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

Early life and education

Immerwahr was born on the Polkendorff Farm near Breslau, the youngest daughter of chemist Philipp Immerwahr and his wife Anna nee Krohn. She grew up on the farm with her three older siblings, Elli, Rose, and Paul. In 1890, her mother died of cancer and while Elli and her husband Siegfried stayed at the farm, Clara moved with her father to Breslau. Immerwahr studied at the University of Breslau, in 1900 attaining her degree and a Ph.D. in chemistry under Richard Abegg. Her dissertation was entitled Beiträge zur Löslichkeitsbestimmung schwerlöslicher Salze des Quecksilbers, Kupfers, Bleis, Cadmiums und Zinks (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.

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 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.

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. 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 in an oven. Eventually, Fritz's ashes and Clara's ashes were buried together in a cemetery in Basel. Subsequently, Clara Immerwahr's son with Fritz Haber, Hermann Haber, emigrated to the United States and later committed suicide in 1946. 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).

קלרה אימרווהר

(21 ביוני 1870 - 2 במאי 1915), הייתה כימאית יהודייה גרמנייה, אשתו הראשונה של הכימאי, פריץ הבר. הייתה האישה הראשונה שקיבלה דוקטורט מאוניברסיטת ברסלאו, והראשונה שקיבלה דוקטורט בכימיה מאוניברסיטה גרמנית כלשהי.

במהלך מלחמת העולם הראשונה תרם בעלה, הכימאי פריץ הבר, בין היתר לפיתוח אמצעים ללוחמה בנשק כימי. בשנת 1915, לאחר שבעלה שב מהקרב אשר בו נעשה שימוש ראשון בנשק כימי, היא התאבדה בעזרת אקדחו, כנראה על רקע התנגדותה לפיתוח מדעי של אמצעי לחימה קטלניים. בהמשך התאבד גם בנם, הרמן, כנראה מאותה הסיבה.

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