Charlotte Houtermans

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Charlotte Houtermans, née Riefenstahl, with her daughter Giovanna, known as "Bamsi", and her husband Fritz Houtermans in Berlin, 1933

Charlotte Houtermans (born May 24, 1899 in Bielefeld , Germany ; † January 6, 1993 in Northfield , Minnesota , United States ), née Johanne Auguste Charlotte Riefenstahl , also Charlotte Houtermans-Riefenstahl , called "Schnax", was a German-American physical chemist and university professor . She was the first (and third) wife of the German physicist Fritz Houtermans .

family

Charlotte Riefenstahl was the oldest of three children of the Bielefeld editor Friedrich Carl Gustav Riefenstahl (born September 6, 1861 in Königsberg ; February 4, 1919 in Bielefeld) and his wife Margarethe Henriette Elisabeth Charlotte Riefenstahl (born June 2, 1874 in Magdeburg ; † May 9, 1957 in Gadderbaum ), née Worch.

Charlotte Riefenstahl's first marriage to Fritz Houtermans had two children, Giovanna (* 1933 in Berlin), known as "Bamsi", and Jan (* April 11, 1935 in Charkow ). Giovanna Fjelstad-Houtermans graduated from Harvard University and taught as a professor of mathematics in Northfield, Minnesota. Jan Houtermans became a physicist at the University of California in Berkeley, California .

Education

Charlotte Houtermans' admirer Robert Oppenheimer as a doctoral student in Göttingen, 1926/27

After attending school, Charlotte Riefenstahl began studying physics at the Georg-August University in Göttingen in 1922 , with Max Born , Richard Courant , James Franck , David Hilbert , Emmy Noether , Robert Pohl and Carl Runge , among others . In 1926, in a proseminar held by James Franck, she met Fritz Houtermans. During her studies, she is said to have been courted by both her fellow student Robert Oppenheimer and her future husband, who both graduated with her.

" Fritz Houtermans - his nickname was Fisl - and Robert Oppenheimer stood out from other students. They had all the money that they wanted. Fritz Houtermans came from a rich family and Oppenheimer was practically a millionaire. He had family in New York and they had access to money. He could do things like go to Paris for the weekend if he wanted. We all went out together, but it was Oppenheimer and Fisl who bought all the drinks. Robert Oppenheimer was very bright; so much so that eventually his colleagues were happy to see Oppenheimer leave for the US, after he received his PhD under Max Born in 1927. He was starting to ask questions that James Franck could not answer. I was amazed over his knowledge. "

- Charlotte Houtermans

In 1928 she did her doctorate under Gustav Tammann with the dissertation title on the rolling process and recrystallization in silver and gold and the change in electrical resistance in the self-hardening alloys lead-mercury and lead-sodium .

Act

Charlotte Houtermans taught at Vassar College in Poughkeepsie , New York in 1927/28 and 1939/40 at the Physics Institute headed by Edna Carter
Charlotte Houtermans taught at Winthrop College in Rock Hill , South Carolina from 1928/29

She then went to the United States, where she taught in 1927/28 at Vassar College , an elite university , in Poughkeepsie , New York , and was employed as a research assistant. There she first applied to Edna Carter in 1924 . Houtermans became close friends with Carter as a result. This gave her a follow-up job at Winthrop College in Rock Hill , South Carolina .

In 1930, on a trip to the Soviet Union to attend the first All- Union conference of physicists in Odessa , she married her former fellow student Fritz Houtermans on a trip to the Caucasus . Wolfgang Pauli and Rudolf Peierls acted as witnesses . The marriage was then registered in Sukhumi . When they presented the marriage certificate to the registry office in Germany, no one could decipher it because it was written in Abkhazian .

In 1932 she and her husband translated the book by Georgi Antonowitsch Gamow The Construction of the Atomic Nucleus and Radioactivity from the Russian language.

The Houtermans' house was frequented by many scientists who counted themselves among their friends, such as Wolfgang Pauli, Georgi Gamow and Lew Landau from the USSR , Victor Weisskopf from Vienna, Michael Polanyi , his niece Éva Amália Striker and Alexander Weißberg . Long discussions covered history, politics, Marxism , literature and art. At times more than thirty participants met, mostly physicists. Additionally, met Patrick M. Blackett , Maria Goeppert , Igor Tamm from Moscow and Ivan Obreimow from Kharkov added. In his memoirs, Victor Weisskopf raves about these almost weekly evenings. These were jokingly referred to by the participants as “A Little Night Physics”, based on Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's “ night music ”, which is not only appreciated by Germans and Austrians alike .

After the transfer of power to the National Socialists , the SA searched the house in 1933 and her husband was arrested for a short period of time for finding banned writings. The couple then left the German Reich with their baby and emigrated to England, where the three were initially taken in by Patrick Blackett and other physicists near Cambridge . Through the mediation of Pjotr ​​Kapiza , at that time a consultant to Electric and Musical Industries (EMI) in Hayes , Middlesex , with the well-known brand name " His Master's Voice ", her husband got a job in their research department at Isaac Schoenberg . At that time, television system components such as the iconoscope were developed there. However, this work was not the right thing for Fritz Houtermans. Charlotte Houtermans remembered visits from Otto Frisch , Georgi Gamow, Alexander Leipunski , Wolfgang Pauli, Leo Szilard and Fritz Lange during this phase. Recruited by Leipunski, the young family and their baby moved to Kharkov in Soviet Ukraine via Vienna at the end of 1934 , where they visited Fritz Houtermans' mother Else . According to Charlotte Houtermans' memory, Wolfgang Pauli had warned particularly vigorously against this step.

In Kharkov, Charlotte Houtermans, like the other wives of the foreign physicists employed at the institute, was entrusted with translating articles by the Soviet physicists in the magazine of the Soviet Union from Russian into the relevant foreign language.

When her husband was arrested and tortured by the NKVD during the Stalinist purges in December 1937 , despite a number of bureaucratic and financial obstacles, she managed to escape with her two children to the United States via Latvia, Denmark and England. In Copenhagen she and her two small children received extensive help from the Danish physicist and Nobel Prize winner Niels Bohr . The German physicist and Nobel Prize winner Max von Laue immediately traveled to Copenhagen to meet Charlotte Houtermans there. He valued Fritz Houtermans' talent very much and also adored his wife Charlotte.

"To the People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs, Beria , Moscow: As the wife of Dr. Friedrich Houtermans, physicist at the Ukrainian Physics and Technology Institute, I appeal to your generosity to give me information about my husband. I and my children, the younger of whom was born in Kharkov, were separated from him on December 1, 1937, when we were in Moscow and already had our exit visas. My husband was arrested on December 1, 1937 at the Moscow Customs Office; the arrest warrant is number 104 from November 29. I suspect he was taken to Kharkov and later to Kiev , but I have never been given his exact address or the charges against him. I am very concerned about his fate. My husband is well known in scientific circles around the world. When asked about him, and I do so often, I am unable to give a satisfactory explanation for his disappearance. My husband and I have always been grateful for the hospitality shown to us in the USSR and especially for the possibility of scientific work for my husband. Please give me any information about him and his state of health. I am convinced that justice will be done for him and I would be grateful to you for every possible effort to get his release, which I, my children and his elderly mother are waiting for every day. With many thanks, Charlotte Houtermans, 56b Foyle Road Blackheath London, sent on February 12, 1939, 7 a.m. "

- Charlotte Houtermans
Charlotte Houtermans taught at Wellesley College in Wellesley , Massachusetts from 1940

On January 14, 1938, the Foreign Office granted her a six-month residence permit in England. Her life situation with her two small children there proved to be precarious, so that she subsequently considered moving to the USA to see the children's grandmother. Charlotte Houtermans' mother-in-law Elsa Houtermans, who has a doctorate in chemistry and a teacher of German, French and Latin, had, as evidenced by the transcription of her affidavit for Charlotte and her children, emigrated to the United States in April 1935, which, in turn, through an affidavit of former students who had also emigrated had been made possible. The three arrived there in April 1939. Charlotte Houtermans resumed a lectureship at Vassar College and made contact with her former fellow student Robert Oppenheimer for support. Subsequently, from 1940, she taught at Wellesley College in Wellesley , Massachusetts .

Charlotte Houtermans had already contacted the Society for the Protection of Science and Learning , an aid organization for emigrated scientists, from Copenhagen . After her arrival in England, she applied to the Foreign Office and the Ministry of the Interior to obtain a guarantee of entry for Fritz Houtermans to England in the event that Fritz Houtermans was released. In the USA, for example, she made contact with Eleanor Roosevelt , with whom she then corresponded for more than a year. While nothing could be achieved with the Soviets, Max von Laue's efforts then succeeded in freeing Fritz Houtermans from Gestapo custody after the Soviets had extradited him to the German Reich . When Laue learned of Houterman's presence in Germany, on June 7, 1940, he sent a postcard to his good friend Edna Carter , who headed the Physics Institute at Vassar College . Under initially unimportant messages about family news there is conspiratorial content: “To my surprise, after a long absence, the former assistant at the Technical University, Dr. Fritz Houtermans "appeared". I think that interests those who live in New York, who you can tell. ”This meant Charlotte Houtermans with her two children Giovanna“ Bamsi ”and Jan as well as Fritz Houtermans' mother Else. Already on June 20, Max von Laue sent a postcard to her directly and informed her: “Your son, Fritz Houtermans, is back in Berlin. I haven't spoken to him personally, and I don't know when that will be. But the fact is incontrovertible! ”His third postcard to the USA of July 13, 1940 was finally addressed to Charlotte Houtermans herself:“ The day before yesterday your husband postponed his visit to me by telephone until the beginning of next week. But Dr. Rosbaud already spoke to him in Tegel. His voice is unchanged and sounds quite undaunted. He has the necessary funds. If I understand correctly, he received money from his sisters-in-law [in fact Max von Laue had provided him with it himself]. In Rosbaud's words, he lacks nothing more than reading, especially scientific literature. During his two and a half years of illness ["sitting sickness"; means encrypted: imprisonment] he could not read at all! "

In 1944 her husband married another woman, Ilse Bartz, without telling her. She was a chemist in Manfred von Ardenne's private research laboratory in Berlin-Lichterfelde . This led to the charge of bigamy against Fritz Houtermans until the post-war period . Legally, this unilateral “remote separation” was possible under the National Socialist law then applicable because the National Socialists had created a regulation that was originally intended to make it easier for so-called “ Aryan ” spouses to quickly separate from “non-Aryan” spouses. The consent of both spouses to this type of divorce was therefore not required according to Nazi marriage law; the absence of a spouse for several years (separated from the table and bed) was sufficient. Since Charlotte Houtermans had been in the USA since 1939, there was nothing in the way of the separation from a legal point of view, although she (unlike her husband) had no "Aryan" problem at all. The question of decency towards his first wife and her two children was not taken into account, but it should be remembered that Fritz Houtermans' contact in the country of the enemy in 1944 might have been very problematic or even impossible.

After the end of the war, Charlotte and Fritz Houtermans met. At this point he already had three children with his second wife. Nevertheless, he divorced her and remarried Charlotte in 1953, this time in Bern , where Fritz Houtermans was teaching at the time. As in 1930, Wolfgang Pauli acted as best man. This marriage did not last long, however, as they must have grown apart during the long separation.

Charlotte Houtermans died in the United States at the age of 93.

Publications (excerpt)

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ The z. The year of birth 1903 cited in the Deutsche Biographie , in the VIAF , in the Kalliope network , the German National Library (now corrected by the DNB) and other German secondary sources is incorrect. In contrast, the year of birth 1899 mentioned in the English-language sources is correct. Lt. Written information from the Head of the Bielefeld City Archives from May 3, 2019, Senior Archives Councilor Dr. Jochen Rath, Johanne Auguste Charlotte Houtermans was born. Riefenstahl, born on May 24, 1899 in Bielefeld. Quoted from: Stadtarchiv Bielefeld, inventory 104.2.20 / registry office, civil status register, 100-1899.1: Bielefeld birth register 1899, vol. 1, no. 840/1899, birth entry of Johanne Auguste Charlotte Riefenstahl.
  2. ^ A b c Misha Shifman: Standing Together in Troubled Times. Unpublished Letters by Pauli, Einstein, Franck and Others . World Scientific Publishing, Hackensack, New Jersey 2017, ISBN 978-981-320-100-2 , p. 27.
  3. ↑ Houtermans, Charlotte . In: Deutsche Biographie , on: deutsche-biographie.de
  4. ↑ Bielefeld City Archives, holdings 104.2.20 / registry office, civil status register, 300-1919.1: Bielefeld death register 1919, vol. 1, no. 123/1919, death entry of the father Friedrich Carl Gustav Riefenstahl.
  5. ↑ Bielefeld City Archives, inventory 104.2.20 / registry office, civil status register, 304-1957: Gadderbaum death register 1957, no. 334/1957, death entry of the mother Margarethe Henriette Elisabeth Charlotte Riefenstahl, b. Worch.
  6. ↑ a b c Ann M. Hentschel: The Physical Tourist: Peripatetic Highlights in Bern (PDF file; 3.9 MB). In: Physics in Perspective , Vol. 7, Issue 1 (March 2005), pp. 107-129 (citations pp. 123-124).
  7. ↑ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o Viktor J. Frenkel: Professor Friedrich Houtermans - work, life, fate. Biography of a twentieth century physicist (PDF file; 9.8 MB), pp. 9, 13, 44, 115, 117, 31, 40, 42, 46, 51, 56, 57, 62, 63, 64, 65 , 73, 74, 104, 105, 110. In: Max Planck Institute for the History of Science , at: mpiwg-berlin.de
  8. ↑ Jan Houtermans: On the quantitative relationships between geophysical parameters and the natural C14 inventory , on: worldcat.org
  9. ^ Edoardo Amaldi : The Adventurous Life of Friedrich Georg Houtermans, Physicist (1903–1966) , Springer Science & Business Media, Berlin / New York 2012, ISBN 978-3-642-32854-1 , p. 11.
  10. ↑ Misha Shifman: Standing Together In Troubled Times: Unpublished Letters Of Pauli, Einstein, Franck And Others . World Scientific, Hackensack, New Jersey, 2017, ISBN 978-981-3201-00-2 , pp. 34f.
  11. ↑ Kai Bird / Martin J. Sherwin: American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer , Vintage Books, 2006, ISBN 978-0375726262 , pp. 63, 69.
  12. ↑ Fritz Houtermans' nickname in Germany was "Fissel". Charlotte Houtermans wrote her notes in English and therefore adapted this nickname onomatopoeically to “Fisl”. Konrad Landrock: Friedrich Georg Houtermans (1903–1966) - an important physicist of the 20th century (PDF file; 583 kB). In: Naturwissenschaftliche Rundschau , Volume 56, Issue 4 (2003), pp. 187–199.
  13. ↑ Misha Shifman: Standing Together In Troubled Times: Unpublished Letters Of Pauli, Einstein, Franck And Others . World Scientific, Hackensack, New Jersey, 2017, ISBN 978-981-3201-00-2 , p. 33.
  14. ↑ Charlotte Riefenstahl is known as the "Research Assistant in Physics". In: Monica Healea and Charlotte Houtermans: The Relative Secondary Electron Emission Due to He, Ne, and A Ions Bombarding a Hot Nickel Target . In: Physical Review , Vol. 58, No. 7 (1940), pp. 608-610.
  15. ↑ Misha Shifman: Standing Together In Troubled Times: Unpublished Letters Of Pauli, Einstein, Franck And Others . World Scientific, Hackensack, New Jersey, 2017, ISBN 978-981-3201-00-2 , p. 75.
  16. ↑ a b Misha Shifman: Standing Together In Troubled Times: Unpublished Letters Of Pauli, Einstein, Franck And Others . World Scientific, Hackensack, New Jersey, 2017, ISBN 978-981-3201-00-2 , pp. 40-41.
  17. ↑ Misha Shifman: Standing Together In Troubled Times: Unpublished Letters Of Pauli, Einstein, Franck And Others . World Scientific, Hackensack, New Jersey, 2017, ISBN 978-981-3201-00-2 , pp. 42-43.
  18. ↑ Iosif B. Khriplovich: The Eventful Life of Fritz Houtermans . In: Physics Today , 45, 7, 29 (1992)
  19. ↑ a b Houtermans, Friedrich Georg (1903–1966) , on: wolfram.com
  20. ^ Misha Shifman: Standing Together in Troubled Times. Unpublished Letters by Pauli, Einstein, Franck and Others . World Scientific Publishing, Hackensack, New Jersey 2017, ISBN 978-981-320-100-2 , p. 222.
  21. ↑ Misha Shifman: Standing Together In Troubled Times: Unpublished Letters Of Pauli, Einstein, Franck And Others . World Scientific, Hackensack, New Jersey, 2017, ISBN 978-981-3201-00-2 , pp. 75-76.
  22. ↑ Misha Shifman: Standing Together In Troubled Times: Unpublished Letters Of Pauli, Einstein, Franck And Others . World Scientific, Hackensack, New Jersey, 2017, ISBN 978-981-3201-00-2 , pp. 42 f.
  23. ↑ Misha Shifman: Standing Together In Troubled Times: Unpublished Letters Of Pauli, Einstein, Franck And Others . World Scientific, Hackensack, New Jersey, 2017, ISBN 978-981-3201-00-2 , p. 75.
  24. ↑ Misha Shifman: Standing Together In Troubled Times: Unpublished Letters Of Pauli, Einstein, Franck And Others . World Scientific, Hackensack, New Jersey, 2017, ISBN 978-981-3201-00-2 , p. 76.
  25. ^ Edoardo Amaldi: The Adventurous Life of Friedrich Georg Houtermans, Physicist (1903-1966) , Springer Science & Business Media, Berlin / New York 2012, ISBN 978-3-642-32854-1 , p. 81.
  26. ↑ During the Nazi era , Fritz Houtermans was considered a “ second degree hybrid ” because his maternal grandmother was of Jewish descent. This belonged to the Karplus family from Vienna . Quoted from: Konrad Landrock: Friedrich Georg Houtermans (1903–1966) - an important physicist of the 20th century (PDF file; 583 kB). In: Naturwissenschaftliche Rundschau , Volume 56, Issue 4 (2003), pp. 187–199.
  27. ↑ Lt. a note on the birth entry of Charlotte Houtermans geb. Riefenstahl is the 2nd marriage with Fritz Houtermans in Bern (Switzerland) under the register no. 942/1953, vol. 1953, p. 942; Source: Bielefeld City Archives, inventory 104.2.20 / registry office, civil status register, no.100-1899.1: Bielefeld birth register 1899, vol. 1, no. 840/1899.
personal data
SURNAME Houtermans, Charlotte
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Riefenstahl, Johanne Auguste Charlotte (maiden name); Houtermans-Riefenstahl, Johanne Auguste Charlotte (full name); Schnax
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German-American physical chemist and university lecturer
DATE OF BIRTH May 24, 1899
PLACE OF BIRTH Bielefeld , Germany
DATE OF DEATH January 6, 1993
Place of death Northfield , Minnesota , United States