Walter Keller (medic, 1894)

Walter Keller (born February 7, 1894 in Heidelberg , † December 20, 1967 in Freiburg im Breisgau ) was a German pediatrician and university professor .

Life

Keller finished his school career at the humanistic grammar school in Heidelberg. He then completed in 1913 to study medicine at the Universities of Heidelberg and Munich, interrupted by the participation in the First World War . After the state examination in 1922, he was awarded a Dr. med. PhD . He then worked as an assistant at the Hygiene Institute and the Children's Clinic at Heidelberg University (under Ernst Moro ). He completed his habilitation for pediatrics in Heidelberg in 1927 and then worked there as a private lecturer and senior physician. In January 1934 he became a part-time associate professor. At the beginning of April 1934 he became chief physician in the children's clinic of the municipal hospital in Mainz and in 1938 director of the municipal hospital there. At the beginning of April 1938 he took over the management of the University Children's Clinic in Gießen and was also appointed full professor of paediatrics at the University of Gießen in 1939 . According to Klee, Keller is said to have carried out polio transmission attempts from 1942 and also cooperated with the brain researcher Julius Hallervorden .

After the handover of power to the National Socialists , Keller joined the SS in 1933 and the NSDAP in 1937 . Furthermore, he belonged to the NS-Ärztebund , the NSV and the NS-Altherrenbund .

After the end of the Second World War , Keller was suspended from university service in Gießen. After that he was interned in America for two years due to his membership in the SS. The cellar, which was considered exonerated after denazification , was finally chosen as Carl Noeggerath's successor to the chair of paediatrics at the University of Freiburg im Breisgau , which he took up in April 1949. In 1952 he became a member of the Leopoldina Academy of Sciences (Section: Pediatrics). Keller, who received numerous honors and co-editor of journals ( Journal of Pediatrics , Archives of Pediatrics , Pediatric surgery ) was in 1962 emeritus .

Since 1923 he was married to Johanna, nee Steidl. The couple had a child.

Keller conducted research on tuberculosis in Heidelberg under Ernst Moro . Through studies on tuberculin sensitivity , he turned to allergies and parallergy (the changed immune behavior after surviving an infectious disease). His research in Giessen "on virus isolation in abacterial meningitis prepared the later development of clinical virology in paediatrics".

literature

• Sigrid Oehler-Klein (Ed.): The Medical Faculty of the University of Giessen during National Socialism and in the post-war period. People and institutions, upheavals and continuities (= The Medical Faculty of the University of Giessen , Volume 2). Steiner, Stuttgart 2007, ISBN 978-3-515-09043-8 . (not evaluated)
• Freiburg University Gazette, Edition 20, Verlag Rombach Freiburg, 1968, p. 11 (obituary)

Web links

• Literature by and about Walter Keller in the catalog of the German National Library

Individual evidence

1. ^ Justus Liebig University Giessen: Ludwig University, Justus Liebig University, 1607-1957: Festschrift for the 350th anniversary , 1957, p. 468
2. ↑ ^{a b} Walter Habel (Ed.): Who is who? The German who's who. XV. Edition, Arani, Berlin 1967, p. 922
3. ^ Ernst Klee : Das Personenlexikon zum Third Reich , Frankfurt am Main 2007, p. 303f.
4. ^ Sascha Topp: History as an argument in post-war medicine. Forms of visualization of National Socialist euthanasia between politicization and historiography. V&R unipress, Göttingen 2013, ISBN 978-3-8470-0127-0 , p. 131
5. ^ ^{A b} Eduard Seidler : The medical faculty of the Albert-Ludwigs-University Freiburg im Breisgau. Basics and developments. Springer Verlag, Berlin 1993, ISBN 3-540-53978-6 , p. 418
6. ↑ Member entry of Walter Keller at the German Academy of Natural Scientists Leopoldina , accessed on August 10, 2015.
7. ↑ Parallergy in the medical dictionary