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Clara Helene Immerwahr (; 21 June 1870 – 2 May 1915) was a German chemist. She was the first German woman to be awarded a doctorate in chemistry from the University of Breslau, and is credited with being a pacifism as well as a "heroine of the women's rights movement". Germans rediscover First World War heroine in new TV drama The Telegraph, 29 May 2014 From 1901 until her death from suicide in 1915, she was married to the eventual Nobel Prize-winning chemist Fritz Haber.
Immerwahr studied at the University of Breslau, attaining her degree and a PhD in chemistry under Richard Abegg in 1900, after 8 semesters of study (two more than required for male doctoral candidates). 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. 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 "Unser erster weiblicher Doktor" ("our first female doctor"). A few months after obtaining her degree, she gave a public lecture entitled "Chemistry and Physics in the Household."
Due to gender role 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, Translate 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, Fritz Haber became a staunch supporter of the German military effort and played an important role in the development of Chemical warfare (particularly ). His efforts would culminate in his supervision of the first successful deployment of a weapon of mass destruction in military history, in Flanders, 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.
Her suicide remained largely unreported. 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." 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, resulting in over 67,000 casualties.Albarelli, H.P. (2009). A terrible mistake : the murder of Frank Olson, and the CIA's secret cold war experiments (1st ed.). Walterville, OR: Trine Day. . Retrieved 9 September 2014.Hobbes, Nicholas (2003). Essential Militaria. Atlantic Books; .
Immerwahr's ashes were moved from Dahlem to Basel and buried together with Haber's after his death in 1934. Subsequently, their son Hermann Haber emigrated to the United States, where he died of suicide in 1946.
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