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Speaker 1: dot com introducing the Fountain Road Files, a new horror
Speaker 1: fiction podcast from Unexplained creator Richard mc clean smith. In
Speaker 1: March twenty twenty, twenty seven year old cafe worker Ben
Speaker 1: Williams began recording an audio diary of the coronavirus pandemic.
Speaker 1: Two months later, he was found dead in the South
Speaker 1: London flat where he was spending lockdown alone, or so
Speaker 1: he thought. Search the Fountain Road Files wherever you get
Speaker 1: your podcasts, and for more information go to the Fountain
Speaker 1: Road Files dot com. Welcome to Unexplained Extra with me
Speaker 1: Richard mc clean smith, where for the weeks in between episodes,
Speaker 1: we look at stories and ideas that, for one reason
Speaker 1: or other, didn't make it into the previous show. In
Speaker 1: the last episode, The Unceasing Cloud, we tracked the inadvertent
Speaker 1: consequences of Alexander von Humboldt's introduction of guano to Europe,
Speaker 1: from the subsequent explosion of international crop yields to the
Speaker 1: discovery of the harbor Bosch process, to arrive eventually at
Speaker 1: a world forever haunted by the specter of chemical warfare.
Speaker 1: As for the Phantom Gasser of Badatort County, the jury
Speaker 1: remains out as to whether the really had been a
Speaker 1: mystery perpetrator terrorizing the community, or whether in fact it
Speaker 1: had been gripped by a kind of mass hysteria instead,
Speaker 1: or perhaps even a mixture of the two. At the
Speaker 1: center of it all, however, was the looming and polarizing
Speaker 1: presence of chemist Fritz Harbor, with the episode in danger
Speaker 1: of becoming too long for its own good. There was
Speaker 1: much about Harbor's life that I wasn't able to include,
Speaker 1: not least of all the inspiring and tragic story of
Speaker 1: Harbor's first wife, Clara Imovar. Clara Imovar was born in
Speaker 1: eighteen seventy in a small town near Breslau in what
Speaker 1: used to be the Kingdom of Prussia. With the unification
Speaker 1: of Germany in eighteen seventy one, Breslau experienced an explosion
Speaker 1: of culture and industry, becoming the sixth largest city in
Speaker 1: the German Empire as its population tripled between eighteen seventy
Speaker 1: and nineteen hundred. Being the daughter of a wealthy chemist
Speaker 1: who was also the owner of a textile store in Breslau,
Speaker 1: Clara had spent much of her time in the city,
Speaker 1: inspired by its newfound dynamism and dreaming of becoming a
Speaker 1: scientist in her own right. However, such were the social
Speaker 1: constraints of the day, the education offered to women was
Speaker 1: of a somewhat different variety to that offered to men.
Speaker 1: The Women's College, as it was known, provided only what
Speaker 1: women were thought to need by the people power at
Speaker 1: the time, preparing them for what was considered to be
Speaker 1: their natural purpose as housewives, mothers, and companions of their husbands.
Speaker 1: There was also the teacher's Seminary, in which you could
Speaker 1: study to become a teacher at the women's and girls' schools.
Speaker 1: Gaining employment as a science professional, however, was an impossibility
Speaker 1: for the simple reason that women were prohibited from officially
Speaker 1: enrolling at university. Without an official degree, you could not
Speaker 1: be employed. Women could, however, attend university classes in a
Speaker 1: guest capacity, provided they passed an entrance exam for which
Speaker 1: they were unlikely to have ever had the education for,
Speaker 1: and even if they could pass the exam, permission to
Speaker 1: attend would still require the gaining of approval from the
Speaker 1: faculty and the support of a professor from the university. Undeterred,
Speaker 1: thanks to the support of her parents, Clara was able
Speaker 1: to enroll in private lessons and successfully passed the un
Speaker 1: Versity of Breslau's exam in eighteen ninety six at the
Speaker 1: age of twenty six. Later that year, she enrolled as
Speaker 1: a guest student at Breslau. Clara was taken under the
Speaker 1: wing of chemist Richard Arbek, who cared little for her
Speaker 1: guest status, preferring to treat her as if she were
Speaker 1: an official student like anyone else. It was through Arbek
Speaker 1: that Clara was first introduced to his friend and fellow
Speaker 1: lecturer Fritz Harbor, who was working at the University of
Speaker 1: Karl's Brewer. The pair wouldn't meet again for some time.
Speaker 1: In the following years, Arbek would become an important confidante
Speaker 1: of Clara's, to whom she would regularly write to express
Speaker 1: her frustration with the sexist attitudes she regularly came up
Speaker 1: against in the laboratory. Nonetheless, Clara persevered, and with Arbek
Speaker 1: as her PhD supervisor, she graduated with distinction nineteen hundred,
Speaker 1: becoming the first woman ever to receive a doctorate in
Speaker 1: chemistry from the University of Breslau. After graduation, although still
Speaker 1: unable to work, she remained with Arbek as an unofficial
Speaker 1: lab assistant while making a living lecturing on chemistry at
Speaker 1: various women's organizations. With little else like it around at
Speaker 1: the time, Clara's lectures were immensely popular among women, helping
Speaker 1: to popularize science for those who were largely denied access
Speaker 1: to it. Then, in spring nineteen oh one, Clara received
Speaker 1: a letter from Fritz Harbor inviting her to accompany him
Speaker 1: to a conference in Freiburg. As it transpired, Harbor had
Speaker 1: struggled to forget Clara from the moment they had first met,
Speaker 1: and was eager to impress her. At the conference, Harbor
Speaker 1: stunned Clara by proposing to her, which she accepted. Clara
Speaker 1: wrote later that she accepted the proposal almost on a whim,
Speaker 1: due to her belief that you should try and experience
Speaker 1: everything that life had to offer. It was certainly never
Speaker 1: her intention to let her professional career take a back
Speaker 1: seat to what might be expected of her as a wife.
Speaker 1: Some have suggested that she may have envisioned herself and
Speaker 1: Harbor becoming a successful team together, much in the manner
Speaker 1: of Marie and Pierre Curie, who only a few years
Speaker 1: before had announced their discovery of radium to the world.
Speaker 1: In the first few months after moving to Karl's Ruher
Speaker 1: to live with Fritz. Clara did her best to balance
Speaker 1: the housework with attending meetings at Carl's Ruhe University's Chemical
Speaker 1: Society and giving lectures. As the months went by, however,
Speaker 1: this would become increasingly difficult, and with the birth of
Speaker 1: her and Fritz's son, Hermann in nineteen oh two, Clara
Speaker 1: had little option but to put her professional ambitions on
Speaker 1: hold indefinitely, and though she adored and doated on Hermann,
Speaker 1: within a few years Clara was forced to accept that
Speaker 1: her professional ambitions had slipped permanently from her grasp. It was,
Speaker 1: no doubt all the harder to take that while her
Speaker 1: career stagnated, Harbors truly began to flourish. By nineteen ten,
Speaker 1: with Clara only able to watch from the sidelines, Harbor
Speaker 1: had established himself as one of the greatest chemists of
Speaker 1: all time, with his work taking significant precedence over his
Speaker 1: personal life. Before long, Clara and Fritz also began to
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Speaker 1: your first order. In April nineteen ten came a particularly
Speaker 1: tough blow when Clara's friend and mentor, Richard Arbek, was
Speaker 1: killed in a ballooning accident at the age of forty one.
Speaker 1: The following year, she and Fritz moved to Berlin, where
Speaker 1: Harbor established the Wilhelm Institute for Physical Chemistry and electro
Speaker 1: Chemistry and was made director of the Kaiser Wilhelm Society,
Speaker 1: the leading German science organization of the day. With the
Speaker 1: outbreak of war a few years later, Harbor and his
Speaker 1: team were drafted in by the German military to begin
Speaker 1: the process of turning chemicals into viable weapons. Harbor's transition
Speaker 1: from pioneering chemist to weapons manufacturer did not sit well
Speaker 1: with Clara, having already been uncomfortable with it morally. After
Speaker 1: seeing first hand the gruesome effect his experiments were having
Speaker 1: on the animals he used for testing, she became positively
Speaker 1: repulsed by the whole venture. The realities of war were
Speaker 1: brought home even more starkly when, on December fourteenth, nineteen fourteen,
Speaker 1: Otto Saka, a close friend of the Harbors and a
Speaker 1: colleague of Fritz's the institute, was experimenting with kacadial chlorite
Speaker 1: when it exploded in his face, killing him instantly. Clara,
Speaker 1: who'd been in the laboratory at the time, watched it
Speaker 1: happen in front of her, though the exact degree to
Speaker 1: which Clara opposed her husband's new line of work has
Speaker 1: been questioned by many. Some say she often pleaded with
Speaker 1: him again and again not to work on gas warfare. Harbor, however,
Speaker 1: felt his duty was ultimately to his country, not his family,
Speaker 1: and that was what his country needed of him. Harbor
Speaker 1: also famously saw no ethical difference between killing with gas
Speaker 1: and killing with the bullet. Five months later, in April
Speaker 1: nineteen fifteen, Clara and the rest of the world woke
Speaker 1: to the news of that first devastating application of her
Speaker 1: husband's weapon at the pre salient on the Western Front.
Speaker 1: Harbor return earned from the front a week later, and
Speaker 1: on the first of May, a day before he was
Speaker 1: due to ship out again to supervise another attack, this
Speaker 1: time on the Eastern Front. A gathering was held at
Speaker 1: his and Clara's home to celebrate the success of the
Speaker 1: gas attack. But attached, Clara could only watch on as
Speaker 1: those in attendance lavished praise on Harbor and congratulated him
Speaker 1: on his invaluable work for the war effort. It isn't
Speaker 1: known exactly what happened between the couple later that night,
Speaker 1: only that at some point Harbor retired to bed alone
Speaker 1: after taking two sleeping pills, which he'd become increasingly dependent on.
Speaker 1: By the time he woke up the following morning, Clara
Speaker 1: was dead at some point. It's believed that after sitting
Speaker 1: down in her study to compose a series of letters
Speaker 1: to friends and family, she took her husband's service revolver
Speaker 1: and headed out into the garden with it. After firing
Speaker 1: off test shot, she aimed the gun at her heart
Speaker 1: and pulled the trigger. She was found dying moments later
Speaker 1: by her twelve year old son Hermann. What is clear
Speaker 1: from letters of acquaintances that being the reluctant housewife that
Speaker 1: Clara was, she was considered somewhat of an outlier by
Speaker 1: many of those in her and Fritz's social circle, criticized
Speaker 1: by some for not accepting her lot, picked on by
Speaker 1: others because she didn't make more of an effort to
Speaker 1: be more presentable. The suicide notes, if she did write them,
Speaker 1: have never been published, leaving many to speculate as to
Speaker 1: what her exact frame of mind was that night. Whether
Speaker 1: her death was due to the devastation of what her
Speaker 1: husband had wrought on the battlefield or merely on her life,
Speaker 1: will never be entirely known. It's been speculated that Harbor
Speaker 1: was having an affair at the time with Charlotte Nathan,
Speaker 1: the manager of newly established political club, and that Clara
Speaker 1: had walked in on them at the celebration dinner. This
Speaker 1: was later denied by Nathan after learning about his wife's
Speaker 1: death in the morning. By the afternoon, Fritz Harbor was
Speaker 1: already on his way to the Eastern Front. Some claim
Speaker 1: he made attempts to stay at home with his son,
Speaker 1: only to be denied permissioned by the military, but this
Speaker 1: has not been verified. Two years later, in nineteen seventeen,
Speaker 1: he married Charlotte Nathan, with whom he would go on
Speaker 1: to have two more children. As is well documented, Harbor
Speaker 1: would also go on to develop even more lethal chemical weapons,
Speaker 1: and at the war's end was controversially awarded the Nobel
Speaker 1: Prize for his contribution to the Harbor Bosch process. Though
Speaker 1: many would question his character, few could deny his genius.
Speaker 1: The following year, Harbor, through his institute, founded the German
Speaker 1: Society for Pest Control also known as de Gesh, a
Speaker 1: state controlled institution for the development of pesticides but also
Speaker 1: the development of chemical weapons. It was there in the
Speaker 1: nineteen twenties that scientists experimenting with methyl cinoformate developed a
Speaker 1: lethal pesticide that released hydrogen cyanide when exposed to water
Speaker 1: and heat. Cyclone, as it was called, was soon banned
Speaker 1: due to its lethality. Despite his patriotism and all he'd
Speaker 1: done for his country during the war, things would become
Speaker 1: increasingly difficult for Harbor when Adolf Hitler and his National
Speaker 1: German Socialist Workers Party came to power. Harbor was born
Speaker 1: into a Jewish family, and despite his conversion to Christianity
Speaker 1: in the eighteen nineties, it was not enough to save
Speaker 1: him from the rising tide of antisemitism. In the nineteen thirties,
Speaker 1: Harbor was ordered to dismiss all Jewish personnel from his
Speaker 1: Kaiser Wilhelm Institute. Though Harbor was entitled to remain as
Speaker 1: director of the institute, he refused to do so, delaying
Speaker 1: the sacking of his staff just long enough for them
Speaker 1: to find somewhere to go before withdrawing himself. Harbor, along
Speaker 1: with Charlotte and his three children, moved to England, where
Speaker 1: he worked for a brief time at Cambridge University. In
Speaker 1: nineteen thirty three, he was invited by him Vatesman, who
Speaker 1: would become the first president of Israel to work in
Speaker 1: what was known by some as mandatory Palestine at the time.
Speaker 1: Harbor left for his new job in January the following year,
Speaker 1: but would never complete the journey, dying on route to
Speaker 1: Palestine of heart failure at the age of sixty five.
Speaker 1: After the banning of Zyclon developed under Harbor's guidance in
Speaker 1: the nineteen twenties, chemists Vaulter heat and Bruno Tesh began
Speaker 1: working on a revised version of the product, seeking to
Speaker 1: distinguish it from the earlier model. It was renamed Cyclon B.
Speaker 1: In August nineteen forty one, Karl Fritz, the SS, chief
Speaker 1: in charge of prisoners at Auschwitz Concentration Camp, intrigued by
Speaker 1: the effectiveness of Cyclon B at delousing the clothes of
Speaker 1: the prisoners, began experimenting with it for use as a
Speaker 1: possible human extermination device. In September that year, he tested
Speaker 1: it out on six hundred Russian prisoners of war and
Speaker 1: two hundred and fifty six prisoners in the basement of
Speaker 1: Auschwitz Block eleven. Camp Commandant Rudolph Hears was so impressed
Speaker 1: by the results, Cyclon B GAS was adopted as the
Speaker 1: main method of killing at Auschwitz. Over the course of
Speaker 1: the next few years, Cyclon B would be used to
Speaker 1: kill up of one point one million, mostly Jewish victims
Speaker 1: of the Holocaust, including members of Harbour's own extended family.
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Speaker 1: All elements have Unexplained, including the show's music, are produced
Speaker 1: by me Richard McClain smith. Please subscribe and rate the
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