The speech Kaiser Wilhelm delivers at the opening of the fictional Dahlem Institute for Physical Chemistry is a paraphrasing of information provided on the website of the Fritz Haber Institute (formerly the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute) at https://www.fhi-berlin.mpg.de/history/h1.epl. And a review by Andrea Stevens published in the New York Times on October 8, 2005, did indeed compare (though not in a good way) the Fritz Haber/Albert Einstein relationship, as portrayed in Vern Thiessen’s play Einstein’s Gifts, to Felix and Oscar’s relationship in The Odd Couple.
The content of Rose Alter’s suicide note, and the manner in which she died, is the same as Claire Haber’s.
There are also deliberate (and no doubt inadvertent) deviations from fact in the book. Was Fritz Haber really the first person to synthesize Ecstasy? Some of the biographies say yes, others say no. I don’t know, then, if Haber had anything to do with Ecstasy. All I know is that in my fictional universe, Lenz Alter did.
Another deliberate departure from what I know to be true: Mamm: The Magazine for Breast Cancer Patients and Survivors, which I placed on the Alter sisters’ dinette table in 1976, did not actually begin publishing until 1997. But once I came across this magazine in my own doctor’s office, I knew I had to add it to the junk on that table, anachronism be damned. I mean—a cancer journal with a pun for a title. Talk about audacity! Talk about chutzpah! Talk about the beautiful human instinct to make jokes in the face of what is painful and terrifying! What can I say? Slam, bam, and thank you, Mamm.
NAMES MENTIONED IN
A REUNION OF GHOSTS
Names of verifiable historical or public figures bold.
Alter, Delphine Frankl (Delph)
Alter, Eddie Glod
Alter, Heinrich Lorenz
Alter, Iris Emanuel
Alter, Karin Gläser
Alter, Line Alter
Alter, Rudi
Alter, Lily Frankl Hopper (Lady)
Alter, Lorenz Otto (Lenz)
Alter, Richard
Alter, Rose
Alter, Veronica Frankl Glod (Vee)
Barry, orgy participant
Beame, Abe
Beef, the dentist’s dog
Bismarck, Otto von
Boggs, Bill
Boleyn, Anne
Brownmiller, Susan
Bunsen, Robert
Carson, Johnny
Costello, Abbott P.
Curie, Marie
Curie, Pierre
Dodsworth, Alan
Douglas, Mike
Einstein, Albert
Einstein, Eduard
Einstein, Elsa
Einstein, Hans
Einstein, Mileva
Emanuel, Anna
Emanuel, Zindel
Frankl, Dahlie
Frankl, Natan
Fillmore, Millard
Franz Ferdinand (Archduke)
Freddie, bar owner
Geist, Frau
Ginsberg, Allen
Gottleib, Joshua
Gurley, a tattoo artist
Hahn, Otto
Hari, Mata
Hepburn, Katharine
Hitler, Adolf
Hogan, Hulk
Hollander, Xaviera (the Happy Hooker)
Howdy Doody
Jan, an oncology nurse
Jones, John Paul
Joplin, Janis
Kazootie, Rooty
Kennedy, Bobby
Kennedy, John F.
Kennedy, John-John
Kennedy, Joseph
Kirk, Grayson
Kram, Arthur
Lehrer, Richard
Lehrer, Marthe
Little, Rich
Matthau, Walter
Meitner, Lise
Meyer, Theo
Millet, Kate
Mommsen, Theodor
Moritz, Emil
Nevelson, Louise
Nim Chimpsky
Norman, orgy participant
O’Keeffe, Georgia
Oyl, Olive
Patty, dentist’s wife
Planck, Max
Popeye
Prinz, Lenz and Iris’s dog
Rosenthal, Grete, Lenz’s mistress
Ruffin, Jimmy
Sainte-Marie, Buffy
The Shine brothers
Shore, Dinah
Smoke, Danny
Smoke, Jack
Smoke, Margo
Smoke, Sharon
Smoke, Violet Alter
Son of Sam
Snyder, Tom
Taylor, Opie
Thiessen, Vern
Treitschke, Heinrich von
Unnamed bus passenger
Unnamed bosses (Delph’s and Lily’s)
Unnamed clerk at City Hall
Unnamed dental hygienist
Unnamed dentist
Unnamed female orgy participant
Unnamed ghosts at Karin’s deathbed
Unnamed housekeeper (Heinrich’s second wife)
Unnamed information clerk at Penn Sta.
Unnamed nursing home supervisor
Unnamed oncologist
Unnamed paralegal friends of Vee
Unnamed radiologist
Unnamed super of Riverside Dr. bldg.
Unnamed tattoo artists (2)
Unnamed therapist (Delph’s)
Unnamed widower
Wayne, John
Weizmann, Chaim
Whitman, Walt
Wilhelm I (Kaiser)
Wilhelm II (Kaiser)
Williams, Tennessee
Younger, Cole
Zappa, Frank
Ziegler, Rose Emanuel
BIBLIOGRAPHY
For readers interested in the lives of Fritz and Clara Haber, here are some of the resources I found helpful and fascinating while working on this book:
Charles, Daniel. Master-Mind: The Rise and Fall of Fritz Haber, the Nobel Laureate Who Launched the Age of Chemical Warfare. New York: CCC Press, 2005.
Dick, Jutta. “Clara Immerwahr.” Jewish Women: A Comprehensive Historical Encyclopedia, March 1, 2009. http://jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/immerwahr-clara.
Dunikowska, Magda, and Ludwik Turko. “Fritz Haber: The Damned Scientist.” http://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/1112/1112.0949.pdf.
Fraenkel, Peter. “Ludwig Haber—The Counsel and the Samurai: The Murder of Ludwig Haber in Hakodate, 1874.” www.ludwighaber.blogspot.com.
Goran, Morris. The Story of Fritz Haber. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1967.
Haber, Charlotte. Mein Leben Mit Fritz Haber. Düsseldorf: Spiegelungen der Vergangenheit, 1970.
Hentschel, Klaus, ed. Physics and National Socialism: An Anthropology of Primary Sources. Basel: Spring Basel AG., 2011. Reprint of the Brikhäuser Verlag edition, which was originally published by Birkhäuser Verlag under the same title as Volume 18 in the Science Networks, Historical Studies series.
Isaacson, Walter. Einstein: His Life and Universe. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2007.
Mazón, Patricia M. Gender and the Modern Research University: The Admission of Women to German Higher Education, 1865–1914. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2003.
Morreall, John. “Humor in the Holocaust: Its Critical, Cohesive, and Coping Functions.” In Hearing the Voices: Teaching the Holocaust to Future Generations; Proceedings of the 27th Annual Scholars’ Conference on the Holocaust and the Churches, March 2–4, 1997, Tampa, Florida. New York: Merion Westfield, 1999. Also available at Holocaust Teacher Research Center website, November 22, 2001. http://www.holocaust-trc.org/humor-in-the-holocaust.
Stern, Fritz. “Fritz Haber: Flawed Greatness of Person and Country.” Angewante Chemie International Edition 51, no. 1 (2012): 50–56. doi:10.1002/anie.201107900.
Stolzenberg, Dietrich. Fritz Haber: Chemist, Nobel Laureate, German, Jew. The Philadelphia: Chemical Heritage Foundation, 2004.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I’m grateful for the fellowships I received in support of my work on this book including, from the University of Wiscon
sin–Madison, the College of Letters & Science’s John Jartz Faculty Fellowship, the Vilas Associates Award, the Arts Institute’s Creative Arts Award, and several Graduate School research grants; and from the Wisconsin Arts Board, an Artist Fellowship Grant. I am also grateful to John Jartz, Karen Reno, and Lynne McCreight for their generous support; to Susanna Daniel, Melissa Falcon Field, Jesse Lee Kercheval, Ron Kuka, Jean Reynolds Page, and Michelle Wildgen for their friendship and insights; to Anja Wanner for help with the German (though any remaining mistakes are completely my own); to Seth Abramson for research assistance (but see preceeding parenthetical re: remaining mistakes); and to Henry Clark, Elizabeth Hilts, and Eric Miller for the Cremora, the light, and Danny’s guitar.
Finally and always, I thank Don Friedlich for his love, his humor, and his remarkable patience.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
JUDITH CLAIRE MITCHELL, author of the novel The Last Day of the War, is an English professor at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, where she directs the MFA program in creative writing. A graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, Judy has received fellowships from the James A. Michener/Copernicus Society, the Wisconsin Institute for Creative Writing, the Wisconsin Arts Board, and elsewhere. She lives in Madison, Wisconsin, with her husband, the artist Don Friedlich.
www.judithclairemitchell.com
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ALSO BY JUDITH CLAIRE MITCHELL
The Last Day of the War
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COVER DESIGN AND ILLUSTRATION BY JOAN WONG
COPYRIGHT
This book is a work of fiction. References to real people, events, establishments, organizations, or locales are intended only to provide a sense of authenticity, and are used fictitiously. All other characters, and all incidents and dialogue, are drawn from the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real.
A REUNION OF GHOSTS. Copyright © 2015 by Judith Claire Mitchell. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
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