He returned to his studies at the universities of Breslau, Munich and Heidelberg until in 1917 he was finally able to enlist in the army.  He found himself as a gunner and telephonist in the trenches of the Somme.  He was wounded, but was awarded an Iron Cross (Second Class) for an attempt to repair telephone wires under fire.

The war led to two changes in Rudi’s life. Firstly, he became a pacifist.  He wrote “I was not a coward and could face the dirt, danger, and death of the trenches, but what I found unbearable was the deliberate attempt to destroy human dignity which the drill sergeants indulged in behind the front, encouraged by their officers”.  Looking back, he saw this as a training school for the concentration camps of the later Nazi days.

 And while in France Rudi became a Christian, joining the Lutheran church, “but not without a great deal of scepticism.”

 After the war Rudi returned to Breslau University to study for his PhD, which he passed summa cum laude (with first class honours).  He also had had a long period of contact with the German youth movement including the Wandervogel, and did social work with Breslau boys’ clubs.  It was through this work that he met his future wife, Hanna Claussen.  Hanna had been born in Breslau and, although from a Jewish family, had had a Christian education. 

Rudi was advised that prospects were poor for a scientist with a Jewish background in German academia, so took a job as an industrial chemist with the Bayer chemical company.  This exposed him to the problems of German inflation of the period.  “Our salaries were paid daily and had to be spent the same evening in town, because the next day their value had decreased by a factor of ten.” Eventually he was retrenched, but received a good redundancy payment that enabled him to return, with Hanna, to Heidelberg and university research.

 He was granted a Rockefeller Fellowship to research in Cambridge. He returned to Heidelberg, but the rise of Hitler led to his dismissal from the university. Fortunately, he received an invitation from friends in Cambridge to return there, so he and Hanna returned to England in 1933.  It was at this stage that they came to know Quakers, and for a while stayed with an old Quaker lady.

 As much as they liked England, it was obvious that not all the refugee scientists could stay in Cambridge.  Rudy accepted a position as a biochemist at the Royal North Shore Hospital in Sydney, not with enthusiasm as he thought that outside a university he would be isolated from others working in his field.

 Before leaving Cambridge he risked a visit back to see is parents in Breslau, believing he would not see them again.  He was right.  His father died before the war, but his beautiful, talented mother died in a concentration camp.

 As Rudi had feared, for some years in Australia he worked in isolation, with a small staff in a small laboratory.  But there was little demand for his services from the medical staff, which allowed him to continue his research.  After World War II, however, he was able to expand his laboratory and increase his reputation among scientists.  By the end of his career he had been awarded the title of Professor Emeritus from Heidelberg University and DSc from Sydney University.  He was also founder and first president of the Australian Biochemical Society.

 In 1955 Rudi and Hanna bought a little over an acre of land in Wahroonga, at that time an outlying Sydney suburb. On this land, which they called “The Sanctuary”, they built a small house designed by architect Hugh Buhrich.  Burich was also a refugee from Nazism; he had progressive political views and a Jewish wife, both of which made life under Hitler impossible.

 At this time Rudi joined Quakers and started holding meetings in the small living room at The Sanctuary.  He was assisted by Max and Erica Wohlwill, also German refugees, and Eric and Enid Pollard.  Members of the Wohlwill and Pollard families are still active Quakers.

In 1962 Rudi and Hanna offered to build a Quaker Meeting House on part of their land.  In 1968, with the proceeds of Rudi’s Britannica Australia Prize, they extended the Meeting House by adding the hexagonal Meeting Room.  Again, the architect was Hugh Buhrich.

 His Academy of Science biographers tell us:

His desire for open discussion of the philosophical and sociological, on a real-world plane, led him for many years to participate actively in and often lead the wider discussions provided by the Friday evening forum of the Society of Friends, to which not only senior members of the community came, but also many students. For some young people these discussions, especially in the 1960s, left an indelible impression. Men such as Dr H.C. Coombs, chairman of the Reserve Bank and later chairman of the Australian Council of Aboriginal Affairs, Thomas Keneally, novelist, Charles Birch, biologist and theologian, Peter Mason, physicist, women such as Faith Bandler, aboriginal leader and spokeswoman, and Dorothy Butler, the mountaineer, presented their views on major contemporary issues at these forums, the venue of which was a Meeting House given by Lemberg to the Society of Friends, and set in the beautiful native bush garden of his home at Wahroonga.

 In an outline of his beliefs, Rudi wrote: “I am an evolutionist, not a vitalist, of Chardinian rather than Darwinian hue.” He was a follower of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, the Jesuit priest, paleontologist and philosopher who suggested that evolution was progressing to a point of union with God.

  Rudi goes on: “I am a Jew by birth, a Christian by adoption, and, although greatly impressed by the theology of such men as Paul Tillich and Martin Buber, yet at home in the silent worship of a Quaker meeting.”