Fritz haber: the protean man
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- Bu səhifədəki naviqasiya:
- William Pope: Enemy Turned Advocate
- Conclusion: Like Fire in the Hands of Small Children
- Bibliography
- 65 - struggles he went through. It is clear that, when he died, Haber had never been able to resolve this great inner conflict.
- 66 - Notes 1.
Stoltzenberg, Dietrich. Fritz Haber: Chemist, Nobel Laureate, German, Jew. Philadelphia, PA: Chemical Heritage Press, 2004, pages 203-204.
2.
Goran, Morris. The Story of Fritz Haber. Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 1967, pages 118- 119.
3.
Ibid, 119.
4. Charles, Daniel. Master Mind: The Rise and Fall of Fritz Haber, the Nobel Laureate Who Launched the Age of Chemical Warfare. New York, NY: HarperCollins Publishers, 2005, page 203.
5. Stoltzenberg, Chemist, Nobel Laureate, 207.
6.
Ibid.
7. Haber, Fritz. Fritz Haber Briefe an Richard Willstätter, translation by David Dollenmayer and Elizabeth Ray. Berlin, Germany: Verlag für Wissenschafts- und Regionalgeschichte, 1995, pages 127-128.Charles,
8. Charles, Master Mind, 221.
9.
Ibid, 222-223.
10. Haber, Briefe, 131-132.
11.
Charles, Master Mind, 226-232.
12.
Stoltzenberg, Chemist, Nobel Laureate, 209.
13.
Goran, The Story, 171.
- 67 - William Pope: Enemy Turned Advocate
“So disillusioned and embittered was Haber by the painful experience of removal of his posted as founding director of the Institute für physikalische Chemie und Elektrochemie … that the erstwhile German patriot resolved to renounce his German citizenship at the earliest opportunity and to seek a refuge elsewhere in Europe.” 1 Haber considered many different countries as a future home; eventually he settled on England. Surprisingly, the greatest advocates in favor of his moving to England were the very men he had fought during World War I: Harold Hartley, Frederic Donnan, and Sir William Pope. The rest of the world had not yet ceased to be angry at Haber and the others who had been involved in chemical warfare during the Great War. However, these men, who had done things similar to those Haber had done, “showed a great deal of understanding for the position in which Haber and his coworkers found themselves.” 2 Theirs was the first offer Haber found interesting: they had gotten the University of Cambridge to offer Haber an honorary position, which therefore did not require teaching or research of any significance. 3
there to visit his son Hermann and his son‟s family. From Paris, he began a series of ten letters to Pope, in which he expressed what he wishes for upon his arrival in England. The replies from Pope to Haber are inaccessible, since they are currently stored in Berlin, but it is obvious in the ten which still exist that there existed an easy friendship between the two of them which allowed Haber to be open about his bitterness toward his situation and his desire to get out of it as quickly as possible without any loss of dignity or honor. In his first letter to Pope, in fact, he said that his “most important goals in life are that I not die as a German citizen and that I not bequeath to my children and grandchildren the civil rights of second-class citizenship.” 4
One of Haber‟s concerns was to ensure that the staff of his Institute who were in danger had somewhere to go.
5 For example, in the second letter of the series, written to Pope on August 23, 1933, from Paris, Haber requested that Pope secure invitations not only for himself but also for his widowed sister Dr. Else Freyhan, his personal secretary Rita Cracauer, and one of his employees, Dr. Joseph Weiss. He did not wish to start his new life before he was certain that all his former colleagues from the Institute were able to find positions in their
- 68 - fields elsewhere. He requested that Weiss be granted a fellowship at Cambridge University, where Haber would continue his work. 6 By the end of July, at which point a laboratory for Haber had been secured 7 , Weiss‟s position was not yet concrete. It is not known exactly what position he was offered, but it is known that eventually Weiss joined Haber in his work at Cambridge. Haber also harbored a more practical concern regarding his move to England. He wanted to negotiate the move without losing his pension and without having to pay a tax, the Reichsfluchtsteuer, by which almost all of his money would be taken by the Nazis. 8 Given the fact that most of Haber‟s assets were in Switzerland, he could have decided to just ignore the tax, but he “could not tolerate the prospect of being branded in his homeland a tax evader”. 9 When the Reich agreed to waive this payment, Haber officially accepted the offer from Cambridge. 10
In addition to this, Haber even went so far as to fantasize that he could leave his homeland honorably. In the second letter he wrote to Pope, he asked if it would be possible to get formal invitations issued by the British ambassador and given to the foreign office in Germany. 11 If that were to happen, Haber said, “the Foreign Office might feel obligated, as an act of international courtesy, to support it.” 12
Haber and Pope had been enemies in what one might call their previous lives, and their friendship was therefore relatively short by comparison to others Haber had in his life. However, despite this, it is clear that their friendship was strong, since, as previously stated, Haber felt comfortable confiding in Pope about his circumstances and what he felt. There is a distinct feeling of remorse in his correspondence. This coupled with his great efforts to find somewhere other than Germany to settle down for the rest of his life indicate that he regretted his past exploits as well as how his beloved homeland had changed. He seemed to very much wish that none of what he was doing was necessary in any way, and to be acutely aware of the problems with what he did in his earlier life.
- 69 - Notes 1.
Stoltzenberg, Dietrich. Fritz Haber: Chemist, Nobel Laureate, German, Jew. Philadelphia, PA: Chemical Heritage Press, 2004, Page 287.
2.
Charles, Daniel. Master Mind: The Rise and Fall of Fritz Haber, the Nobel Laureate Who Launched the Age of Chemical Warfare. New York, NY: HarperCollins Publishers, 2005, Page 228.
3. Ibid.
4.
Wallace, Ian. German Monitor: Fractured Biographies. New York, NY: Rodopi, 2003, Page 4.
5. Ibid, 7.
6.
Stoltzenberg, Chemist, Nobel Laureate, 288. 7.
Wallace, Fractured Biographies, 4. 8.
Charles, Master Mind, 228. 9.
Ibid. 10.
Wallace, Fractured Biographies, 5. 11.
12.
Charles, Master Mind, 229.
- 70 - Conclusion: Like Fire in the Hands of Small Children
There can be no doubt that Fritz Haber was an extremely complex man. He was a brilliant chemist, a skilled teacher, a committed friend, and yet an appalling husband. He was one of Germany‟s greatest patriots throughout most of his life, even fighting for his nation in the Great War, but with Hitler‟s rise to power he discovered that the only thing that mattered was his Jewish heritage. Did he regret any of the things he did during his life, or did he remain firm in the belief that everything he did was morally sound?
As we have stated, Haber converted from Judaism at a young age in order to further his career. However, it is clear that he never really gave up the culture; although he was not a practicing Jew, many of the people with whom he associated and both the women he married were Jews. Additionally, based on the correspondences between Haber and Einstein, the issue of his faith was ever-present in the back of his mind. As an example of this, the two men often disagreed on the perception of Jews abroad; Haber cautioned Einstein that his behavior would reflect badly on Jews in the Fatherland. As Fritz Stern said of their relationship, “Einstein was proud to be a Jew, just as Haber was proud of being a German. It is an honor to both men, and especially to Einstein, that the distress that the other‟s position must have caused each of them to feel did not seriously hinder their friendship.” 1 Because of this, he clearly still cared about the way Jewish people were represented and, toward the end of his life, how they were treated.
Haber‟s changing attitudes may have extended to more than just how Jews were treated. The domineering way with which he treated both his wives, partially driving one of them to suicide and driving the other one away, may have begun to weigh on his conscience, and he may have come to regret it. He and his second wife, Charlotte Nathan, nearly reconciled in 1930; in the end, they remained divorced, but the fact that she was even willing to consider this possibility shows that she saw in him a change. After all, if she did not believe that he had changed, she would not have even considered reentering the near-abuse which constituted their marriage. Also, another incentive for her to think about the possibility was that he would now have time for a loving relationship with a person: his amazing mind was now caged in a rapidly decaying body.
Haber‟s once-brilliant mind and magnetic personality may be the reason some may single him out as one
- 71 - of the least moral scientists of his time. However, those very qualities which helped him stand out so sharply also overshadowed his colleagues, some of whom committed acts which may be considered even worse than Haber‟s. For example, his one-time friend and colleague James Franck, who worked with Haber to train the gas troops in the Great War and then later at the institute, resigned his position at the institute shortly before Haber. Unlike Haber, however, Franck relocated to the United States and began work on the atomic bomb, which is considered worse than the gas warfare that Haber helped develop. 2
It is not as though Haber was completely blind to the fact that technology could advance past the bounds of morality. Toward the end of his life, he “confess[ed] to a friend that the great technical accomplishments of the previous half-century appeared increasingly „like fire in the hands of small children‟.” 3 Clearly, Haber knew that technology could both create and destroy. He also knew that its development had to be closely monitored to ensure it would not be used rashly, as it was by the Nazis, who were the “children” of this quotation. By calling them “small children”, Haber is saying that they cannot be trusted with advanced technology because they lack foresight and do not think about the consequences of their actions.
If Haber had known that his own scientific achievements would later be used to develop a weapon for use on civilians, he may have regretted the enthusiasm with which he approached his work. He and those working with him could be said to have been more interested in seeing if they could advance previous discoveries than perhaps considering whether or not they should. As Daniel Charles, author of Master Mind, said, “The spirit of innovation cannot be stamped out – nor should it – but it can be directed and controlled by equally powerful human impulses of responsibility and love.” 4 Still, it is true that other than the few ambiguous pieces of information used in this paper, there is no proof that Haber regretted what part he personally played in developing chemical warfare, or even that he ever seriously questioned it. As such, many of the questions we raised rhetorically in our introduction cannot be factually answered; instead, we invite readers to draw their own conclusions.
To this day, scholars are still debating the morality of Haber‟s life, both personal and professional. His life at the end was perhaps less than ideal, given that the country he once loved so passionately, which had once cared more about what its people could do than who their parents were, had now turned its back on him. The betrayal he was sure to have felt must have been incredibly difficult to bear. Still, through his work at the
- 72 - institute and through those who sympathized with him, he touched so many other lives that the effects are still being felt. Eloquently put by Wilhelm Schlenk in a startlingly personal obituary for Haber, “„The times pass and we pass with them.‟ This was one of the most beautiful expressions that Fritz Haber used shortly before our last farewell. Certainly he has gone from this world. But he has not completely left us; for „A master who his best did give, / lives and acts beyond the grave!‟” 5
- 73 - Notes
1. Stoltzenberg, Dietrich. Fritz Haber: Chemist, Nobel Laureate, German, Jew. Philadelphia, PA: Chemical Heritage Press, 2004, page 202.
2. Charles, Daniel. Master Mind: The Rise and Fall of Fritz Haber, the Nobel Laureate Who Launched the Age of Chemical Warfare. New York, NY: HarperCollins Publishers, 2005, page 261.
3. Ibid, 264.
4.
Ibid.
5. Stoltzenberg, Chemist, Nobel Laureate, 306.
- 74 - Bibliography Charles, Daniel. Master Mind: The Rise and Fall of Fritz Haber, the Nobel Laureate Who Launched the Age of Chemical Warfare. New York, NY: HarperCollins Publishers, 2005.
Duffy, Michael. "Primary Documents: Treaty of Versailles, 28 June 1919." The War to End All Wars. 28 10 2001. 16 Sep 2008
Friedrich, Bretislav. "Fritz
Haber (1868-1934)." FHI-Berlin. 5 Oct 2008 berlin.mpg.de/~brich/Friedrich_HaberArticle.pdf>.
Goran, Morris. The Story of Fritz Haber. Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 1967. Haber, Fritz. Fritz Haber Briefe an Richard Willstätter, translation by David Dollenmayer and Elizabeth Ray. Berlin, Germany: Verlag für Wissenschafts- und Regionalgeschichte, 1995.
Hager, Thomas. The Alchemy of Air: A Jewish Genius, a Doomed Tycoon, and the Scientific Discovery That Fed the World but Fueled the Rise of Hitler. New York, NY: Harmony Books, 2008.
Lehrer, Steven. Wannsee House and the Holocaust. Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Company, Incorporated Publishers, 2000.
Manchester, Keith L.. "Man of Destiny: The Life and Work of Fritz Haber." Endeavor 26. 2. 01 06 2002. 24 Jan 2009. 8&_user=74021&_rdoc=1&_fmt=&_orig=search&_sort=d&view=c&_acct=C000005878&_ version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=74021&md5=7eadd86fa0da7027f583c6e061a1ec49>.
Ryder, A. J.. Twenieth-Century Germany: From Bismarck to Brandt. New York, NY: Columbia University Press, 1973.
Stern, Fritz. Einstein's German World. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1999. Stoltzenberg, Dietrich. Fritz Haber: Chemist, Nobel Laureate, German, Jew. Philadelphia, PA: Chemical Heritage Press, 2004. Wallace, Ian. German Monitor: Fractured Biographies. New York, NY: Rodopi, 2003. Yüklə 415,83 Kb. Dostları ilə paylaş:
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