Fritz Haber has been getting a bad rap for quite a while.
In fact, for about the last third of those 150 years that elapsed from
his birth in 1868.
It was here in Karlsruhe at Haber's centennial in 1968 where a wave of
criticism surged up and has not quite abated since.
During the intervening 50 years, two major scholarly biographies as
well as countless monographs and historical articles have been written
dealing with aspects of Haber's life, work, and legacy.
As a result, much more is known about Haber today than in 1968.
Some of these sources are listed in the reading list at the end of my
presentation.
Here is what Dietrich Stolzenberg, one of Haber's biographers, noted
about the views on Haber.
It is easy to condemn Haber.
It is much harder to make a sound judgment on him.
I will by no means attempt to make a judgment on Fritz Haber.
Instead, I will try to present a sound selection of what I think one
should consider when forming an opinion about Fritz Haber.
So let me start from the beginning.
Fritz Jakob Haber, Jakob after his grandfather, was born on December
9, 1868 in the then sprawling city of Breslau, Prussia, today Polish
Wroclaw, into a Jewish family.
His father was a wealthy merchant, a leading indigo importer.
His mother died from complications of childbirth three weeks into his
life.
The parents were first cousins from the paternal side, so had the same
family name even before marriage.
The father remarried, and the female element in Haber's childhood was
mainly represented by his affectionate stepmother and three
stepsisters.
Fritz, the only son, ended up attending a traditional humanistic high
school closely affiliated with the largest Protestant church in
Breslau.
Half of its pupils were Jewish.
Fritz was a good student, but not an outstanding one.
Fritz's strongest early influence was his mother's brother, Hermann
Haber, the leader of the Liberal People's Party in Silesia, which
Breslau was the capital.
Hermann ran a local newspaper, the Breslauer Zeitung, to which Fritz
would later contribute.
Uncle Hermann also provided space in his apartment for Fritz's early
chemical experiments, the Germans having mutual affection.
Haber's interest in chemistry may have been ignited by his father, who
possessed some chemical expertise.
When Fritz made it known that he wanted to become a chemist, his
father disagreed.
The father wanted Fritz to become a merchant and to work for the
Breslau -based family business.
Breslau, characterized by Goethe as a noisy, dirty, and stinking town,
transformed itself during the second half of the 19th century into a
prosperous metropolis teeming with business and industrial enterprise.
This was accompanied by an enormous increase in population, which
doubled between 1875 and 1905, reaching almost half a million then.
At the same time, Breslau developed into a major center of science and
culture with a large educated middle class.
There was the Schlesische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität, founded in
1811, a number of colleges, as well as an opera house, several
orchestras, and a city theater, all of them of national significance.
The booming of Breslau was a reflection of what was going on
throughout Germany at the time.
The whole country was booming.
It was for the first time in history that an economic transformation
of a major country was driven by scientific and technological advances
rather than by conquest.
The era of academic and cultural prosperity of Breslau, that Breslau
had enjoyed, coincided with the childhood and youth of Fritz Haber.
But he wanted to get out of there, as he put it, to study in Berlin
and other places.
At loggerheads with his father and with some support from Uncle
Hermann, Haber entered at age 18 Berlin's Friedrich-Wilhelms
-Universität, now Humboldt University, to study chemistry and physics.
He was drawn to these subjects by the towering figures of August von
Hofmann and Hermann von Helmholtz.
However, Haber would be disappointed by both.
Hofmann's lectures amounted, in Haber's view, to easy, unchallenging
entertainment, and Helmholtz was just mumbling to himself while doing
incomprehensible calculations on the blackboard.
The next three semesters Haber spent with Robert Bunsen in Heidelberg,
who was already 76 when he arrived, and another disappointment.
The silver lining on Haber's time in Heidelberg was his calculus
course, was the calculus course that he took from Leo Königsberger,
from which he benefited from the rest of his career.
The subsequent year, Haber performed a legally required military
service in Breslau in an artillery regiment.
In order to save himself from death by boredom, as he put it, he took
a course in Kantian philosophy at the university.
Back in Berlin, at what's today the Technical University, Haber, under
the tutelage of Karl Lieberman of Alizarin fame, fell under the spell
of organic chemistry.
He wrote a doctoral thesis on the synthesis of an indigo precursor,
but was far from being proud about it.
Just kukeri.
Since the Technische Hochschule did not award doctoral degrees at the
time, Haber graduated from the Friedrich Wilhelms Universität.
The thesis defense took place before a committee that included Hoffman
and the Kantian philosopher Wilhelm Dilltey.
Apparently, Haber did well in philosophy, but not so well in physics,
which spoiled his grade.
Subsequently, on his father's urging, he took several apprentice jobs
in chemical industry, which brought him eventually to the ETH Zurich
to improve his skills.
After a brief stint at his father's company in Breslau, during which
he proved himself to be a danger to the business, he lost a lot of
money during a very short time, he moved on to do organic chemistry
again, this time in Jena with Ludwig Knorr of anti-pyrene fame.
Anti-pyrene was a predecessor of aspirin.
Apparently, in Jena, Haber developed an interest in a fledgling
science, namely in physical chemistry.
Likely instigated by his friend from Breslau and comilitone from
Berlin, Richard Abeck, Haber took a course nominally in physical
chemistry from the mathematical physicist Rudolf Straubel, who worked
in optical physics.
However, Haber's attempt to gain admission to the circle of Wilhelm
Ostwald, one of the founders of physical chemistry, remained
unsuccessful.
Haber's best friend, Richard Wilstetter, would later characterize what
Haber did up to this point as a complete failure.
However, it was a failure from which Haber was able to learn.
Right at the outset of his time in Jena, Haber at age 23 converted to
Christianity, or more accurately to Protestantism, or perhaps more
accurately yet to cultural Protestantism.
Haber's conversion happened against the background of the memorable
exchange between Heinrich von Treitschke, an overt anti-Semite, and
Theodor Mommsen, a liberal.
According to Mommsen, Germans were to abandon those loyalties and
affiliations that divided them.
According to the historian Stefan Wolf, a stronger influence yet may
have been Greek philosophy, especially Plato and Plato's emphasis on
the spirit.
Haber's father was dismayed by his son's conversion, and as Fritz
Stern speculated, Haber's closest Jewish friends, Albert Einstein and
Richard Wilstetter, both unconverted, would not hear much from Haber
about it.
What followed could be described as Fritz Haber's first heyday period,
here in Karlsruhe.
Ludwig Knorr recommended Haber to his colleague, the distinguished
organic chemist Karl Engler, at the Technische Hochschule Karlsruhe.
Haber moved to the capital of the liberal Duchy of Baden in the spring
of 1894, when he was 25, to live through the best 17 years of his
working life, as he would later put it.
He started off as assistant to the professor of chemical technology,
Hans Bunte, habilitated as Privatdozent in two years, with work on
pyrolysis of hydrocarbons, became Extraordinarius in four years, and
was finally named full professor of physical chemistry and
electrochemistry after 12 years.
This was a fast rise, he was just 37 then.
The average age for reaching the academic pinnacle in Germany at the
time was 42.
This did not prevent Haber from complaining about the sluggishness of
the process, and even invoking antisemitism as a possible cause.
Haber's textbooks on pyrolysis, electrochemistry, and gas phase
reactions were already well known by then.
Haber never attended a single lecture on physical chemistry though,
apart from his own, as he would later admit with glee.
Let me note that physical chemistry came about with a purpose, namely
to save chemistry from becoming a collection of little disconnected
facts.
The success of physical chemistry in providing a common ground for
chemistry was celebrated by Ostwald in his proclamation, physical
chemistry is not just a branch on, but the blossom of the tree of
knowledge.
The fragrance of this blossom proved irresistible to scores of
scientists who would lead chemistry through the quantum revolution and
beyond, and find a new gratification in the premise that the road to
general chemistry leads through physics and mathematics.
In Karlsruhe, Haber developed a remarkably diverse research program
ranging from electrochemistry to gas phase chemistry to chemical
technology.
Among the many problems that Haber tackled in Karlsruhe was the
corrosion of gas and water mains, pipes, by stray currents from
streetcar systems.
This problem was later resolved by replacing direct current by
alternating current to power the streetcars.
Haber's crowning achievement at Karlsruhe was the catalytic synthesis
of ammonia from its elements.
The need to find new ways of replenishing agricultural soil with
nitrogen in a form that can be metabolized by plants was articulated
in 1898 by William Crookes, and was widely perceived as a challenge.
In Sir William's words, the fixation of atmospheric nitrogen is one of
the great discoveries awaiting the genius of chemists.
It was one of the most publicized speeches of its time.
Some of the most illustrious chemists had a go at fixing nitrogen to
hydrogen, that is, at the direct synthesis of ammonia from its
elements.
Among them were Henri Le Chatelier, William Ramsey, Wilhelm Ostwald,
Walter Nernst.
All failed.
There were two basic questions to answer, a thermodynamic one and a
kinetic one.
The thermodynamic question was, where does the equilibrium lie?
Imagine we mix nitrogen and hydrogen at a given temperature and
pressure.
What will the fraction of ammonia in the mixture be?
Or the other way around, if we want, on the order of, say, 10% of
ammonia, what must the pressure and temperature be?
And the kinetic question was, how quickly will the equilibrium be
reached, or the given fraction of ammonia produced?
The answer found by Haber, together with his young collaborator from
England, Robert LaRosignol, to both questions was, work at as low a
temperature as possible to save the ammonia from thermal
decomposition, but use as high a pressure as you can to increase the
yield.
Drain whatever ammonia you get and recycle the unused nitrogen and
hydrogen.
In order for the reaction to go quickly enough to sustain the cycle,
use an osmium catalyst.
Here's a schematic of the iconic LaRosignol-Haber laboratory
apparatus, out of which the first synthetic ammonia had dripped.
At a temperature of 550 degrees centigrade and a pressure of 175
atmospheres, the yield of ammonia was 8%.
This would correspond to a single pass of the reagent gases.
The multiple cycling enabled a yield of over 90%.
The historic date of the demonstration of the apparatus in Karlsruhe
to the representatives of the Badische Aniline und Sodafabrik is July
the 2nd, 1909.
Haber claimed the patent rights for the catalytic synthesis of ammonia
from its elements and recognized LaRosignol's contribution to the feat
by yielding 40% of the royalties to him.
Let me mention that LaRosignol also invented the needle valve, so much
used by gas-faced scientists until this day, if there are any present
in the room.
In the industrial-scale Haber-Bosch process developed by Karl Bosch
with his co-workers at BASF, the expensive osmium catalyst was
replaced by a cheap iron catalyst.
Haber wondered in 1910 about it.
It is remarkable how new special features always come to light.
Here iron, with which Ostwald had first worked and which we later
tested a hundred times in its pure state, is now found to function
when impure.
What happened was that Bosch and his co-worker Alwin Mittasch made use
of Swedish iron ore, which introduced aluminum and potassium as
beneficial impurities that acted as promoters of iron's catalytic
activity.
The elementary steps of the said heterogeneous catalytic reaction
would be investigated in the 1980s by Gerhard Erthel and co-workers,
and the role of the promoters only then fully understood.
The catalytic synthesis of ammonia from its elements was a momentous
discovery that revolutionized chemical industry, and through its use
in the production of fertilizers, paved the way for the growth of the
world population from about 1.6 billion in 1900 to about 7.6 billion
today.
By 1920, the Haber-Bosch process became the dominant means of nitrogen
fixation.
It's a cornerstone of organized life on the planet.
As shown in the graph, the biosphere is capable of sustaining only
about one half of the world's population.
The other half can be fed thanks to the Haber-Bosch process.
However, about 40% of the food produced is wasted.
An incredible number, I think.
In the absence of this wasting, and if people ate reasonable amounts
of food that is in the absence of obesity, 6 billion could be fed by
the biosphere.
The process of converting fixed nitrogen into food is quite
inefficient, between 4% and 14%, depending on the kind of food,
whether it's meat or vegetables.
Hence, much of the reactive ammonia is being dumped into the
atmosphere.
Reactive nitrogen is dumped into the atmosphere.
The environmental impact of producing current levels of reactive
nitrogen, about four times more than what the biosphere can deal with,
leads to the loss of biodiversity, as well as to other deleterious
effects, as shown by this slide that comes from Jan Delen Erismont's
laboratory in Amsterdam.
Back to Haber and his life story.
While Haber was toiling on the ammonia synthesis in Karlsruhe, a group
of prominent scientists and officials in Berlin pondered on creating
an elite institution of a new type, capable of securing Germany's
worldwide leadership in basic research.
Aided by their contacts with the royal librarian and distinguished
theologian Adolf von Harnack, they developed the idea for what was to
become the Kaiser Wilhelm Society, the forerunner of the Max Planck
Society.
The Kaiser Wilhelm Society came into being in 1911, and its first two
institutes were inaugurated by Wilhelm II, a year later in Berlin
-Dahlen.
One of them was the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Physical Chemistry
and Electrochemistry, funded from a private endowment created by the
banker and entrepreneur Leopold Koppel.
On the recommendation of Svante Arhenius, one of the founders of
physical chemistry, and under pressure from Koppel, Fritz Haber was
offered to become its founding director.
It was an offer that Haber could not resist.
He was guaranteed a generous operating budget, the status of a state
official, honorary professorship at the Berlin University, and
membership in the Prussian Academy.
The institute was designed to Haber's image by the chief imperial
architect, Ernst von Ehne, and included a director's mansion that
served as Haber's residence.
The photo on the left shows Haber and his scientific staff, just four
people total, shortly after they settled in Berlin.
Among Haber's early staff members was the pioneer of quantum
statistical mechanics, Otto Sackur.
He would die in a laboratory accident at the beginning of the First
World War.
Sackur was a close friend of Haber's first wife, Clara, née Imelwar.
More about Clara in a moment.
And there was also Albert Einstein, whose arrival in Berlin in 1914,
orchestrated with Haber's help, made Berlin's academic luster even
brighter.
Einstein and Haber developed quickly a close personal relationship.
Einstein made use of an office at Haber's institute during 1914-1915,
while he was finalizing his General Theory of Relativity.
According to a Dahlem legend, Haber called upon Einstein to do for
chemistry what he, Einstein, did for physics.
After all, Einstein's first two papers and his thesis dealt with
molecules.
Let me now talk about World War I and the role of Fritz Haber in it.
Haber's letter to Svante Arrhenius, written in August 1914, the first
month of the war, captures well his patriotic attitude towards the
war.
Quote, this war, this is a war in which our entire people is taking
part to its utmost abilities.
You know Germany all too well not to realize that such a unanimous
commitment to a cause is only possible when all are conscious that the
good of the nation must be defended through a just struggle.
You should give no credence to the absurd fiction according to which
we are conducting a war out of military interests.
We now see it as our ethical duty to take down our enemies with the
use of all our strength and bring them to a peace that will make the
return of such a war impossible for generations and lay a solid
foundation for the peaceful development of Western Europe.
In keeping with his patriotism, Haber applied himself in extraordinary
ways to aid the German war effort and became in the process the
driving force behind the development of chemical warfare in Germany.
The chlorine cloud attack at Ypres on the 22nd of April 1915 that
Haber had orchestrated amounted to the first use of a weapon of mass
destruction and as such marks a tragic turning point in world history.
Following the success at Ypres, Haber eager to employ science in
resolving the greatest strategic challenge of the war, namely the
stalemate of trench warfare, promptly transformed his Kaiser Wilhelm
Institute into a center for the development of chemical weapons and of
protective measures against them since within a few months of Ypres
the Entente introduced its own potent chemical arsenal.
The universal abhorrence of chemical weapons as manifestly inhumane is
surprisingly recent.
At a time of their use in the First World War, the perverse sounding
notion that chemical weapons were in fact humane had been a part of
the vocabulary of war experts of the Central Powers and the Entente
alike.
Albert Einstein's pacifist views contrasted sharply with those of his
friend Haber.
As Einstein would put it later, warfare cannot be humanized, it can
only be abolished.
Strangely enough there is no record of Einstein's criticism of Haber's
World War I efforts, although Einstein must have been aware of what
was going on at the institute that was hosting him at the time.
The character of World War I as a total war was underpinned by a major
escalation of chemical warfare in July of 1917, namely the deployment
of mustard gas by Germany.
Haber, whose brainchild mustard gas was, urged the Third Supreme
Command to use it only if the war could be won before the Allies
acquired the ability to retaliate in kind, that is, with their own
mustard gas.
Otherwise Germany's situation would become hopeless, as Haber put it,
which it eventually did, but also for a number of other reasons.
Although Haber had no regrets about his involvement in chemical
warfare, he never anticipated its use against civilians.
As Margit Solesi-Jansse put it, in this respect Haber's imagination
remained trapped in the 19th century.
Gruesome as they were, chemical weapons have been banned only since
1997, when the Chemical Weapons Convention was finally ratified.
The development of chemical weapons was by far not the only
involvement of Haber's in the German war effort.
On the eve of World War I, Germany was the world's largest importer of
Chilean saltpeter, that is sodium nitrate, used for the production of
both fertilizers and explosives.
With its supply cut off by the British naval blockade, the German
government quickly recognized the need for alternative sources of
nitrates and other war chemicals.
Fritz Haber, led by his belief that all economic, military, and even
social problems can be solved by science, promptly found his way into
the circle of Germany's decision makers.
As pointed out by Margit Solesi-Jansse, Haber acted as an expert that
is an intermediary between the producers and consumers of knowledge.
He was behind the so-called saltpeter coup in which BASF monopolized
much of Germany's production of nitrates via oxidation of ammonia
produced in turn by the Haber-Bosch process.
For better or worse, it was the production of nitrates by the German
chemical industry that enabled Germany to sustain her war endeavor.
Let me add that although Germany lost the war, its chemical industry
did not.
In fact, its massive buildup, funded in large part by state loans,
could never have happened in a peace economy.
Moreover, the loans had actually not been paid back because of
hyperinflation that descended upon Germany after the war.
Let me now talk briefly about Fritz Haber's first wife, Clara.
When in April 1901 the German Electrochemical Society convened in
Freiburg for its annual meeting, there was for the first time a woman
among the scientific participants.
This was Clara Immerwar from Breslau, who had completed her PhD just a
few months earlier.
She thus ranks among a small yet significant group of women scientists
who entered at the turn of the 20th century with an exclusively male
domain of scientific research.
Clara's PhD advisor was Fritz Haber's friend, Richard Abeck, a
physical chemist already well known at the time for his work on
chemical valence.
At her scientific debut appearance, Clara met Fritz Haber, whom she
had known from the dancing classes they took together in Breslau as
teenagers.
The love affair between them that ensued, or was rekindled, resulted
quickly in marriage.
During the first years of her married life, Clara, in the absence of
job opportunities, lectured on science in the household, mainly to
housewives, while struggling not to become a housewife herself.
She also appeared at the lectures as well as in the laboratories of
the Technische Hochschule Karlsruhe.
That was the case even after the birth of their son Hermann in 1902.
In her letter to Richard Abeck, who would become her confidant, Clara
declared that she will get back to the laboratory once we become
millionaires and will be able to afford servants, because I cannot
even think about giving up my scientific work.
As we know, the Habers did become rich, but Clara would never return
to the laboratory nevertheless.
As years went by, she would fall increasingly into the traditional
role of a professorial wife, a housewife preoccupied with the well
-being of the family, and a caring mother.
An equitable and reciprocal scientific marriage, like the one between
Marie and Pierre Curie in Paris, would not materialize.
When Habers celebrated the success at Ypres and his promotion to the
rank of captain at the gathering in his directorial mansion in Dahlem,
Clara committed suicide.
She shot herself with Habers' army pistol.
The motive for Clara Habers' suicide is as unclear as the available
sources are ambiguous and rare.
Nevertheless, during the 1990s, a narrative took root, according to
which Clara Habers was an outspoken pacifist, not unlike the Nobel
Peace Prize laureate Bertha von Zutner, and a star scientist, not
unlike Marie Curie, who was destroyed as both a person and a scientist
by her oppressive and opportunistic husband.
It appears that this narrative was catapulted into the public sphere
in Germany and beyond by Gerrit von Leitner's book, Der Fall Clara
immer war, Leben für eine humane Wissenschaft, published in 1993, as
well as by various dramatizations derived from it, some of them
certainly of high artistic quality.
The sources in von Leitner's book are either not given or tapped
selectively, so as to provide a spotless image of Clara while
portraying Fritz Haber as a kind of Dr. Evil.
In particular, von Leitner's account ignores other sources that
suggest that the reasons for Clara's suicide may have had to do with
her mental disposition and private life.
The ambiguity of the sources has been somewhat reduced by several
recently surfaced letters.
Especially telling is a letter in which Clara replies to Haber's
former Japanese collaborator, Setsuro Tamaru.
Tamaru had to leave Germany after the outbreak of the war and
complained bitterly in his letter written on Christmas Eve, 1914,
about the war's politics.
He usually spent Christmas Eves with the Haber family.
Clara's reply to Tamaru's letter, written just three and a half months
before her suicide, is revealing in several respects.
Firstly, she describes her own patriotic feeling and the need to be
helpful and useful to her country.
Secondly, she mentions that her husband was working 18-hour days and
that she herself was taking care of 57 children in a makeshift
kindergarten while her son Hermann had been constantly sick since
November.
The kindergarten was set up for children whose fathers were on the
front and whose mothers had to make ends meet.
Thirdly, in response to Tamaru's political litany, he wrote, for
instance, that a war doesn't decide anything, it just breeds the next
war.
Clara stated that she was too ignorant in the matters of foreign
affairs to be able to properly answer Tamaru's points.
Clara's letter to Tamaru is difficult to reconcile with her image as
an outspoken pacifist whose disagreements with her husband about the
conduct of the war would drive her to suicide.
The additional recently surfaced letters were written in the immediate
aftermath of Clara's suicide by people from her circle, Lisa Meitner
and Edith Hahn, the wife of Otto Hahn.
These letters indicate that the reasons for Clara's desperation had to
do with her personal life, especially with her feeling of being
neglected by her husband.
Thus, it seems that Clara's suicide resulted in circumstances
considerably different and more complex than those described in
Meitner's book or its derivatives.
In light of the available evidence, Clara Haber's suicide appears to
have resulted from a catastrophic failure, to borrow an engineering
term as a metaphor, brought about by a confluence of a host of
unfortunate circumstances.
These included, apart from her unfulfilling life, Haber's
philandering, the premature deaths of her PhD advisor and confidant,
Richard Habeck, and of her friend and commilitone, Otto Sackur, as
well as the death and destruction of the war itself, amplified by the
horrors of chemical warfare.
This recent perspective makes the myth of Clara Immerwahr
questionable.
However, without belittling Clara's actual achievements or courage,
her admirable feat of graduating with magna cum laude in chemistry in
1900 Prussia was not only unusual, but also difficult, or unusual
because it was difficult.
It took the first 30 years of her life to achieve it, for she was
denied a straight path free of hurdles and chicanes and had to take
lengthy detours.
However, I think we should refrain from projecting our contemporary
ideas on Clara.
What she achieved in her time does not need to be embellished with
exaggerations, or even wishful thinking, fashioned by present-day
aspirations.
Fritz Haber remarried in 1917.
His second wife, Charlotte Nenathan, was a manager of the club
Deutsche Gesellschaft 1914, where she and Haber likely got to know
each other.
In their wedding picture, they are shown with Hermann, the only child
of Fritz and Clara.
Fritz and Charlotte had two children, Ludwig and Eva.
Ludwig Lutz, an economic historian, wrote The Poisonous Cloud, an
authoritative volume on chemical warfare in World War I.
Ludwig was motivated to write the book by what he witnessed at his
father's centennial in Karlsruhe in 1968.
When World War I finally ended, largely due to the economic collapse
of Germany, the victorious powers compiled a list of 895 alleged war
criminals, with the Kaiser on top of the list.
Haber's name was also included but dropped later for reasons that are
not entirely clear.
In the end, nobody was extradited anyway.
Haber would, however, testify about chemical warfare before an
investigative committee of the Reichstag in 1923.
In his testimony, Haber put the blame for any transgressions against
international law squarely on the German supreme command.
Haber also claimed that chemical weapons were first used in World War
I by the French, already in August 1914 in the Battle of the
Frontiers, when they fired rifle grenades filled with a highly toxic
ethyl bromoacetate.
This claim was later validated by a parliamentary investigation as
well as by historians.
The early French chemical attacks were ineffective and thus remained
largely unknown because of the low concentrations achieved of the
gruesome poison.
When Haber received the 1918 Nobel Prize in chemistry for finding a
way for making bread from air, his term by the way, there was no
mention during the Nobel proceedings of gunpowder from air, my term,
at all, not to speak about Haber's involvement in chemical warfare of
poison instead of air.
Let me add that the award was made at considerable risk, not only to
the reputation of the Royal Swedish Academy, but even to the
neutrality of Sweden as a country in the new world order, because the
government actually approves the laureates.
During the turmoil that followed the end of the First World War, Haber
was concerned about the restoration of basic services in Germany, as
well as in neutral countries ravaged by the war.
In September 1919, he co-founded with his comrade-in-arms Otto
Lumitsch the Technische Nordhilfe aid organization.
Haber enlisted his friend Einstein to help find suitable contacts in
the affected countries, especially in the Netherlands.
At the outset of the post-World War I period, Haber hired a great
number of young first-class researchers and gave free rein to their
pursuits.
The golden age of his Kaiser Wilhelm Institute and the second heyday
period of Haber's scientific career had begun.
Unfortunately, Haber himself would be plagued by illness.
The diversity and quality of the work done at Haber's Institute is
astounding.
Although physical chemistry remained the principal subject, the
theme's pursuit ranged from fundamental physics to physiology.
The exemplary workings of Haber's Institute entered the annals of the
sociology of science through the writings of Michael Polanyi, one of
this field's founders and a former Haber affiliate.
Perhaps we can talk about Michael Polanyi later.
After all, he was a student at Karlsruhe under Fritz Haber's successor
Georg Bredig.
At the same time, Haber was able to secure adequate funding, mainly
through his contacts with industry.
Funding was also provided by the Nordgemeinschaft der Deutschen
Wissenschaft, the forerunner of today's Deutsche
Forschungsgemeinschaft, which Haber co-founded in 1920.
Haber also co-founded in 1926 the Japan Institute to foster cultural
and economic cooperation with Japan, which became a major importer of
German goods, thereby offsetting the loss or weakness of European
markets at the time.
Haber, along with Einstein, also actively pursued the restoration of
relations with the academic communities of the allied countries.
For instance, at the Benjamin Franklin Centennial in Philadelphia in
1924, Haber made a case for academic and technological
internationalism.
Moreover, between 1920 and 1926, Haber toiled on the secret patriotic
Gold from Seawater project in an attempt to help to meet Germany's
obligations under the Versailles Treaty, namely the payment of war
reparations, which were denominated in gold, 50,000 tons of it.
But the concentration of gold in seawater turned out to be too low,
and so the project had to be scrapped.
Haber must have been unimaginably busy during this period, perhaps one
of the reasons for his absence in this memorable colloquium forum with
six Nobel laureates present and future in it.
And certainly a reason for his absence from home.
In 1927, he broke up with his second wife, Charlotte, and from 1930
on, it was his stepsister, Elsa, who would lead his household for the
remaining four years of his life.
I may add that Haber was also spending inordinate amounts of time in
various sanatoria in vain attempts to restore his health.
Haber, however, is conspicuously present in this unique photo as Mr.
Chemistry, playfully perched on one of the armrests of the sofa, while
Mr. Physics, that is Einstein, occupies the other.
James Frank, flanked by his wife Ingrid and by Lisa Meitner, jokes
with his assistant, while Otto Hahn makes himself ready to jump into
conversation.
Standing in the back are Gustav Hertz, as well as other distinguished
physicists and chemists.
This photo embodies what the Austrian-American biochemist and essayist
Erwin Chargaff must have meant when he characterized Berlin during the
Weimar era as the very Empyrean of science, the highest heaven of
science.
The heaven would start turning into hell in 1933.
With the Nazis at the helm, Germany was done with the Jew Haber, in
the words of Bernhard Rust, the infamous Kultusminister.
Haber became a persona non grata under the Nazis, who would deny him
credit for anything they viewed as admirable, including, ironically,
Haber's involvement in chemical warfare.
After the promulgation of the law for the restoration of the
professional civil service in April 1933, Haber found himself under
the obligation to dismiss all his co-workers of Jewish descent, all 12
out of 49.
Haber soon realized that what remained for him to do was to help to
secure a future abroad for his people and to quit.
Haber handed in his resignation on April 30th, 1933, with these
memorable words.
My sense of tradition requires of me that I only choose staff members
according to their professional abilities and character, without
regard to their racial makeup, thereby he burned bridges.
Max Planck made an attempt at saving Haber's institute by pleading
with Minister Rust, and after being turned down by asking Hitler in
person to intercede, but this was to no avail.
According to Planck's testimony, Hitler concluded the audience by a
fit of rage worthy of a furious Führer.
Mel Brooks joke.
Haber became just another Jew in Germany.
In 1940, the Nazis would turn Haber's institute into a model National
Socialist Enterprise, NS-Musterbetrieb.
It was the only academic establishment that achieved this honor.
Haber received job offers from Britain, France, Japan, and Palestine,
and decided for the first.
In the fall of 1933, he joined Sir William Pope at Cambridge
University.
Sir William Pope worked for the British Chemical Warfare Service in
World War I, and developed a new synthesis of mustard gas.
From his hotel in Cambridge, Haber wrote to Pope the following lines,
quote, my most important goals in life are that I not die as a German
citizen, and that I not be quid to my children and grandchildren the
civil rights of second-class citizenship as German law now demands.
The second thing that's important to me is to spend my last years in a
scientific community with honor but without heavy duties, end quote.
During his two-month stay at Cambridge, Haber wrote his last paper on
catalytic decomposition of hydrogen peroxide.
According to Haber's stepsister, Elsa, it cost him the last ounce of
his strength, it's a major 19-page paper.
One can see that the distribution of Haber's publications over the
timeline of his life is bimodal.
The two hills corresponding to the heyday periods of his scientific
career are separated by the abyss of World War I.
The harsh English winter in 1933-34 took a toll on Haber's fragile
health, and so he set out on a southbound journey, possibly as far as
Palestine, to take heed of Hein Weizmann's invitation to join him
there and to assume a professorship at the Hebrew University of
Jerusalem.
The Palestine idea had not come out of the blue.
In his exchange with Einstein during the summer of 1933, Haber noted,
I was never in my life so Jewish as now.
Weizmann encouraged Haber to come to Palestine with the words, it will
be a return home for you, your journey's end.
According to Haber's stepsister, Elsa, Haber's son Hermann was much
more of a Jew than his father, and it was actually Hermann who pushed
the Palestine idea in the first place.
Haber had great difficulties detaching himself emotionally from
Germany.
In this time of humility and contrition before leaving Cambridge,
Haber drafted his testament.
In it, he expressed his wish to be buried alongside his first wife,
Clara.
Haber died of a heart attack on January 29th, 1934, in Basel,
Switzerland, on a journey south without a clear destination and was
buried there.
In accordance with his will, Clara's ashes were reburied beside his.
Haber was revered in many quarters, including the highest echelons of
industry, the military, and academia.
Two weeks after Haber's death, Max von Laue eulogized Haber in an
obituary that was published by Naturwissenschaften, a leading journal
at the time.
The very writing and publication of the eulogy, not to speak about its
moral message, was an act of political defiance, given Haber's
official status as enemy of the National Socialist State.
It was not only Haber's Jewishness, but also his democratic attitudes
that were a thorn in the flesh of the Nazis.
Haber was an open supporter of the Weimar Republic and its democratic
institutions and contributed to the coffers of the German Democratic
Party, later called the Deutsche Staatspartei.
Haber's characterization of the Nazis is both revealing and
instructive.
Haber viewed the Nazis as people who hated their political adversaries
more than they loved their country.
On the first anniversary of Haber's death in January 1935, Max Planck,
as president of the Kaiser Wilhelm Society, held a memorial service
for Haber in Harnackhaus.
Max Planck, after a Auftakt, opened the meeting with a Hitler salute
and gave the introductory address.
In it, Planck pointed out that had Haber not made his ammonia
synthesis discovery, Germany would have collapsed economically and
militarily in the first three months of World War I.
The two main speeches by Otto Hahn and Karl Friedrich Bonhoeffer dealt
with Haber's personal side, the significance of his Kaiser Wilhelm
Institute, as well as scientific work.
As Bonhoeffer was not able to be present, had been forbidden to come,
Otto Hahn read Bonhoeffer's notes in his name.
The prohibition to partake in the memorial service was issued to all
academics who fell under the jurisdiction of Bernhard Rust's ministry.
This is why much of the audience were professors' wives who attended
the service in lieu of their husbands.
Among notable exceptions were Lise Meitner, Max Delbrück, Fritz
Strassmann, and Richard Wilstetter.
Nevertheless, the lecture hall that seated 500 was packed.
Curiously, although Bernhard Rust's directive with his signature on it
was posted at every German university for everybody to see and to
observe, Rust later denied ever issuing such a directive.
Max von Loewe and Karl Friedrich Bonhoeffer became key figures in the
reconstruction of German academia after the Second World War.
Their great scientific reputation and irreproachable past had made
them uniquely qualified for such a role.
And it was von Loewe and Bonhoeffer who put forward the initiative to
rename Haber's Kaiser Wilhelm Institute after its founding director.
Because of Haber's principled attitude towards the Nazis and the
banishment that he had to suffer as a result, there was a strong anti
-Nazi component to the renaming.
Moreover, upon Haber's death in exile, Einstein noted that Haber's
love for his country was unrequited.
The renaming of the institute after Haber therefore signaled that
Haber's affection for his country was not unrequited after all, and
that there was no room for Nazism in Germany anymore.
Haber is also remembered in Israel.
The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, jointly with the Minerva
Foundation, established in 1981 the Fritz Haber Center for Molecular
Dynamics.
And the library of the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot holds
Haber's private book collection, donated to the institute by Haber's
son Hermann.
Let me conclude by four quotes by those who knew Fritz Haber well.
Albert Einstein wrote in 1921, I declined many attractive calls from
abroad, decided not out of attachment to Germany, but rather to my
dear German friends, of whom you, Fritz Haber, are one of the most
distinguished and gracious.
Richard Wilstetter wrote on Haber's 60th birthday in 1928, Fritz
Haber's 60th birthday is a memorable day not only for academia, the
whole of Germany should gratefully honor Haber as one of its
intellectual leaders.
James Frank wrote in 1934, in my whole life I will not be able to
forgive those who forced a man like Fritz Haber, who did more for his
country than is almost imaginable, to end his life in exile.
And finally, Chaim Weizmann wrote in 1934, the only thing one must
have faith in is that just as Fritz Haber's life will remain
unforgotten, so his death as a martyr will have a deep importance for
us and for the world in years still to come.
Thank you for your attention.