Marriage and Work
Immerwahr married Haber in 1901. Due to societal expectations 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 without recognition, translating his works into English. In 1902 she gave birth to Hermann Haber (1902–1946) the only child of that marriage.
Confiding in a friend, Immerwahr bemoaned her subservient role:
It has always been my attitude that a life has only been worth living if one has made full use of all one's abilities and tried to live out every kind of experience human life has to offer. It was under that impulse, among other things, that I decided to get married at that time... The life I got from it was very brief...and the main reasons for that was Fritz's oppressive way of putting himself first in our home and marriage, so that a less ruthlessly self-assertive personality was simply destroyed.During World War I, Haber became a staunch supporter of the German military effort and played an important role in the development of chemical weapons (particularly poison gases). His efforts would culminate in his supervision of the first gas attack in military history in Flanders, Belgium on April 22, 1915. Haber thereafter returned home to Berlin.
Read more about this topic: Clara Immerwahr
Famous quotes containing the words marriage and/or work:
“Who of us is mature enough for offspring before the offspring themselves arrive? The value of marriage is not that adults produce children but that children produce adults.”
—Peter De Vries (20th century)
“... married women work and neglect their children because the duties of the homemaker become so depreciated that women feel compelled to take a job in order to hold the respect of the community. It is one thing if women work, as many of them must, to help support the family. It is quite another thing—it is destructive of woman’s freedom—if society forces her out of the home and into the labor market in order that she may respect herself and gain the respect of others.”
—Agnes E. Meyer (1887–1970)