Disappointed with the situation of Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) in Germany the German Scientific Society of Traditional Chinese Medicine was founded in 1997 by a group of TCM-practitioners. The foundation of the German Scientific Society of Traditional Chinese Medicine was the milestone many TCM-Therapists were waiting for as a consequence of the negative situation of TCM during the 90ies.
In Germany did not only exist one society of TCM. There were and still are dozens of societies, groups and organisations in the field of TCM and acupuncture. The reasons are complex:
1) As a result of the divided Germany there were two different opportunities for practising TCM: in the socialist eastern part of Germany one national society with good relations to the communist China, and in the western part of Germany a lot of different little societies with different interests according to the democratic background.
2) After the reunion of Germany in 1991 the diversity of acupuncturist and TCM societies did not change. Every teacher who wants to tie his students closer to himself founded a society and offered lower charges for the education in return for membership.
3) During the boom of TCM in the 90ies the organizational fragmentation got even worse. Most of the older societies in the field of TCM were founded by acupuncturists. Exhausted by the long fight for scientific reputation of acupuncture and led by personal prevalences there was no room for other TCM-treatments in those societies. According to regional agglomerations and personal connections new TCM-based societies were founded in the 80ies and 90ies.
This situation led to major problems for German TCM-therapists:
1) The TCM-education was very different. There were diplomas after one single 8-hour-lesson and there were diplomas after 3 years of studying. Patients did not know if their therapist got a real TCM-education of good quality.
2) The language of the TCM-schools was different in words and meanings. As a result of the many foreign influences and different beginnings of German acupuncture there still are semantic misunderstandings between therapists. There are societies with Austrian, Indonesian, French, English, American, Chinese and even Latin roots and terminologies.
3) The political impact of the TCM-community was very weak.
4) The financial resources of the German TCM-community were scattered the same as the organisations. Scientific research suffered the most by the financial insufficiency.