Immerwahr, Clara

Haber (Nathan), Charlotte, 228-229 Haber (Immerwahr), Clara, 68 Haber, Eva, 228... 

During the summer of 1901, Haber met Clara Immerwahr at a chemistry conference. Like Haber, Clara came from an assimilated Jewish family in Breslau. Her father was a well-to-do chemist who operated a beet sugar factory on his estate. As students, Clara and Fritz had met in a dancing class and fallen in love, but parental opposition had prevented the match. When they met again, Haber immediately proposed. 

Clara Immerwahr was not sure she was suited for marriage. At 30, she had a teaching certificate and a doctorate, the first earned by a woman at the University of Breslau. Her degree was in chemistry, and she was eager for a research career. Nonetheless, after only three days, she accepted his proposal. Otherwise, she said, one chord of my soul would lie fallow. ... 

Haber, then 33, joyfully wrote to her uncle, Fate has been kind to me. Your Niece, Dr. Clara Immerwahr, of whom I was fond as a student and then for ten years tried very hard but unsuccessfully to forget, has said yes to me. We saw each other at the Congress in Freiburg, spoke to each other, and finally Clara allowed herself to be persuaded to try a life with me.. . . [We were] like a prince and princess in a fairy tale wrapped up in a dream. On August 3, 1901, three months after becoming engaged, Clara and Fritz were married. 

Haber was buried in a Basel cemetery. At his request, the body of his first wife Clara Immerwahr was buried next to his, and his gravestone read, He served his country in war and peace for as long as was granted to him. ... 

In Breslau, Richard Abegg also became Fritz Haber s link to a person who belonged to his past and his future. She was a young woman, the first woman ever to acquire a doctorate from Breslau s university. Richard Abegg was her academic adviser. Her name was Clara Immerwahr. 

The postcard did reach its intended recipient, thirty-year-old Clara Immerwahr, whom Fritz Haber had met many years earlier. And Immerwahr did travel to Freiburg. 

In 1899, fate brought Fritz Haber s former classmate and good friend Richard Abegg to Breslau. He took a position teaching chemistry at the university, and became Clara Immerwahr s academic adviser. The two developed a friendship that was both properly formal and heartfelt. 

Three days before Christmas in 1900, a crowd composed mostly of women crammed into the ornate ceremonial auditorium of Breslau s university, the Aula Leopoldina, to watch Clara Immerwahr defend her dissertation. Seldom has the awarding of a doctorate been attended by so many, noted a report in the Breslau evening newspaper under the headline Our First Feminine Doctor. ... 

Dr. Clara Immerwahr stayed at the university and became Richard Abegg s laboratory assistant. And this is where, a few months later, Fritz Haber s postcard found her. Two weeks later, another letter from Haber arrived, repeating his desire to see Abegg and Immerwahr during the upcoming conference in Freiburg. 

Clara Immerwahr joined Fritz Haber in Freiburg. And there, over the course of just a few days, Haber persuaded her to link her life with his. 

Charlotte Nathan was twenty years younger than Fritz, and in many ways the complete opposite of Clara Immerwahr. Charlotte was carefree and impulsive. She had little interest in science, but loved music, dancing, art, and romance. Like Clara, however, she was Jewish. 

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. 

In any case, auf Wiedersehen Haber to Richard Abegg and Clara Immerwahr, March 14, 1901, HC 923. 

Leitner, Gerit von. Der Fall Clara Immerwahr Leben fur eine humane Wissenschaft. 2d ed. Munich C.H. Beck, 1994. 

But Haber paid a high price for his preoccupation with the war, his already strained relationship with his wife Clara Immerwahr, one of Germany s first female PhDs in chemistry, broke down completely, and on 2 May 1915 she shot herself with her husband s service weapon. The manner of Clara Immerwahr s death and its near simuitaneity with the first gas attack at Ypres have only recently come to be seen as a protest against the new form of warfare ushered in by her husband... 

Leitner, Immerwahr] Leitner, Gerit von Der Fall Clara Immerwahr. Leben fur humane Wissenschaft, Miinchen 1993. 

Wohrle, HaberImmeiwahr] Wohrle, Dieter Fritz Haher und Clara Immerwahr, Chemie in unserer Zeit 44 (2010), p. 30-39. 

Clara Immerwahr (1870-1915). Courtesy of Bibliothek und Archiv zur Geschichte der Max Planck Gesselschaft, Berlin, Germany. 

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