Clara Immerwahr

Clara Immerwahr
Clara Immerwahr (1870–1915)
Born	June 21, 1870(1870-06-21) Polkendorf near Breslau, German Empire, today Poland
Died	May 2, 1915(1915-05-02) (aged 44) Berlin-Dahlem, Germany Suicide
Residence	Germany
Nationality	German
Fields	Chemistry
Alma mater	University of Breslau
Doctoral advisor	Richard Abegg

Clara Immerwahr (June 21, 1870 – May 2, 1915) was a Jewish-German chemist and the wife of fellow chemist Fritz Haber.

Education

Immerwahr studied at the University of Breslau, attaining her degree and a Ph.D. in chemistry. She was the first woman Ph.D. at the University of Breslau.^[1]

Marriage and work

Immerwahr married Haber in 1901. Constrained by the female stereotypes of the time, her scientific research was hindered. She instead contributed to her husband's work without recognition, translating his works into the English language.

Confiding in a friend, Immerwahr bemoaned her newfound subservient role as a housewife:

It has always been my attitude that a life has only been worth living if one has made full use of all one's abilities and tried to live out every kind of experience human life has to offer. It was under that impulse, among other things, that I decided to get married at that time... The life I got from it was very brief...and the main reasons for that was Fritz's oppressive way of putting himself first in our home and marriage, so that a less ruthlessly self-assertive personality was simply destroyed.^[1][2]

During World War I, Haber became a staunch supporter of the German military effort and played an important role in the development of chemical weapons (particularly poison gases). His efforts would culminate in his supervision of the first gas attack in military history in Flanders, Belgium on April 22, 1915. Haber thereafter returned home to Berlin.

Death

Shortly after her return, Immerwahr picked up Haber's military pistol and shot herself in the chest. She died in her son's arms. The morning after her death, Haber immediately left home to stage the first gas attack against the Russians on the Eastern Front.^{[3] [4]} Her suicide remained largely in the dark; it was never in the newspapers and there is no evidence of an autopsy. The undocumented nature of her death has led to much controversy as to her motives.

Fritz Haber later married again. Eventually, he left Germany because of Nazi persecution. Fritz Haber died in Basel, Switzerland in 1934 and was cremated. Eventually Fritz's ashes and Clara's ashes were buried together in a cemetery in Basel.^[2] Subsequently, Clara Immerwahr's son with Fritz Haber, Hermann Haber, emigrated to the United States and later committed suicide in 1946.^[2] One of his other children, Ludwig ("Lutz") Fritz Haber (1921–2004, son of Fritz Haber and his second wife, Charlotte), published a book on the history of poison gas, The Poisonous Cloud (1986).^[5]

See also

• Chlorine

External links

• Short biography of Clara Haber (Immerwahr) at Doomed Engineers

Notes

1. ^ ^{a b} Cornwell, John (2003). Hitler's Scientists, Science, War and the Devil's Pact. Penguin Press. p. 49. ISBN 0-14-20-0480-4. 
2. ^ ^{a b c} Stoltzenberg, Dietrich (1998). Fritz Haber: Chemiker, Nobelpreisträger, Deutscher, Jude: eine Biographie. Weinheim. 
3. ^ Cornwell, John (2003). Hitler's Scientists, Science, War and the Devil's Pact. Penguin Press. p. 65. ISBN 0-14-20-0480-4. 
4. ^ Stoltzenberg, Dietrich (1998). Fritz Haber: Chemiker, Nobelpreisträger, Deutscher, Jude: eine Biographie. Weinheim. p. 356. 
5. ^ "Lutz F. Haber (1921–2004)". University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. http://www.scs.uiuc.edu/~mainzv/HIST/awards/Dexter%20Papers/HaberDexterBioJJB.pdf. 

Persondata
Name	Immerwahr, Clara
Alternative names
Short description
Date of birth	June 21, 1870
Place of birth	Polkendorf near Breslau, German Empire, today Poland
Date of death	May 2, 1915
Place of death	Berlin-Dahlem, Germany