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1:00

introducing the Fountain Road Files,

1:03

a new horror fiction podcast from

1:05

Unexplained creator Richard

1:07

mc clean smith. In

1:10

March twenty twenty, twenty seven

1:12

year old cafe worker Ben Williams

1:14

began recording an audio diary of the

1:16

coronavirus pandemic. Two

1:19

months later, he was found dead

1:21

in the South London flat where he was spending

1:24

lockdown alone, or

1:26

so he thought. Search

1:28

the Fountain Road Files wherever you get your

1:30

podcasts, and for more information go

1:33

to the Fountain Road Files dot

1:35

com.

1:48

Welcome to Unexplained Extra with

1:50

me Richard mc clean smith, where

1:52

for the weeks in between episodes, we look

1:54

at stories and ideas that, for one reason

1:56

or other, didn't make it into the previous

1:58

show. In the last episode,

2:01

The Unceasing Cloud, we

2:03

tracked the inadvertent consequences

2:05

of Alexander von Humboldt's introduction

2:08

of guano to Europe, from

2:10

the subsequent explosion of international

2:12

crop yields to the discovery of

2:14

the harbor Bosch process, to

2:16

arrive eventually at a world forever

2:18

haunted by the specter of chemical

2:21

warfare. As

2:23

for the Phantom Gasser of Badatort County,

2:26

the jury remains out as to whether the

2:28

really had been a mystery perpetrator terrorizing

2:31

the community, or whether in fact

2:33

it had been gripped by a kind of mass hysteria

2:36

instead, or perhaps even

2:38

a mixture of the two. At

2:41

the center of it all, however, was the

2:43

looming and polarizing presence of

2:45

chemist Fritz Harbor, with

2:48

the episode in danger of becoming too

2:50

long for its own good. There was much

2:52

about Harbor's life that I wasn't able to

2:54

include, not least of

2:56

all the inspiring and tragic

2:58

story of Harbor's first wife,

3:01

Clara Imovar. Clara

3:09

Imovar was born in eighteen seventy

3:12

in a small town near Breslau in

3:14

what used to be the Kingdom of Prussia.

3:17

With the unification of Germany in eighteen

3:19

seventy one, Breslau experienced

3:21

an explosion of culture and industry,

3:24

becoming the sixth largest city in the German

3:26

Empire as its population tripled

3:28

between eighteen seventy and nineteen hundred.

3:31

Being the daughter of a wealthy chemist who

3:34

was also the owner of a textile store in

3:36

Breslau, Clara had spent much

3:38

of her time in the city, inspired

3:40

by its newfound dynamism and dreaming

3:42

of becoming a scientist in her own right. However,

3:46

such were the social constraints of the day,

3:49

the education offered to women was of a somewhat

3:51

different variety to that offered to men.

3:55

The Women's College, as it was known, provided

3:57

only what women were thought to need by the people

4:00

power at the time, preparing

4:02

them for what was considered to be their natural

4:04

purpose as housewives, mothers,

4:06

and companions of their husbands. There

4:10

was also the teacher's Seminary, in which

4:12

you could study to become a teacher at the women's

4:14

and girls' schools. Gaining

4:17

employment as a science professional, however,

4:19

was an impossibility for the simple

4:21

reason that women were prohibited from officially

4:24

enrolling at university. Without

4:26

an official degree, you could not be employed.

4:30

Women could, however, attend university

4:32

classes in a guest capacity,

4:35

provided they passed an entrance exam for

4:37

which they were unlikely to have ever had

4:39

the education for, and even

4:41

if they could pass the exam, permission

4:44

to attend would still require the

4:46

gaining of approval from the faculty and

4:48

the support of a professor from the university.

4:52

Undeterred, thanks to the support

4:54

of her parents, Clara was able to

4:56

enroll in private lessons and successfully

4:59

passed the un Versity of Breslau's exam

5:01

in eighteen ninety six at the age of

5:03

twenty six. Later that

5:06

year, she enrolled as a guest student

5:15

at Breslau. Clara was taken

5:17

under the wing of chemist Richard Arbek, who

5:20

cared little for her guest status, preferring

5:22

to treat her as if she were an official student

5:24

like anyone else. It

5:27

was through Arbek that Clara was first introduced

5:29

to his friend and fellow lecturer Fritz

5:31

Harbor, who was working at the University

5:34

of Karl's Brewer. The

5:36

pair wouldn't meet again for some time. In

5:39

the following years, Arbek would

5:42

become an important confidante of Clara's,

5:44

to whom she would regularly write to express

5:46

her frustration with the sexist attitudes

5:49

she regularly came up against in the laboratory.

5:52

Nonetheless, Clara persevered,

5:55

and with Arbek as her PhD supervisor,

5:58

she graduated with distinction nineteen

6:00

hundred, becoming the first woman

6:02

ever to receive a doctorate in chemistry

6:04

from the University of Breslau. After

6:08

graduation, although still unable

6:10

to work, she remained with Arbek

6:12

as an unofficial lab assistant while

6:15

making a living lecturing on chemistry

6:17

at various women's organizations. With

6:20

little else like it around at the time, Clara's

6:23

lectures were immensely popular among women,

6:25

helping to popularize science for those

6:27

who were largely denied access to it.

6:31

Then, in spring nineteen oh one, Clara

6:34

received a letter from Fritz Harbor inviting

6:37

her to accompany him to a conference in Freiburg.

6:40

As it transpired, Harbor had

6:42

struggled to forget Clara from the moment they

6:44

had first met, and was eager

6:46

to impress her. At

6:48

the conference, Harbor stunned Clara

6:51

by proposing to her, which

6:53

she accepted. Clara

6:55

wrote later that she accepted the proposal

6:58

almost on a whim, due to her belief

7:00

that you should try and experience everything

7:02

that life had to offer. It

7:05

was certainly never her intention to let her

7:07

professional career take a back seat

7:09

to what might be expected of her as a wife.

7:13

Some have suggested that she may have envisioned

7:15

herself and Harbor becoming a successful

7:17

team together, much in the manner

7:19

of Marie and Pierre Curie,

7:22

who only a few years before had

7:24

announced their discovery of radium to the world.

7:28

In the first few months after moving

7:30

to Karl's Ruher to live with Fritz. Clara

7:32

did her best to balance the housework with

7:35

attending meetings at Carl's Ruhe University's

7:37

Chemical Society and giving lectures.

7:41

As the months went by, however, this

7:43

would become increasingly difficult, and

7:46

with the birth of her and Fritz's son, Hermann

7:48

in nineteen oh two, Clara had

7:50

little option but to put her professional ambitions

7:53

on hold indefinitely, and

7:56

though she adored and doated on Hermann,

7:58

within a few years Clara was forced

8:01

to accept that her professional ambitions

8:03

had slipped permanently from her grasp.

8:06

It was, no doubt all the harder to take that

8:09

while her career stagnated, Harbors

8:11

truly began to flourish.

8:14

By nineteen ten, with Clara only

8:16

able to watch from the sidelines, Harbor

8:18

had established himself as one of the greatest

8:21

chemists of all time, with his work

8:23

taking significant precedence over his

8:25

personal life. Before

8:28

long, Clara and Fritz also

8:30

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April nineteen ten came a particularly

9:52

tough blow when Clara's friend

9:54

and mentor, Richard Arbek, was

9:56

killed in a ballooning accident at the age

9:58

of forty one. The following

10:00

year, she and Fritz moved to Berlin,

10:03

where Harbor established the Wilhelm Institute

10:06

for Physical Chemistry and electro Chemistry

10:09

and was made director of the Kaiser

10:11

Wilhelm Society, the leading

10:13

German science organization of the day.

10:16

With the outbreak of war a few years later,

10:19

Harbor and his team were drafted in by

10:21

the German military to begin the process

10:23

of turning chemicals into viable weapons.

10:27

Harbor's transition from pioneering chemist

10:30

to weapons manufacturer did

10:32

not sit well with Clara,

10:34

having already been uncomfortable with it morally.

10:37

After seeing first hand the gruesome

10:39

effect his experiments were having on the

10:41

animals he used for testing, she

10:44

became positively repulsed by the whole

10:46

venture. The realities

10:48

of war were brought home even more

10:50

starkly when, on December fourteenth,

10:53

nineteen fourteen, Otto

10:56

Saka, a close friend of the Harbors

10:58

and a colleague of Fritz's the institute,

11:01

was experimenting with kacadial chlorite

11:03

when it exploded in his face, killing

11:06

him instantly. Clara,

11:09

who'd been in the laboratory at the time, watched

11:12

it happen in front of her, though

11:15

the exact degree to which Clara opposed

11:17

her husband's new line of work has been

11:20

questioned by many. Some say

11:22

she often pleaded with him again and

11:24

again not to work on gas

11:26

warfare. Harbor, however,

11:29

felt his duty was ultimately to his country,

11:32

not his family, and that was

11:34

what his country needed of him.

11:37

Harbor also famously saw no

11:39

ethical difference between killing with gas

11:42

and killing with the bullet. Five

11:45

months later, in April nineteen

11:48

fifteen, Clara and the rest

11:50

of the world woke to the news of that

11:52

first devastating application of

11:54

her husband's weapon at the pre salient

11:57

on the Western Front. Harbor

11:59

return earned from the front a week later, and

12:02

on the first of May, a day before

12:04

he was due to ship out again to supervise

12:06

another attack, this time on the

12:08

Eastern Front. A gathering was held

12:10

at his and Clara's home to celebrate

12:12

the success of the gas attack. But

12:15

attached, Clara could only watch on

12:18

as those in attendance lavished praise

12:20

on Harbor and congratulated him

12:22

on his invaluable work for the war effort.

12:26

It isn't known exactly what happened between

12:28

the couple later that night, only

12:31

that at some point Harbor retired

12:33

to bed alone after taking two

12:35

sleeping pills, which he'd become increasingly

12:38

dependent on. By

12:40

the time he woke up the following morning, Clara

12:44

was dead at

12:47

some point. It's believed that after sitting

12:49

down in her study to compose a series

12:51

of letters to friends and family, she

12:54

took her husband's service revolver and

12:56

headed out into the garden with it. After

12:59

firing off test shot, she aimed

13:01

the gun at her heart and pulled the trigger.

13:05

She was found dying moments later by

13:07

her twelve year old son Hermann. What

13:13

is clear from letters of acquaintances

13:15

that being the reluctant housewife that Clara

13:18

was, she was considered somewhat of an

13:20

outlier by many of those in her

13:22

and Fritz's social circle, criticized

13:25

by some for not accepting her lot,

13:27

picked on by others because she didn't

13:30

make more of an effort to be more presentable.

13:34

The suicide notes, if she did write

13:36

them, have never been published, leaving

13:39

many to speculate as to what her exact

13:41

frame of mind was that night. Whether

13:44

her death was due to the devastation of

13:46

what her husband had wrought on the battlefield

13:49

or merely on her life, will never

13:51

be entirely known. It's

13:54

been speculated that Harbor was having

13:56

an affair at the time with Charlotte Nathan,

13:59

the manager of newly established political

14:01

club, and that Clara had walked

14:03

in on them at the celebration dinner. This

14:06

was later denied by Nathan after

14:15

learning about his wife's death in the morning.

14:18

By the afternoon, Fritz Harbor

14:20

was already on his way to the Eastern Front.

14:24

Some claim he made attempts to stay at home

14:26

with his son, only to be denied

14:28

permissioned by the military,

14:30

but this has not been verified. Two

14:33

years later, in nineteen seventeen,

14:36

he married Charlotte Nathan, with whom

14:38

he would go on to have two more children. As

14:42

is well documented, Harbor would

14:44

also go on to develop even more lethal

14:47

chemical weapons, and at the war's

14:49

end was controversially awarded

14:51

the Nobel Prize for his contribution

14:53

to the Harbor Bosch process.

14:56

Though many would question his character, few

14:58

could deny his genius. The

15:01

following year, Harbor, through

15:03

his institute, founded the German Society

15:06

for Pest Control also known

15:08

as de Gesh, a state controlled

15:10

institution for the development of pesticides

15:14

but also the development of chemical weapons.

15:17

It was there in the nineteen twenties that

15:19

scientists experimenting with methyl

15:22

cinoformate developed a lethal

15:24

pesticide that released hydrogen

15:26

cyanide when exposed to water and

15:28

heat. Cyclone,

15:31

as it was called, was soon banned

15:33

due to its lethality. Despite

15:37

his patriotism and all he'd done for

15:39

his country during the war, things

15:41

would become increasingly difficult for Harbor

15:44

when Adolf Hitler and his National German

15:46

Socialist Workers Party came to power.

15:50

Harbor was born into a Jewish family,

15:52

and despite his conversion to Christianity

15:54

in the eighteen nineties, it was not enough

15:57

to save him from the rising tide of antisemitism.

16:01

In the nineteen thirties, Harbor

16:03

was ordered to dismiss all Jewish personnel

16:06

from his Kaiser Wilhelm Institute. Though

16:09

Harbor was entitled to remain as director

16:11

of the institute, he refused to do

16:13

so, delaying the sacking of his staff

16:16

just long enough for them to find somewhere

16:18

to go before withdrawing himself.

16:22

Harbor, along with Charlotte and his three

16:24

children, moved to England, where he worked

16:26

for a brief time at Cambridge University.

16:30

In nineteen thirty three, he was invited

16:32

by him Vatesman, who would become

16:34

the first president of Israel to work

16:36

in what was known by some as mandatory

16:39

Palestine at the time. Harbor

16:42

left for his new job in January the following

16:44

year, but would never complete the journey,

16:47

dying on route to Palestine of

16:49

heart failure at the age of sixty

16:52

five. After

16:55

the banning of Zyclon developed

16:57

under Harbor's guidance in the nineteen twenties,

17:00

chemists Vaulter heat and Bruno Tesh

17:03

began working on a revised version of

17:05

the product, seeking to

17:07

distinguish it from the earlier model. It

17:09

was renamed Cyclon B. In

17:13

August nineteen forty one, Karl

17:16

Fritz, the SS, chief in

17:18

charge of prisoners at Auschwitz Concentration

17:20

Camp, intrigued by the effectiveness

17:23

of Cyclon B at delousing

17:25

the clothes of the prisoners, began

17:27

experimenting with it for use as a possible

17:29

human extermination device. In

17:33

September that year, he tested

17:35

it out on six hundred Russian prisoners

17:37

of war and two hundred and fifty

17:39

six prisoners in the basement of

17:41

Auschwitz Block eleven. Camp

17:45

Commandant Rudolph Hears was

17:47

so impressed by the results, Cyclon

17:50

B GAS was adopted as the main

17:52

method of killing at Auschwitz. Over

17:55

the course of the next few years, Cyclon

17:58

B would be used to kill up of

18:00

one point one million, mostly

18:02

Jewish victims of the Holocaust,

18:05

including members of Harbour's own

18:08

extended family. If

18:15

you enjoy Unexplained and would like to help supporters,

18:17

you can now do so via Patreon. To

18:20

receive access to add three episodes, discount

18:23

or merchandise, as well as brand new video

18:25

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18:27

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18:29

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18:32

to sign up, or if you'd like to

18:34

make a one time donation, you can go

18:36

to Unexplained podcast dot com

18:38

forward Slash Support. All donations,

18:41

no matter how large or small, are greatly

18:43

appreciated. Unexplained The book

18:45

and audiobook, featuring ten stories

18:47

that have never before been covered on the show,

18:50

is now available to buy worldwide.

18:52

You can purchase through Amazon, Barnes and

18:54

Noble, and Waterstones, among other

18:56

bookstores. All elements

18:59

have Unexplained, including the show's music,

19:01

are produced by me Richard McClain smith.

19:04

Please subscribe and rate the show wherever you

19:06

listen to podcasts, and feel free

19:08

to get in touch with any thoughts or ideas

19:10

regarding the stories you've heard on the show. Perhaps

19:13

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19:15

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19:17

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19:20

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