic. Meeran citizens, who did not consider the ordered vaccinations to be sufficient health care, founded the Verein für Gesundheitspflege und Naturheilkunde, of which Bilz also became a member. The association organised lectures and courses on naturopathy. However, as many books were incomprehensible because of the foreign words used, Bilz collected all comprehensible instructions on healthy living and treatment of the sick and tested them on himself.
In this way he taught himself naturopathy and gradually acquired a nature-oriented world view. Bilz wrote books with the support of the physician Dr. Paul Aschke and achieved a circulation of about 3.5 million copies.
In 1900, the beverage expert Franz Hartmann contacted Bilz and presented him with a recipe for a lime extract. Bilz and Hartmann jointly developed the Bilz tinsel, which from 1902 was called Bilz-Brause and was renamed Sinalco (sine alcohol) in 1905, a name that is still used today.