According to historical record, a 29-year-old Bayer chemist Felix Hoffmann, synthesised aspirin in its pure form in 1897. He is fêted across Germany for one of the few global ‘brands’ it can lay claim to.
But new research proves that it was not Hoffmann but a German Jew, Arthur Eichengrun, who discovered the drug. His name has disappeared from Bayer’s records.
Aspirin: A Bitter Pill uncovers a conspiracy of betrayal and injustice. Revealing newly discovered archives and with personal testaments from Eichengrun’s relatives, this film combines the remarkable story of Arthur Eichengrun with the history of aspirin, a portrait of Bayer, the German elite in Nazi Germany and a modern-day fight for the truth.