Dr. Bronner’s – Dispatches From The Front

Read the label on most soaps and you’ll find a few words about freshness and lather. But pick up a bottle of Dr. Bronner’s and you’ll read this: “Whatever unites us is greater than whatever divides us! … Only if constructive-selfish work, perfecting first me, like every arctic owl-penguin-pilot-cat-swallow-beaver-bee, can I teach the Moral ABC.”

It goes on. And on. Hundreds of these tiny, preachy, semi-coherent phrases cover every inch of the bottle. All of them are the work of late visionary Emanuel Bronner, a German-Jewish soap maker who escaped Hitler, then came to America to preach his vision of a unified mankind. Bronner’s mystical rantings landed him in a mental institution (he escaped that, too), after which the good doctor (who wasn’t really a doctor) started selling his family-recipe peppermint soap to finance his itinerant sermonizing—only to begin printing his sermons on the label once he realized people were more into his soap than his teachings.

There’s a common narrative that unfolds the first time you buy Dr. Bronner’s Magic Soap. It starts in the store, where the bottles, with their brightly colored, text-heavy labels, line up like cure-alls from some deranged medicine man. You pick one up. Later, in the shower, there comes a curious tingling sensation after you’ve lathered up your nether regions. That’s when you reach for the bottle again to give it a closer read.

There are quotes from Mao, Jesus, Hillel, Einstein, and George Washington, among others. There’s something called the Moral ABC, which appears to be a philosophy for uniting all humans on Spaceship Earth. There’s a lot of religious ranting, a liberal dose of exclamation points, and instructions for cleansing your “mind-body-soul-spirit instantly.”

Now you’re more curious than ever. And if you read enough of the label and happen to Google Dr. Bronner after you’ve toweled off, you’ll discover the story of the late Emanuel Bronner, which reads like bizarro fiction. (We’ll get to it shortly.) That story is just the beginning.

Tag: Dr. Bronner’s

How a German-Jewish Mystic Created an American Soap Company Determined to Clean Up the Planet | Adweek

The Undiluted Genius of Dr. Bronner’s | Inc.com