A doctor of neurology with a philological flair

Dr. Gunter R. Haase, 83, formerly of Rosemont, a German-born neurologist and medical school professor who was an enthusiast of the English language, died of postoperative complications Sept. 13 at Dunwoody Village, a retirement community in Newtown Square.

Dr. Haase was chairman of the department of neurology at Pennsylvania Hospital from 1974 to 1989 and was a professor of neurology at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine.

Previously, he led the neurology department at the Temple University School of Medicine for nine years and taught Temple medical students. In 1969, he received a Golden Apple Award for teaching excellence from what is now the American Medical Student Association.

That year, Dr. Haase gave the commencement address to Temple medical school graduates. He shared with them words he lived by, said his wife, Therese Dolan: "Every man has a right to your compassion, and the best that our knowledge and skills can give. Every man has the right to know the truth as you know it, and it is your duty to pursue the truth."

Dr. Haase was born in Chemnitz, Germany. During World War II, he served in the Luftwaffe and was sent to the University of Berlin to study medicine.

After the war, he received his medical degree from Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität in Munich.

At a hospital in Munich, he met Virginia Potter, a U.S. Army nurse. After they married in 1949, Dr. Haase served an internship at St. Luke's Hospital in Denver, and completed residencies in psychiatry and neurology at the University of Colorado Denver School of Medicine.

From 1954 to 1959, he was a neurologist with the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Md., and spent a year at the National Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery in London. From 1960 to 1964 he was an associate professor at the University of Oklahoma Medical Center.

After retiring as department chair, Dr. Haase continued to maintain an office at Pennsylvania Hospital and taught Penn medical students until the end of 1994.

For many years he was a member of the advisory committee of the Greater Delaware Valley Chapter of the national Multiple Sclerosis Society and in 1988 received an award for his service from the chapter.

Dr. Haase's first wife died in 1986. He met Dolan, an art history professor, the next year, and they married in 2000. His knowledge of literature was vast, she said, and he often called up references to Shakespeare and Dickens while teaching.

His speeches, she said, were rife with citations from such notables as Ralph Waldo Emerson, John Stuart Mill, and St. Elizabeth of Hungary.

He called English his "borrowed" language, his wife said, but he was so fluent that she had him proofread her professional articles.

He and his wife had season tickets to the Metropolitan Opera and the Philadelphia Opera Company and were Philadelphia Orchestra subscribers.

In his younger years, Dr. Haase enjoyed skiing in Germany.

After retiring, he studied art at Bryn Mawr College and sometimes took the same class twice because of his love of the subject and admiration for his teachers, his wife said.

In addition to his wife, Dr. Haase is survived by sons Christopher and Peter; daughters Leslie Hanks and Stephanie; stepchildren Martin and Elizabeth Stamm; and five grandchildren.

A memorial service was held yesterday at Main Line Unitarian Church in Devon.