Karl Ernst Claus

Karl Ernst Claus (also Karl Klaus or Carl Claus, Russian: Карл Ка́рлович Кла́ус, 23 January 1796 – 24 March 1864) was a Baltic German chemist and naturalist. Claus was a professor at Kazan State University and a member of the Russian Academy of Sciences. He was primarily known as a chemist and discoverer of the chemical element ruthenium, but also as one of the first scientists who applied quantitative methods in botany.

Early life and education

Karl Claus was born in 1796 in Dorpat (Tartu), Livonia, Russia, as the son of a painter. At the age of four, he lost his father and two years later became an orphan. In 1810, he moved to Saint Petersburg and started working as an assistant in a pharmacy. Although he had not received formal education, at age 21, Claus managed to pass the State exam on the pharmacist at the Military Medical Academy of St. Petersburg, becoming the youngest pharmacist in Russia at that time. Later in 1826, he established his own pharmacy in Kazan.

In 1821, Claus married Ernestine Bate whom he knew since his youth. They had three daughters born in Kazan and later a son, when they moved back to Tartu.

Karl Ernst

Karl Ernst (September 1, 1904, Berlin – June 30, 1934, Stadelheim Prison) was an SA- Gruppenführer who, in early 1933, was the SA leader in Berlin. Before joining the Nazi Party he had been a hotel bellboy and a bouncer at a gay nightclub.

Reichstag fire

It has been suggested that it was he who, with a small party of stormtroopers, passed through a passage from the Palace of the President of the Reichstag, and set the Reichstag building on fire on the night of February 27, 1933. There is evidence indirectly to substantiate this: Gisevius at Nuremberg implicated Goebbels in planning the fire,Rudolph Diels stated that Göring knew how the fire was to be started, and General Franz Halder stated that he had heard Göring claim responsibility for the fire. However, according to Ian Kershaw, the consensus of nearly all historians is that Van der Lubbe did set the Reichstag on fire.

Night of the Long Knives

On June 30, 1934, Ernst had just married, and was in Bremen on his way to Madeira to honeymoon with his new wife. SA Leader Ernst Röhm had repeatedly called for a "second revolution" that would introduce socialism into the Reich and banish the old Conservative forces of business and government. Fearing the socialistic tendencies of the SA, along with Röhm's ambition to absorb the Reichswehr into the SA, conservative elements in the German Army and Kriegsmarine pressed for an elimination of SA power.Adolf Hitler undertook a purge of the SA — an event known to history as the "Night of the Long Knives". It lasted until July 2, 1934.