Feinmechanikermeister Hermann Lütge (1886-1970)

Hermann Lütge was the workshop manager at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Physical Chemistry and Electrochemistry from 1913 to 1933. He developed the experimental model for the Haber-Bosch process of ammonia synthesis. This enabled the production of artificial fertilizers and gunpowder, which was more of a curse than a blessing during World War I. He later describes the horrors of war with great sympathy for Haber’s wife, Clara Immerwahr, who shot herself with her husband’s army revolver after his use of poison gas in Ypres, Belgium, out of despair over her husband’s war crimes, as he developed not only mustard gas but also Cyclon, the poison gas used in the Holocaust. Hermann Lütge’s life is traced, intertwined with that of the Haber family. It includes his own accounts from his youth, professional life, and the Nazi takeover of the Kaiser Wilhelm Society, later known as the Max Planck Society, which had eagerly submitted to Hitler and continued the brown era long after 1945. Finally, the life of Clara Immerwahr is illuminated under Fritz Haber’s dictation, and the claims of brown institute professors are refuted, asserting that she did not leave because of Haber’s harshness and warlike tendencies, but due to endogenous depression.