S05 Episode 2 Extra: Breaking Bonds

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in your shoes. Get to know the wool runners, pipers and loungers at Alberts dot com. That's alll bi rds dot com introducing the Fountain Road Files, a new horror fiction podcast from Unexplained creator Richard mc clean smith. In March twenty twenty, twenty seven year old cafe worker Ben Williams began recording an audio diary of the coronavirus pandemic. Two months later, he was found dead in the South London flat where he was spending lockdown alone, or so

he thought. Search the Fountain Road Files wherever you get your podcasts, and for more information go to the Fountain Road Files dot com. Welcome to Unexplained Extra with me Richard mc clean smith, where for the weeks in between episodes, we look at stories and ideas that, for one reason

or other, didn't make it into the previous show. In the last episode, The Unceasing Cloud, we tracked the inadvertent consequences of Alexander von Humboldt's introduction of guano to Europe, from the subsequent explosion of international crop yields to the discovery of the harbor Bosch process, to arrive eventually at a world forever haunted by the specter of chemical warfare.

As for the Phantom Gasser of Badatort County, the jury remains out as to whether the really had been a mystery perpetrator terrorizing the community, or whether in fact it had been gripped by a kind of mass hysteria instead, or perhaps even a mixture of the two. At the center of it all, however, was the looming and polarizing presence of chemist Fritz Harbor, with the episode in danger

of becoming too long for its own good. There was much about Harbor's life that I wasn't able to include, not least of all the inspiring and tragic story of Harbor's first wife, Clara Imovar. Clara Imovar was born in eighteen seventy in a small town near Breslau in what

used to be the Kingdom of Prussia. With the unification of Germany in eighteen seventy one, Breslau experienced an explosion of culture and industry, becoming the sixth largest city in the German Empire as its population tripled between eighteen seventy and nineteen hundred. Being the daughter of a wealthy chemist who was also the owner of a textile store in Breslau, Clara had spent much of her time in the city, inspired by its newfound dynamism and dreaming of becoming a

scientist in her own right. However, such were the social constraints of the day, the education offered to women was of a somewhat different variety to that offered to men. The Women's College, as it was known, provided only what women were thought to need by the people power at the time, preparing them for what was considered to be their natural purpose as housewives, mothers, and companions of their husbands.

There was also the teacher's Seminary, in which you could study to become a teacher at the women's and girls' schools. Gaining employment as a science professional, however, was an impossibility for the simple reason that women were prohibited from officially enrolling at university. Without an official degree, you could not

be employed. Women could, however, attend university classes in a guest capacity, provided they passed an entrance exam for which they were unlikely to have ever had the education for, and even if they could pass the exam, permission to attend would still require the gaining of approval from the

faculty and the support of a professor from the university. Undeterred, thanks to the support of her parents, Clara was able to enroll in private lessons and successfully passed the un Versity of Breslau's exam in eighteen ninety six at the age of twenty six. Later that year, she enrolled as a guest student at Breslau. Clara was taken under the wing of chemist Richard Arbek, who cared little for her guest status, preferring to treat her as if she were

an official student like anyone else. It was through Arbek that Clara was first introduced to his friend and fellow lecturer Fritz Harbor, who was working at the University of Karl's Brewer. The pair wouldn't meet again for some time. In the following years, Arbek would become an important confidante of Clara's, to whom she would regularly write to express her frustration with the sexist attitudes she regularly came up

against in the laboratory. Nonetheless, Clara persevered, and with Arbek as her PhD supervisor, she graduated with distinction nineteen hundred, becoming the first woman ever to receive a doctorate in chemistry from the University of Breslau. After graduation, although still unable to work, she remained with Arbek as an unofficial lab assistant while making a living lecturing on chemistry at

various women's organizations. With little else like it around at the time, Clara's lectures were immensely popular among women, helping to popularize science for those who were largely denied access to it. Then, in spring nineteen oh one, Clara received a letter from Fritz Harbor inviting her to accompany him to a conference in Freiburg. As it transpired, Harbor had struggled to forget Clara from the moment they had first met, and was eager to impress her. At the conference, Harbor

stunned Clara by proposing to her, which she accepted. Clara wrote later that she accepted the proposal almost on a whim, due to her belief that you should try and experience everything that life had to offer. It was certainly never her intention to let her professional career take a back seat to what might be expected of her as a wife.

Some have suggested that she may have envisioned herself and Harbor becoming a successful team together, much in the manner of Marie and Pierre Curie, who only a few years before had announced their discovery of radium to the world. In the first few months after moving to Karl's Ruher to live with Fritz. Clara did her best to balance the housework with attending meetings at Carl's Ruhe University's Chemical

Society and giving lectures. As the months went by, however, this would become increasingly difficult, and with the birth of her and Fritz's son, Hermann in nineteen oh two, Clara had little option but to put her professional ambitions on hold indefinitely, and though she adored and doated on Hermann, within a few years Clara was forced to accept that her professional ambitions had slipped permanently from her grasp. It was, no doubt all the harder to take that while her

career stagnated, Harbors truly began to flourish. By nineteen ten, with Clara only able to watch from the sidelines, Harbor had established himself as one of the greatest chemists of all time, with his work taking significant precedence over his personal life. Before long, Clara and Fritz also began to drift apart. Care Off is a wellness brand that makes it easy to maintain your health goals with the customized vitamin plan that helps you feel your best to day

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five zero. Once again, that's take care of dot com and enter code unexplained five zero for fifty percent off your first order. In April nineteen ten came a particularly tough blow when Clara's friend and mentor, Richard Arbek, was killed in a ballooning accident at the age of forty one. The following year, she and Fritz moved to Berlin, where Harbor established the Wilhelm Institute for Physical Chemistry and electro Chemistry and was made director of the Kaiser Wilhelm Society,

the leading German science organization of the day. With the outbreak of war a few years later, Harbor and his team were drafted in by the German military to begin the process of turning chemicals into viable weapons. Harbor's transition from pioneering chemist to weapons manufacturer did not sit well with Clara, having already been uncomfortable with it morally. After seeing first hand the gruesome effect his experiments were having on the animals he used for testing, she became positively

repulsed by the whole venture. The realities of war were brought home even more starkly when, on December fourteenth, nineteen fourteen, Otto Saka, a close friend of the Harbors and a colleague of Fritz's the institute, was experimenting with kacadial chlorite when it exploded in his face, killing him instantly. Clara, who'd been in the laboratory at the time, watched it happen in front of her, though the exact degree to which Clara opposed her husband's new line of work has

been questioned by many. Some say she often pleaded with him again and again not to work on gas warfare. Harbor, however, felt his duty was ultimately to his country, not his family, and that was what his country needed of him. Harbor also famously saw no ethical difference between killing with gas

and killing with the bullet. Five months later, in April nineteen fifteen, Clara and the rest of the world woke to the news of that first devastating application of her husband's weapon at the pre salient on the Western Front. Harbor return earned from the front a week later, and on the first of May, a day before he was due to ship out again to supervise another attack, this time on the Eastern Front. A gathering was held at his and Clara's home to celebrate the success of the

gas attack. But attached, Clara could only watch on as those in attendance lavished praise on Harbor and congratulated him on his invaluable work for the war effort. It isn't known exactly what happened between the couple later that night, only that at some point Harbor retired to bed alone after taking two sleeping pills, which he'd become increasingly dependent on. By the time he woke up the following morning, Clara

was dead at some point. It's believed that after sitting down in her study to compose a series of letters to friends and family, she took her husband's service revolver and headed out into the garden with it. After firing off test shot, she aimed the gun at her heart and pulled the trigger. She was found dying moments later

by her twelve year old son Hermann. What is clear from letters of acquaintances that being the reluctant housewife that Clara was, she was considered somewhat of an outlier by many of those in her and Fritz's social circle, criticized by some for not accepting her lot, picked on by others because she didn't make more of an effort to be more presentable. The suicide notes, if she did write them, have never been published, leaving many to speculate as to

what her exact frame of mind was that night. Whether her death was due to the devastation of what her husband had wrought on the battlefield or merely on her life, will never be entirely known. It's been speculated that Harbor was having an affair at the time with Charlotte Nathan, the manager of newly established political club, and that Clara had walked in on them at the celebration dinner. This was later denied by Nathan after learning about his wife's

death in the morning. By the afternoon, Fritz Harbor was already on his way to the Eastern Front. Some claim he made attempts to stay at home with his son, only to be denied permissioned by the military, but this has not been verified. Two years later, in nineteen seventeen, he married Charlotte Nathan, with whom he would go on

to have two more children. As is well documented, Harbor would also go on to develop even more lethal chemical weapons, and at the war's end was controversially awarded the Nobel Prize for his contribution to the Harbor Bosch process. Though many would question his character, few could deny his genius. The following year, Harbor, through his institute, founded the German Society for Pest Control also known as de Gesh, a state controlled institution for the development of pesticides but also

the development of chemical weapons. It was there in the nineteen twenties that scientists experimenting with methyl cinoformate developed a lethal pesticide that released hydrogen cyanide when exposed to water and heat. Cyclone, as it was called, was soon banned due to its lethality. Despite his patriotism and all he'd done for his country during the war, things would become increasingly difficult for Harbor when Adolf Hitler and his National

German Socialist Workers Party came to power. Harbor was born into a Jewish family, and despite his conversion to Christianity in the eighteen nineties, it was not enough to save him from the rising tide of antisemitism. In the nineteen thirties, Harbor was ordered to dismiss all Jewish personnel from his Kaiser Wilhelm Institute. Though Harbor was entitled to remain as director of the institute, he refused to do so, delaying the sacking of his staff just long enough for them

to find somewhere to go before withdrawing himself. Harbor, along with Charlotte and his three children, moved to England, where he worked for a brief time at Cambridge University. In nineteen thirty three, he was invited by him Vatesman, who would become the first president of Israel to work in what was known by some as mandatory Palestine at the time.

Harbor left for his new job in January the following year, but would never complete the journey, dying on route to Palestine of heart failure at the age of sixty five. After the banning of Zyclon developed under Harbor's guidance in the nineteen twenties, chemists Vaulter heat and Bruno Tesh began working on a revised version of the product, seeking to

distinguish it from the earlier model. It was renamed Cyclon B. In August nineteen forty one, Karl Fritz, the SS, chief in charge of prisoners at Auschwitz Concentration Camp, intrigued by the effectiveness of Cyclon B at delousing the clothes of the prisoners, began experimenting with it for use as a possible human extermination device. In September that year, he tested it out on six hundred Russian prisoners of war and two hundred and fifty six prisoners in the basement of

Auschwitz Block eleven. Camp Commandant Rudolph Hears was so impressed by the results, Cyclon B GAS was adopted as the main method of killing at Auschwitz. Over the course of the next few years, Cyclon B would be used to kill up of one point one million, mostly Jewish victims of the Holocaust, including members of Harbour's own extended family. If you enjoy Unexplained and would like to help supporters,

you can now do so via Patreon. To receive access to add three episodes, discount or merchandise, as well as brand new video and audio content exclusive to Patreon members. Just go to patron dot com, forward Slash Unexplained Pod to sign up, or if you'd like to make a one time donation, you can go to Unexplained podcast dot com forward Slash Support. All donations, no matter how large

or small, are greatly appreciated. Unexplained The book and audiobook, featuring ten stories that have never before been covered on the show, is now available to buy worldwide. You can purchase through Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and Waterstones, among other bookstores. All elements have Unexplained, including the show's music, are produced

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