Nathan, Charlotte

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

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. 

Charlotte wrote that the friendship began when Fritz Haber came to retrieve an umbrella that he thought he d left behind in her office. The umbrella he found there, unfortunately, wasn t his. With exaggerated gallantry, Haber returned it. I lay the umbrella on your heart and myself at your feet, he said. Nathan retorted, I d prefer the other way around and immediately felt embarrassed at her own audacity. 

Charlotte Nathan wrote that she was overcome by Haber s passion and vulnerability A very different man suddenly stood here before me a man who sought and needed love— love that I could give him. I hesitated, but at the same time felt that we belonged together, with soul and body. ... 

Haber evidently overcame his hesitations. He soon dispatched a telegraph to Charlotte proclaiming, Miss Nathan s last journey. Soon, he wrote, she would be Mrs. ... 

On October 25, 1917, Captain Fritz Haber, outfitted in military uniform complete with sword and spiked helmet of a Prussian officer, took Charlotte Nathan as his wife. The ceremony occurred at the spiritual altar of the German empire, inside... 

Miss Nathan s last journey Haber to Charlotte Nathan, September 14, 1917, HC, Dep. L. Haber, 26. 

Haber met Charlotte Nathan, according to her memoirs, in March 1917 at the Deutsche Gesellschaft, a club for German power brokers and celebrities established at the beginning of World War I, where she worked as a secretary. His poems quoted in her book of reminiscences (Haber was an accomplished and frequent versifier) and his letters to her show a man almost boyishly in love with a woman nearly twenty years younger. They were married in the Kaiser-Wilhelm-Gedachtnisskirche in late October 1917. Haber insisted on a church ceremony, and Charlotte had to convert to Christianity. 

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