Dr. Manfred Curry was born in Munich on December 11th 1899. His family had emigrated from the USA and Curry was a US citizen all of his life. His mother died when giving birth to another child, when Manfred Curry was seven years old. He and his sister Marion grew up at their grandmother Mary Abby’s in Riederau on the west bank of Ammer Lake.
When he was only 18 years old, Curry wrote the book “Sailing aerodynamics and the art of regatta-sailing”, which was translated into many languages from the 1920s on. He took part in about 1,400 sailing regattas, most of which he won. In 1928, Curry sailed for the American team in the Olympic Games.
He was considered an ingenuous tinkerer, whose success in sailing was due to the superior construction of his boats and his special talent of early detecting and tactically making use of changing wind conditions. Curry strived to improve the cut and profile of sails and optimize the current conditions, carrying out many experiments.
In 1930, Curry graduated from the medical university. In the 1940s, he founded the “American Bioclimatic Research Institute” in his home town Riederau. He wrote a comprehensive book on bioclimatics, the occupation with the emotion and health of people in connection with different weather conditions and changes. Based on the medical aspects of this, he started distinguishing types of people in order to better understand the health tolerances and requirements that are individual for everyone. According to Curry, the allocation of the type depends on whether one’s condition gets worse if a warm front passes or a cold front. The chemical composition of the air influenced the impact of weather, in his opinion.
Curry also occupied himself intensively with radiesthesia. He was the first one to describe the so-called “diagonal net grid”, which was named “Curry grid” after him. The direction corresponds, in contrast to the Hartmann grid (North-South, East-West), to the intermediate cardinal directions (North-West – South-East, North-East – South-West) and is arranged in the shape of a chess board. The Curry grid is an earth radiation grid and reaches up to the borders of the atmosphere. The width of the strips is 30 to 70 cm, and the meshes are 3 to 5 m. The course of this system can be influenced by various factors, just like the Hartmann grid. In residential places, the grid structure can be distorted through mirrors or other metal items with a huge surface, such as radiators. The Curry grid has a more uncomfortable biological impact than the Hartmann grid, which is mostly true for the intersections.
Curry published 12 books. Next to various books on sailing, he also wrote “The beauty of ice-skating” (Schönheit des Eislaufs), Paul Franke, Berlin 1934, “Bioclimatics. How the healthy and sick organism is steered by the atmosphere” (Bioklimatik. Die Steuerung des gesunden und kranken Organismus durch die Atmosphäre) (2 volumes), Oldenbourg, Munich 1946 as well as “The key to life. The secret of attraction between two people“ (Der Schlüssel zum Leben. Das Geheimnis der Anziehungskraft zwischen zwei Menschen), Schweizer Druck- und Verlagshaus, Zurich 1949.
Dr. Manfred Curry died on February 13th 1953 in Landsberg am Lech. After his death, his widow Maude Hester-Curry continued to run the “American Bioclimatic Research Institute” as “Manfred-Curry-Klinik”.
