Lever, walter f.

(¤ 13.12.1909, † 1993) The name Walter Lever will remain connected in dermatology by the first description and characterization of what Lever called bullous pemphigoid, a disease which he was able to distinguish from pemphigus diseases and dermatitis herpetiformis Duhring with his groundbreaking work in 1953. The characterization of the mucosal pemphigoid ( scarring pemphigoid) also goes back to Lever. Lever's personal career is an impressive and also shocking example of a German-Jewish and ultimately American career in dermatology. Lever was born in Erfurt as the son of a dermatologist working there. From 1928 to 1934 he studied medicine, first in Heidelberg and later in Vienna, Zurich, Hamburg and Leipzig. The emerging National Socialist racial mania caused Walter Lever to leave Germany in 1936 to take up a position as resident in the dermatology department of the Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston. 1951 Assistant Professor at Harvard Medical School. 1959 Appointed Full Professor of Dermatology at Tufts University in Boston. Lever is one of the outstanding dermatologists of the 20th century. His "Textbook of Histopathology of the skin", first published in 1949, was an indispensable tool for every dermatohistologist. With his return to Germany in 1983, the circle of his special vita was closed.