[The dermatologist Edmund Lesser (1852-1918) : Teaching and learning in Leipzig]

Edmund Lesser was one of the most influential German dermatologists of his time. After the death of his academic teacher Oscar Simon in Breslau, the later director of the dermatology hospital at the Charité moved to Leipzig in 1882. At the University of Leipzig he quickly completed his habilitation in June of the same year and continued the course for dermatology and venereology started by Neisser. Later he also went into private practice, where he recruited patients for his lectures. In Leipzig Lesser also published his well-received handbook on skin diseases and venereology and organized the third meeting of the German Society of Dermatology in 1891. Despite his hope and his undisputable achievements, he was not granted professorship by the faculty of medicine in Leipzig. For this he had to become head of dermatology at the University of Bern in 1892. This manuscript deals with his ten important years in Leipzig as a prerequisite for his later merits in Berlin as well as the development of academic dermatology at the University of Leipzig.