Haber, Hermann

Three months after the Habers son Hermann was born on June 1, 1902, Haber left for a five-month trip to the United States. The German... 

Come down, there s ammonia, he called to Hermann Staudinger, whose office was upstairs. Sure enough, at the bottom of Haber s flask sat a little puddle of ammonia the size of a scant teaspoonful. It was not precisely pouring out, but it was enough to amaze the chemists. 

At dawn, Clara took Haber s army revolver, fired a test shot, and then shot herself in the heart. Her 13-year-old son, Hermann, found her still alive... 

After the Nazi takeover, Haber s second wife Charlotte moved to England where one of her sons, Ludwig Haber, became a prominent historian and wrote about chemical warfare, including his father s role in its development. Clara Haber s son Hermann moved to New York City where in 1946 he, like his mother before him, committed suicide. 

Haber demonstrated that the production of ammonia from the elements was feasible in the laboratory, but it was up to Carl Bosch, a chemist and engineer at BASF, to transform the process into large-scale production. The industrial converter that Bosch and his coworkers created was completely revised, including a cheaper and more effective catalyst based on extensive studies in high-pressure catalytic reactions. This approach led to Bosch receiving the Nobel Prize in chemistry in 1931, and the production of multimillion tons of fertilizer per year worldwide, see also Agricultural Chemistry Catalysis and Catalysts Equilibrium Le Chatelier, Henri Nernst, Walther Hermann Ostwald, Friedrich Wilhelm. 

Haber s second wife, Charlotte, who was also Jewish—and, separately, his son Hermann—wrote after Haber s death that conversion... 

On August 18, shortly after his and Clara s first anniversary, Fritz Haber sailed for America. Clara, left to cope on her own with ten-week-old Hermann, retreated to her father s house in Breslau. 

For the first time since leaving his parents home, Haber had money to spare. His salary jumped by 50 percent upon his appointment, then increased by another 30 percent a year later, when Haber turned down an offer from the University of Zurich, in Switzerland. Finally, he could genuinely afford the spacious dwelling that he, Glara, and Hermann occupied on the northwestern side of Karlsruhe. They were soon joined by a dog whose true nature precluded obedience, who led Haber on many a frustrated chase through the city streets. 

Home life, of course, meant Clara. Fonda knew her only from dinner parties at the Haber home, a quiet figure in the background tending to her young son Hermann while Fritz entertained the guests with an endless series of stories, jokes, and rhymes composed on the spot. But Fonda knew her reputation It was said that Haber was under continuous nagging from his wife and that he was disturbed by it. ... 

Haber rushed from one laboratory to another, gathering witnesses to the marvel he ran upstairs to find Hermann Staudinger, head of the organic chemistry section. Come on down There s ammonia he announced. 

In July of 1911, Fritz, Clara, and their son, Hermann, left behind the city in southern Germany that had been their home for a decade. One of Haber s colleagues in Karlsruhe drew a caricature of Haber s departure. It depicted Fritz Haber in the clutches of an airborne eagle, symbol of the empire. Haber, one arm gripped in the eagle s beak, the other by a claw, appeared helpless. The eagle was carrying him toward an unknown fate. 

This much is sure On the clear and cool night of May 1-2, under a nearly full moon, Clara Haber found her husband s army-issued pistol, shot herself with it, and died. Fritz Haber, obeying his orders, returned the next day to the front lines of combat. Hermann, just twelve years old, was left behind without mother or father. 

One additional account of Clara s last hours exists, from the hand of the mechanic in Haber s institute, Hermann Liitke. In... 

Liitke s story, however, was hearsay. He wasn t there himself, but claimed to have learned these details from Haber s household servants. Other friends of Haber do confirm a few parts of Liitke s story—that Clara shot herself with Haber s military revolver, for instance, and that Hermann was the first to arrive at his mother s side. But Liitke also emerges from his letters as a man fond of operatic prose, even when describing less dramatic events. He s not a witness who can be fully trusted. 

The threat became urgent in July. Germany ratified the Treaty of Versailles, which included a provision that compelled it to turn over accused war criminals for trial. Haber immediately sent the rest of his family—Charlotte, seventeen-year-old Hermann, and Eva, who was not quite two—to the neutral haven of Switzerland. Perhaps he acquired a new identity years later, scientists at his institute discovered a forged passport with Haber s picture. On August 1, he followed his family to the Alpine city of St.-Moritz. There he waited. He also grew a beard, evidently thinking that it might help conceal his identity. 

The criminal charges that Haber feared never materialized, and he returned to Berlin a few months later. During his time in Switzerland, however, he encountered moral condemnation of another and more personal sort. It came unexpectedly, in the form of letters from an old acquaintance, the chemist Hermann... 

There s a taste of it in two letters—one to Willstatter, the other to Charlotte and Hermann—that Haber sent from the deathbed of his father, Siegfried, in December of 1920. In both letters, but particularly in the one to his wife and son, Haber expresses admiration for his father, with whom he d had such bitter clashes during his youth. In Haber s words there is wistfulness for his father s self-contained life—a life that Fritz Haber, in his ambition, had resolved to escape. 

Much of Fritz Haber s personal correspondence in the following years deals with money, for there was suddenly too little of it. In the divorce settlement, he d agreed to maintain Charlotte and the children in the style to which they had been accustomed. He also wanted to support Hermann, who moved with his family from the United States to Czechoslovakia to France without finding a satisfactory job. But reckless investments in South American stocks claimed some of Haber s fortune, taxes ate up another chunk, and the world economic crisis of 1929 destroyed much of what was left. 

Haber s distress over his worsening financial state fills his letters to Hermann during this period. It s not clear, however, whether he actually faced financial ruin or simply found losing so much of his previous wealth emotionally unbearable. Some portion of the fortune still remained he had his salary as well, and the promise of a pension. When he traveled, he continued to do so in style, staying at the finest hotels of Paris, London, and Monte Carlo. On the other hand, Charlotte demanded that Haber fulfill at least the major portion of his financial commitments to her and the children, and Haber, in the midst of the worldwide economic collapse, struggled to do so. 

Haber had met Weizmann a few years earlier in Paris. (Haber s son Hermann brought the two men together Hermann worked for Weizmann s brother-in-law.) At first, Weizmann regarded the man from Berlin as a political and ideological foe. He felt that Haber was lacking in any Jewish self-respect. He had converted to Christianity and had pulled all his family with him along the road to apostasy. To Weizmann s surprise, however, he found Haber extremely affable and even interested in Weizmann s campaign to establish a Jewish homeland in Palestine. 

At the end of October, with his dilemma still unresolved, Haber joined Hermann and his family in Paris. A few days later, accompanied by his sister, he arrived in England and took up residence at the University Arms Hotel in Cambridge. 

A few weeks before his death, Haber had written down a few wishes for his burial and given them to Hermann. He wanted his ashes to rest at Clara s side in Dahlem, he wrote, but not if the anti-Semitic movement in Germany made this impossible or inappropriate. In that case, it was up to Hermann to choose another final resting place and have Clara s ashes brought there. 

Richard Willstatter came from Munich to speak at a farewell ceremony at Haber s graveside on February 1. Hermann Haber, Else Freyhan, and Rudolf Stern were there as well. 

News of haber s death reached Albert Einstein in the United States. He sat down to write a letter of condolence to Hermann and Marga Haber, and this time his words were sympathetic and devoid of all scorn. 

Eva Lewis has little contact with Fritz Haber s other descendants, the grandchildren and great-grandchildren of Haber s first wife, Clara Immerwahr, and their son, Hermann. It s a consequence in part of emigration to different countries, but also of the domestic civil war that raged during Haber s lifetime between Hermann and Charlotte Haber, stepson and stepmother. 

They were each fighting for Fritz Haber, says Eva Lewis. First Charlotte had the upper hand, then Hermann. She pauses. You know, it was Hermann who really suffered. ... 

In the mid-1930s, after his father died, Hermann Haber tried to make a new home for himself, his wife, Marga, and their three young children in France. He had a job in Paris, but his future there was uncertain because he lacked French citizenship. 

The obstinacy of this assertion boggles the mind. The memorial service had been an act of subdued protest against the Nazi government, and Nazi officials had prohibited state employees from attending it. Hermann himself had refused to attend, for he felt his father could not properly be honored in a country that had so completely rejected him. Yet French officials considered it evidence of his continued attachment to Germany. No matter which way he turned, Hermann Haber could not escape the shadow of his father. 

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