The saprobic system has a long history in German-language countries. The idea of saprobes to estimate water quality has been foreshadowed by the works of Arthur Hill Hassall (1850) and Ferdinand Julius Cohn (1853). In a series of publications, the Germans botanists Richard Kolkwitz and Maximilian Marsson (1902, 1908, 1909) have developed the saprobic system to judge water quality. They compiled a list of about 300 plant and 500 animal species (excluding fish), and estimated saprobic values for them.
In 1955, H. Knöpp introduced abundance classes, and the calculation of a water quality index was established during the 1950s and 1960s (Pantle & Buck, 1955; Zelinka & Marvan, 1961; Marvan, 1969).
In 2000, the Pantle & Buck technique has been criticized because it requires the surveyed organisms to be identified by genus, something that freshwater ecologists are rarely trained for. Furthermore, it focuses on aquatic organisms that are prevalent in Western Europe, something that hampers water quality assays in Eastern Europe and Asia.
The procedure used in Germany to estimate the saprobic index has been standardized in DIN 38410.