FRITZ HABER -- a Nobel laureate in chemistry, a friend of Albert Einstein, a German Jew and World War I hero -- may be the most important scientist you have never heard of. The Haber-Bosch process, which he invented at the turn of the twentieth century, revolutionized agriculture by converting nitrogen to fertilizer in quantities massive enough to feed the world. The invention has become an essential pillar for life on earth; some two billion people on our planet could not survive without it. Yet this same process supplied the German military with explosives during World War I, and Haber orchestrated Germany's use of an entirely new weapon -- poison gas. Eventually, Haber's efforts led to Zyklon B, the gas later used to kill millions -- including Haber's own relatives -- in Nazi concentration camps.
Haber is the patron saint of guns and butter, a scientist whose discoveries transformed the way we produce food and fight wars. His legacy is filled with contradictions, as was his personality. For some, he was a benefactor of humanity and devoted friend. For others, he was a war criminal, possessed by raw ambition. An intellectual gunslinger, enamored of technical progress and driven by patriotic devotion to Germany, he was instrumental in the scientific work that inadvertently supported the Nazi cause; a Jew and a German patriot, he was at once an enabler of the Nazi regime and its victim.
Master Mind is a thought-provoking biography of this controversial scientist, a modern Faust who personifies the paradox of science, its ability to create and to destroy. It offers a complete chronicle of his tumultuous and ultimately tragic life, from his childhood and rise to prominence in the heady days of the German Empire to his disgrace and exile at the hands of the Nazis; from early decades as the hero who eliminated the threat of starvation to his lingering legacy as a villain whose work led to the demise of millions.
Young Fritz
He was a patriot, even more extreme than I was. He was thirteen years older. The influence of time and surroundings can't be denied.
-- Nobel laureate James Franck,
speaking about Fritz Haber in 1958
Raise a bloody curtain on the year 1871. German armies encircle and capture tens of thousands of French soldiers along the border with Belgium. Napoleon III, emperor of France, surrenders. Princes from Bavaria, Württemberg, Baden, and many other German states gather in the court of their enemy, at the palace of Versailles near Paris. They proclaim Prussia's King Wilhelm I emperor of a new German Reich. Germany unites; a popular dream is fulfilled. A fever of exultation sweeps the nation.
A few pessimistic voices -- a tiny minority -- warn of perils to come. Friedrich Nietzsche, still a young professor of classical languages, writes sourly of the "evil and perilous consequences" of wars, especially ones that have ended in victory. He complains about the delusion that German culture and civilization have triumphed, rather than simply its weapons; this delusion, he warns, was likely to lead to "the extirpation of the German spirit for the benefit of the German empire."
In the Prussian city of Breslau, a young boy bravely faces the camera, perhaps for the first time. He appears to be three or four years old. He wears his finest clothes for this portrait, and fine clothes they are. The buttons on his jacket march upward toward his neck; his hair is neatly parted and combed. He stands stiffly, left hand supporting himself on the seat of an elaborately carved chair that's just a bit taller than he is. His right hand holds the barrel of a toy gun.
The boy carries the name Fritz, the most German of names. It recalls "old Fritz," Frederick the Great, Prussian leader of the previous century.
This Fritz, however, does not appear triumphant. He looks sad and a little bit lost. His eyes are anxious. This is a picture of a motherless child.
Fritz Haber was born into a large and tightly knit Jewish clan. His parents, Paula and Siegfried, were cousins. When Paula and Siegfried were young, their families had even lived in the same house for a time, filling it with the noise and chaos of fifteen children.
Fritz was the couple's first child, arriving on December 9, 1868. It was a hard and painful birth, and Paula never recovered. She died three weeks later, on New Year's Eve.
Siegfried, twenty-seven years old and already a successful dye merchant, was devastated. For years, he could barely face the world. He retreated into his expanding business and, according to one family member, "lived from his memories." It's unclear who cared for his infant son; one of Fritz's many aunts may have taken the boy into her home.
It was seven years before Siegfried Haber found love again. He met and married nineteen-year-old Hedwig Hamburger, noted for her beauty and her talent on the piano. Music and laughter entered the Haber house once again. And children: Three daughters -- Else, Helene, and Frieda -- were born within five years.
By all accounts, Hedwig became a loving stepmother to Fritz, and Fritz returned her affection. Siegfried, on the other hand, doted on his daughters; he never found it within himself to fully love or accept the son whose birth had brought so much sadness.
Fritz grew into a talkative, energetic teenager, an enthusiastic student but not a spectacularly gifted one. He soaked up everything available to an upper-middle-class boy in Breslau: theater, an education heavy in classical philosophy and literature at the elite school known as the Gymnasium, and hours of friendly debate...
