documents that had survived. We therefore have to thank Jaenicke for
assembling the critical mass of biographical evidence upon which our
understanding of Fritz Haber is based. The interpretation of the evidence
however was ultimately beyond him and by the late 1980s he delivered all his
files to the archives of the Max Planck Society for the Advancement of
Science in Berlin
5 who in turn made them available to researchers. These files
were a ‘treasure trove’ for historians and they were subsequently used to build
biographies of Haber and none more carefully than Vaclav Smil,
6 Daniel
Charles,
6 Dietrich Stoltzenberg
6 and Margit Szöllösi-Janze of the University
of Munich, whose monumental, Fritz Haber 1868–1934: Eine Biographie
6
remains—for this author at least—the seminal work.
7 This Chapter however
adds little new of Haber, my brief story of his early years simply serves to
‘contextualise’ aspects of Le Rossignol’s life.
2.2 Young Fritz Jakob
Fritz Jakob Haber was born in Breslau,
8 Prussia on 09 December 1868 into a
large, close, Jewish family whose provenance could be traced back to the
beginning of the 1800s. Fritz was the only child of first cousins Paula and
Siegfried who, when they were young, had lived in the same house; a chaotic
and noisy residence filled with fifteen children. Fritz’s birth however proved
too much for Paula who never recovered. She died just three weeks later on
New Year’s Eve. Twenty-seven-year-old Siegfried Haber was devastated by
Paula’s death, for many years later he could hardly face the world and threw
himself into building up his business becoming a wealthy merchant dealing in
dyes and pharmaceuticals with far-reaching business connections. It was seven
years after Paula’s death before Siegfried allowed himself to love again marrying nineteen-year-old Hedwig Hamburger. Three daughters followed in the
next five years. The female element in Fritz’s childhood was therefore provided by his step-sisters and by Hedwig who—according to Charles
6
—was a
loving mother. Siegfried however found it difficult to accept the son whose
birth had caused so much pain, preferring instead to dote upon his daughters.
Like Robert Le Rossignol, Fritz Haber received a largely classical education.
At the St. Elizabeth Gymnasium, an elite high school closely affiliated with
the largest protestant church in Breslau—half of whose pupils were Jewish
9
—
Fritz grew into an energetic and talkative student, but not a spectacularly
2 Fritz Haber and Karlsruhe
39
assembling the critical mass of biographical evidence upon which our
understanding of Fritz Haber is based. The interpretation of the evidence
however was ultimately beyond him and by the late 1980s he delivered all his
files to the archives of the Max Planck Society for the Advancement of
Science in Berlin
5 who in turn made them available to researchers. These files
were a ‘treasure trove’ for historians and they were subsequently used to build
biographies of Haber and none more carefully than Vaclav Smil,
6 Daniel
Charles,
6 Dietrich Stoltzenberg
6 and Margit Szöllösi-Janze of the University
of Munich, whose monumental, Fritz Haber 1868–1934: Eine Biographie
6
remains—for this author at least—the seminal work.
7 This Chapter however
adds little new of Haber, my brief story of his early years simply serves to
‘contextualise’ aspects of Le Rossignol’s life.
2.2 Young Fritz Jakob
Fritz Jakob Haber was born in Breslau,
8 Prussia on 09 December 1868 into a
large, close, Jewish family whose provenance could be traced back to the
beginning of the 1800s. Fritz was the only child of first cousins Paula and
Siegfried who, when they were young, had lived in the same house; a chaotic
and noisy residence filled with fifteen children. Fritz’s birth however proved
too much for Paula who never recovered. She died just three weeks later on
New Year’s Eve. Twenty-seven-year-old Siegfried Haber was devastated by
Paula’s death, for many years later he could hardly face the world and threw
himself into building up his business becoming a wealthy merchant dealing in
dyes and pharmaceuticals with far-reaching business connections. It was seven
years after Paula’s death before Siegfried allowed himself to love again marrying nineteen-year-old Hedwig Hamburger. Three daughters followed in the
next five years. The female element in Fritz’s childhood was therefore provided by his step-sisters and by Hedwig who—according to Charles
6
—was a
loving mother. Siegfried however found it difficult to accept the son whose
birth had caused so much pain, preferring instead to dote upon his daughters.
Like Robert Le Rossignol, Fritz Haber received a largely classical education.
At the St. Elizabeth Gymnasium, an elite high school closely affiliated with
the largest protestant church in Breslau—half of whose pupils were Jewish
9
—
Fritz grew into an energetic and talkative student, but not a spectacularly
2 Fritz Haber and Karlsruhe
39