Stern, Rudolf

Stern, Rudolf. Fritz Haber Personal Recollections. In Yembook of the Do Baeck Institute (196S). New York Leo Baeck Institute, 1963. Pp. 70-102. 

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... 

Others, though, saw a different Fritz Haber, charming, mentally acute, and still the life of the party. Almost to the very end, Haber had the ability to gather himself and perform his accustomed public role, though he often paid the price later. Rudolf Stern remembered one such occasion, when he accompanied a weak and depressed Fritz Haber to a formal dinner in 1929. They ended up seated at a small table with Finance Minister Rudolf Hilferding and Hjalmar Schacht, president of the central bank. It was a socially awkward arrangement, for Schacht, who would later serve the Nazis loyally and lead Hitler s economics ministry,... 

Charlotte, rid of her rival, hoped for a cozy life with Fritz and their two children, but it was not to be. As always, there was work, travels, and Fritz s declining health, which took him—alone—to various sanatoriums for periods of rest. At the end of 1926, Fritz decided to relax in Monte Carlo with his friend Rudolf Stern for nearly a month, leaving her to pass the Christmas and New Year s holidays alone with the children. To make matters worse, Ludwig got very ill during that time. 

Haber felt himself growing weaker and blamed the damp English climate. As so often, he sought to escape from his agonies through travel. He wrote to Rudolf Stern, asking his friend and doctor to accompany him to a sanatorium in Locarno, Switzerland. The two arranged to meet in Basel. 

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. 

Friends in the United States, especially Marga Stern s brother Rudolf Stern (Fritz Haber s friend and doctor) and Albert Einstein, mounted a campaign to save the Haber family and obtained exit visas for them. At the end of 1940, the family escaped from France, traveling first to Portugal and then to the Caribbean. The British interned them there for several months until Einstein again intervened. In June of 1941, Hermann, Marga, and their three daughters arrived in Hoboken, New Jersey. 

Fritz Stern, an eminent historian at Columbia University, became a guardian of Fritz Haber s legacy not because of genetic ties, but through friendship. Stern is Fritz Haber s godson, the son of Rudolf Stern, Haber s friend and doctor, who accompanied the aging and infirm chemist on his final trip. 

Fig. 2.6. "Boss-free" colloquium held during Niels Bohr s visit to Berlin, April 1920. Left to Right Otto Stern, Wilhelm Lenz, James Franck, Rudolf Ladenburg, Paul Knipping, Niels Bohr, Ernst Wagner, Otto von Baeyer, Otto Hahn, George von Hevesy, Lise Meitner, Wilhelm Westphal, Hans Geiger, Gustav Hertz, Peter Pringsheim.

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