Abraham Buschke

Biography of Abraham Buschke

Abraham Buschke was the son of Abraham Buschke, a merchant. He attended the Königliches Gymnasium at Nakel, graduating in Easter 1886 at age 17. At that time his father was dead. Buschke then studied at Breslau, Berlin, and Greifswald, receiving his doctorate at Berlin in 1891. He was assistant at the surgical clinic in Greifswald under Heinrich Helferich (1851-1945), at the dermatological clinic in Breslau under Albert Neisser (1855-1916) and under Edmund Lesser (1852-1918) in Berlin. In 1904 he became chief physician at the department of dermatology at the city Urban-Krankenhaus, and from 1906 he was head of dermatology at the Rudolf-Virchow-Krankenhaus, where he had access to 400 beds for patients with dermatological disorders. This vast clinical material was the basis for numerous articles.

Buschke was habilitated for dermatology at the Friedrich Wilhelm University in 1900. He was appointed titular professor in 1908, professor extraordinary in 1920. He retired in 1933.

One of Buschke's main fields of interest was syphilis and gonorrhoea, diseases that in his days played a role similar to AIDS nearly a century later. With Martin Gumpert (1897-1955) he published a work on syphilis in children, based on more than 160 children treated for venereal diseases at the Rudolf-Virchow-Krankenhaus during six months.

Like many of his colleagues, Buschke became victim of the Nazis and together with his wife, he was incarcerated in the Theresienstadt (Terezín) in northern Bohemia, Czechoslovakia, where he died in 1943. Among other prominent physicians who died in this camp were the pathologist Ludwig Pick (1868-1944) and the haematologist Hans Hirschfeld (1873-1944).

Buschke was survived by his widow and three sons, two of whom were physicians and all of the children were living in the United States in 1945. The widow was apparently in Switzerland at that time.

We thank Edward Luft, Juris Doctor, for information submitted.