Haber, Siegfried

Haber, Ludwig Fritz, 228 Haber, Paula, 65 Haber, Siegfried, 65 Hahn, Otto, 231 Hellriegel, Hermann, 14-16 Hessberger, Johannes, 75 Hildebrand, Georg F., 62 Hitler, Adolf, 224, 229-230 Hoffmann, August Wilhelm von, 66 Humholdt, Alexander von, 41... 

Haber, Fritz (1868-1934) German Chemist Fritz Haber was born on December 9, 1868, in Breslau, Germany, to Siegfried Haber, a merchant and a member of one of the oldest families of the town. He went to school at the St. Elizabeth classical school at Breslau and conducted many chemistry experiments while still a child. 

It was seven years before Siegfried Haber found love again. He met and married nineteen-year-old Hedwig Hamburger, noted for her beauty and her talent on the piano. Music and laughter entered the Haber house once again. And children Three daughters—Else, Helene, and Frieda—were born within five years. 

While Siegfried Haber acted as patriarch and domestic despot, Fritz became the court jester. Stories of him in this role abound. Once, when his sisters were six, four, and two years old, their... 

Money wasn t the issue for Siegfried Haber. He could pay. But like all pragmatists, he readily accepted the conventions of his time and the limits imposed by circumstance. He knew exactly who he was—a Jew in Breslau—and refused to step beyond what was safe or prudent for a Jew of Breslau in the latter years of the nineteenth century. Siegfried pursued ambitions that were within reach prosperity and a position of respect within his local community. Eventually, he would become a member of the Breslau city council. 

The academic world, on the other hand, was unfamiliar and inhospitable. Siegfried had not attended university, nor had any of his ancestors. Jews were rare in the upper ranks of Germany s universities. The elder Haber foresaw roadblocks at every turn, eventual failure and frustration. 

His father stepped in to fill the void. Siegfried Haber decided that Fritz could use some practical experience, and arranged appointments among his far-flung business contacts. 

One friend, Rudolf Stern, called Haber s short-lived attempt to work with his father an impossible alliance. Another wrote that Siegfried Haber came to regard his son as a danger to the business. Two other accounts are more specific. According to... 

In the other version of this story, Fritz shipped a large quantity of lime chloride to prospective buyers in Russia who then refused to accept it. And you see, gentlemen, Haber would say after telling this tale, that s the reason I can t stand the Russians In both versions, Siegfried Haber threw his son out of the business in a fury at the financial loss. 

It s a mystery why the Margulies brothers turned to Fritz Haber. They may have known his father, Siegfried, who traveled widely in Austria s eastern territories and had many business contacts there. If so, one senses in Fritz s initially unhelpful responses the recalcitrance of a son who still regarded his father s guidance as a yoke to be thrown off. 

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. 

Siegfried Haber was stuck with chemicals no one needed Goran, Story of Fritz Flaber, pp. 14—15. 

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