Clara Helene Immerwahr (; 21 June 1870 – 2 May 1915) was a German
chemist
A chemist (from Greek ''chēm(ía)'' alchemy; replacing ''chymist'' from Medieval Latin ''alchemist'') is a scientist trained in the study of chemistry. Chemists study the composition of matter and its properties. Chemists carefully describe t ...
.
She was the first German woman to be awarded a doctorate in chemistry in Germany, and is credited with being a
pacifist as well as a "heroine of the
women's rights
Women's rights are the rights and entitlements claimed for women and girls worldwide. They formed the basis for the women's rights movement in the 19th century and the feminist movements during the 20th and 21st centuries. In some countries, ...
movement". From 1901 until her suicide in 1915, she was married to the Nobel Prize-winning chemist
Fritz Haber
Fritz Haber (; 9 December 186829 January 1934) was a German chemist who received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1918 for his invention of the Haber–Bosch process, a method used in industry to synthesize ammonia from nitrogen gas and hydroge ...
.
Early life and education
Immerwahr was born on the Polkendorff Farm near Breslau (then in eastern
Prussia
Prussia, , Old Prussian: ''Prūsa'' or ''Prūsija'' was a German state on the southeast coast of the Baltic Sea. It formed the German Empire under Prussian rule when it united the German states in 1871. It was ''de facto'' dissolved by an ...
; now known as
Wojczyce, in western
Poland
Poland, officially the Republic of Poland, is a country in Central Europe. It is divided into 16 administrative provinces called voivodeships, covering an area of . Poland has a population of over 38 million and is the fifth-most populou ...
). She was the youngest daughter of
Jewish
Jews ( he, יְהוּדִים, , ) or Jewish people are an ethnoreligious group and nation originating from the Israelites Israelite origins and kingdom: "The first act in the long drama of Jewish history is the age of the Israelites""The ...
parents, chemist Philipp Immerwahr and his wife Anna (née Krohn). She grew up on the farm with her three older siblings, Elli, Rose and Paul. In 1890, her mother died of cancer; while Elli and her husband Siegfried stayed at the farm, Clara moved with her father to Breslau.
[Clara Immerwahr profile](_blank)
jwa.org; accessed 27 April 2015.
Immerwahr studied at the
University of Breslau
A university () is an institution of higher (or tertiary) education and research which awards academic degrees in several academic disciplines. Universities typically offer both undergraduate and postgraduate programs. In the United States, th ...
, attaining her degree and a PhD in
chemistry under
Richard Abegg
Richard Wilhelm Heinrich Abegg (9 January 1869 – 3 April 1910) was a German chemist and pioneer of valence theory. He proposed that the difference of the maximum positive and negative valence of an element tends to be eight. This has come to be ...
in 1900, after 8 semesters of study (two more than required for male doctoral candidates).
Her dissertation was entitled (Contributions to the Solubility of Slightly Soluble Salts of Mercury, Copper, Lead, Cadmium, and Zinc). She was the first woman Ph.D. at the University of Breslau
and received the designation ''magna cum laude''. Her thesis defense was held in the main hall of the university and was attended by many young women of the city, interested in seeing "" ("our first female doctor").
A few months after obtaining her degree, she gave a public lecture entitled "Chemistry and Physics in the Household."
Marriage and work
Immerwahr married
Fritz Haber
Fritz Haber (; 9 December 186829 January 1934) was a German chemist who received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1918 for his invention of the Haber–Bosch process, a method used in industry to synthesize ammonia from nitrogen gas and hydroge ...
in August 1901, four years after she had
converted to Christianity in 1897.
The two had met years earlier at a dance lesson and started a brief romance, but Immerwahr turned down his marriage proposal at the time because she wanted to remain financially independent.
Due to
societal expectations that a married woman's place was in the home, her ability to conduct research was limited.
She instead contributed to her husband's work with minimal recognition,
translating
Translation is the communication of the meaning of a source-language text by means of an equivalent target-language text. The English language draws a terminological distinction (which does not exist in every language) between ''transl ...
some of his papers into English.
On 1 June 1902 she gave birth to Hermann Haber (1902–1946), the only child of that marriage.
Confiding in Abegg, Immerwahr expressed her deep dissatisfaction with this subservient role:
Haber continually neglected his wife and child, leaving for a tour of scientific facilities in the US when his son was only a few months old. When he was in the country, he often spent lunch hours and evenings at work or with his colleagues rather than at home.
In a 1915 letter to Setsuro Tamaru, a Japanese colleague of Haber's, Immerwahr expressed her disappointment that her husband worked "18 hours a day, almost always in Berlin (not in Dahlem!)"
During
World War I
World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fightin ...
, Fritz Haber became a staunch supporter of the German military effort and played an important role in the development of
chemical weapons
A chemical weapon (CW) is a specialized munition that uses chemicals formulated to inflict death or harm on humans. According to the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), this can be any chemical compound intended as a ...
(particularly
poison gas
Many gases have toxic properties, which are often assessed using the LC50 (median lethal dose) measure. In the United States, many of these gases have been assigned an NFPA 704 health rating of 4 (may be fatal) or 3 (may cause serious or perman ...
es). His efforts would culminate in his supervision of
the first successful deployment of a
weapon of mass destruction
A weapon of mass destruction (WMD) is a chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear, or any other weapon that can kill and bring significant harm to numerous individuals or cause great damage to artificial structures (e.g., buildings), natu ...
in military history, in
Flanders
Flanders (, ; Dutch: ''Vlaanderen'' ) is the Flemish-speaking northern portion of Belgium and one of the communities, regions and language areas of Belgium. However, there are several overlapping definitions, including ones related to cultu ...
, Belgium, on 22 April 1915. Immerwahr reportedly spoke out against her husband's research as a "perversion of the ideals of science" and "a sign of barbarity, corrupting the very discipline which ought to bring new insights into life." Immerwahr was also a witness to the accidental death of one of her former college classmates,
Otto Sackur, who was attempting to tame cacodyl chloride in Haber's lab as part of Haber's research into chemical weapons.
Death
Shortly after Haber's return from Belgium, Immerwahr shot herself in the chest using Haber's military pistol. On 2 May 1915, she died in her son's arms.
The morning after her death, Haber left for the first gas attack against the Russians on the
Eastern Front.
Her suicide remained largely in the dark. Six days after her death, only the small local newspaper ''Grunewald-Zeitung'' reported that "the wife of Dr H. in Dahlem, who is currently on the front, has set an end to her life by shooting herself. The reasons for this act of the unhappy woman are unknown."
There is no evidence of an
autopsy. The poorly documented circumstances of her death have resulted in considerable discussion and controversy as to her reasons, including that she opposed Haber's work in chemical warfare and her suicide was a response to him personally overseeing the first successful use of chlorine gas during the
Second Battle of Ypres
During the First World War, the Second Battle of Ypres was fought from for control of the tactically important high ground to the east and south of the Flemish town of Ypres in western Belgium. The First Battle of Ypres had been fought the pr ...
, resulting in over 67,000 casualties.
Immerwahr's ashes were moved from
Dahlem to
Basel
, french: link=no, Bâlois(e), it, Basilese
, neighboring_municipalities= Allschwil (BL), Hégenheim (FR-68), Binningen (BL), Birsfelden (BL), Bottmingen (BL), Huningue (FR-68), Münchenstein (BL), Muttenz (BL), Reinach (BL), Riehen (BS ...
and buried together with Haber's after his death in 1934.
Subsequently, their son Hermann Haber emigrated to the United States, where he committed suicide in 1946.
In drama, fiction and writing
A number of works have been inspired to explore Fritz and Clara's relationship. The short film ''
Haber'', written and directed by Daniel Ragussis, attempts to examine some of the issues in the couple's relationship.
The Habers also feature prominently in the novel ''A Reunion of Ghosts'' by Judith Claire Mitchell, where their characters are named Lenz and Iris Alter.
Works such as ''The Greater Good'' (2008), directed by Celia de Wolff and written by Justin Hopper, portray Clara as deeply affected by her husband's research on gas warfare. Their lives are portrayed in the American television series
''Genius''.
In 2014 the film ''Clara Immerwahr'' was released (directed by
Harald Sicheritz). Clara and Fritz are also discussed, in brief account, in the book ''How to Hide an Empire: A History of the Greater United States'' by
Daniel Immerwahr, when referencing the history of nitrogen's role in agriculture in American history.
References
External links
Short biography of Clara Haber (Immerwahr) at Doomed EngineersClara Immerwahr in the Jewish Women's Archive
{{DEFAULTSORT:Immerwahr, Clara
20th-century German chemists
Jewish chemists
German women chemists
20th-century German women scientists
German Christian pacifists
Lutheran pacifists
University of Breslau alumni
Converts to Lutheranism from Judaism
19th-century German Jews
People from the Province of Silesia
Suicides by firearm in Germany
1870 births
1915 suicides
Fritz Haber
Jewish pacifists
Jewish women scientists
Female suicides