Ahead of Her Time
02 Dec 2014
Hanna Kroeger’s colorful history runs deep in Boulder’s health-food scene
By Charmaine Ortega Getz
Natural Healing on Trial
In an era when “alternative medicine” was as novel as the term “new age,” Kroeger soon attracted long lines of people seeking health advice. Sometimes she suspended a pendulum and observed its motions as an expression of the energy present in the client—an ancient form of divination called dowsing. Always, she said, she consulted God. And that was what led to the first indictment by Boulder County’s new grand jury on April 16, 1971. Kroeger was indicted on 11 counts of practicing medicine without a license. The indictment, filed by then-District Attorney Stanley Johnson, added that Kroeger received fees or other compensation for treating patients without the qualifications recognized by the Colorado Board of Medical Examiners. Her trial began Nov. 15, 1971. Kroeger denied that she had ever received a dime for dispensing health advice, but it was pointed out that she received a profit from the items people purchased at her store in response to her advice. Four Pinkerton detectives hired by the Colorado Board of Medical Examiners testified that they described fake illnesses to Kroeger and were given diagnoses and remedies. Defense attorneys Michael McCarthy and Paul Snyder argued that Kroeger dispensed nutritional advice as part of her Christian religion, in obedience to Jesus’ command to heal the sick. They also argued that the statute in question was vague and allowed selective enforcement. “What this prosecution is really all about is a test of the right to be different,” Snyder was quoted as saying by the Daily Camera on Nov. 20, 1971. Kroeger refused in court to answer any questions until she had consulted with God. Supporters packed the courtroom and protested in front of the courthouse.
Messages from God
Hanna Kroeger died on May 7, 1998, 14 months after her husband, Rudolf. Four of their children declined to take up their mother’s work and legacy. The middle child, Gisela, had grown up baking whole-grain bread and putting herbs in capsules to sell at Hanna’s store. But she had no desire to follow in her mother’s footsteps. “I thought my mother was weird,” she says during an interview on a fine fall day in October. She smiles now, sitting behind a computer at Peaceful Meadow Retreat that she uses to run the business she once shunned. Gisela Kroeger became a mathematics professor, with a focus on statistics. She married another mathematics professor, Dr. Tony Hoffman, and eventually they became a database designer and a computer systems analyst, respectively, for insurance corporations.
