Eleanor Lansing Dulles was an economist and author, a professor, and an employee of the United States Government who held several positions dealing with finance and economics but came to be especially associated with the Office of German Affairs at the Department of State, and Berlin matters in particular. Eleanor Dulles was the sister of Secretary of State John Foster Dulles and Director of Central Intelligence Allen Welsh Dulles of the Eisenhower administration.
The photographs in this series were accumulated by Eleanor Dulles during her lifetime. They include portraits and snapshots of family members, photographs that were gathered into albums on particular subjects, and many photographs taken during her State Department work during the 1950s and 1960s.
The contents of an album titled, “American Relief Work in France,” were taken or acquired by Dulles during her war relief work in France from 1917 through 1919, during which she assisted Ernest W. and Helen Shurtleff in their Shurtleff Relief Work organization. Along with snapshots of Paris during World War I and other locations in France to which the group traveled, there are photo postcards of American troops in France, General John J. Pershing, and scenes of war destruction.
From Dulles’ time at the State Department, albums in the series cover her essential involvement with the building of the Berlin Congress Hall, an overview of the Student Village at the Free University of Berlin, activities of a women’s organization in West Berlin called the Staatsbürgerinnen-Verband, and an inspection tour of Radio Free Europe installations in 1960.
The Berlin Congress Hall is featured heavily in the series, as are members of the Benjamin Franklin Foundation, a U.S./West German nonprofit formed to broaden the cultural landscape of Cold War West Berlin by administering funds donated by the United States. Members include chairman Ralph Thomas Walker, Albert Edelman, Robert B. Wolf, and Bob Dowling. Architects involved include lead architect Hugh Stubbins, Jr., Leon Chatelain, Howard S. Eichenbaum, Moreland G. Smith, Werner Düttman, Franz Mocken, and Jack P. Gensemer.
The Benjamin Franklin Foundation also managed the financing of the University Clinic or Medical Center at the Free University of Berlin, designed by architects Franz Mocken and Arthur Quentin Davis. Photographs of the planning phases and architectural models of the Clinic appear in the series as well. Dr. Arist Stender, Dean of Medicine at the Free University, appears in one of the photographs concerning the development of the University Clinic.
The Student Village at the Free University of Berlin was also funded by the United States with Eleanor Dulles’ involvement, and the newly occupied housing area is presented in the form of a tour in the album photos.
Dulles’ album from the Staatsbürgerinnen-Verband primarily features the organization’s aid to Eastern Sector refugees in West Berlin, including their work with Dr. Elisabeth Gerhartz.
On the 1960 Radio Free Europe Inspection Tour, Dulles visited RFE facilities at Gloria, Portugal; Munich and Straubing, West Germany; and West Berlin. Photographs from this album feature RFE management Erik Hazelhoff, Dusty Rhoads, and Henry Lolliot, and tour participants including John McCready Patterson, C. Arthur Hemminger, Luther Youngdahl, Clarence Decker, Esther Van Wagoner Tufty, Joseph J. Lombardo, E. K. Hartenbower, Evelyn Alden, Frances F. Solovich, Marie Dornbach, John Hoyt Blalock, Allan Marshall Wilson, Joseph Oscar Tally, Jr., Gerard Weinstock, Frances L. Millican, Leo P. Carlin, Howard H. Ellsworth, and Maurice E. Zetterholm.
Dulles also included in her donation an album of photos of the members of the 1896-97 Bering Sea Claims Commission, which had probably belonged to her uncle, Robert Lansing, who was a member of that commission. Besides Lansing, members appearing in the album include: William L. Putnam, Chandler P. Anderson, George Edwin King, Donald M. Dickson, Charles B. Warren, Frederick Peters, Frédérick Béique, Ernest Bodwell, and Sir Charles Hibbert Tupper.
A large portion of the series is made up of family photographs, including group photos, portraits of ancestors, and studio portraits of Eleanor Dulles and her siblings in childhood. There are also a signed engraving of Dulles’ grandfather, John W. Foster, and a photograph of a painted portrait of ancestor John Welsh in the series. Many snapshots were taken at the Dulles family’s vacation homes on Lake Ontario, mostly at Henderson Harbor, New York. Others involve family members sailing, and two include Eleanor Dulles’ friend Emily Huntington in a kayak. Other snapshots were taken at Dulles’ house at McLean, Virginia, or on Dulles’ trips to Europe, especially Austria, with her children David and Ann.
Family members also appearing in photographs in the series include Dulles’ husband, David Blondheim; her parents, Allen Macy Dulles and Edith Foster Dulles; siblings John Foster Dulles, Allen Welsh Dulles, Margaret Dulles Edwards, and Nataline Dulles Seymour; in-laws Janet Avery Dulles, Clover Todd Dulles, and Deane Edwards; nieces Lillias Pomeroy Dulles Hinshaw, Clover Dulles Jebsen, Joan Dulles Talley, Edith Foster Edwards, Mary Parke Edwards Manning, and nephews John Watson Foster Dulles, Avery Robert Dulles, Allen Macy Dulles, Jr., Robert Lansing Edwards, and Richard Edwards. Edith Foster Dulles’ parents, John Watson Foster and Mary Parke McPherson Foster, and her sisters Eleanor Foster Lansing and Alice Foster, are included as well. Janet Avery Dulles’ sister, Elizabeth Pomeroy Bakewell, and Elizabeth’s husband, Allan Bakewell, and son, Thomas, also appear.
Photographs from Dulles’ career in the U.S. Government feature political figures, diplomats, and federal employees including Presidents Dwight D. Eisenhower and John F. Kennedy, Secretary of State Christian Herter, Clare Boothe Luce, Henry Cabot Lodge, James Bryant Conant, Margaret Chase Smith, David K. E. Bruce, Andrew Berding, Wilbur J. Cohen, Cecil B. Lyon, Robert D. Murphy, George C. McGhee, John A. Calhoun, Livingston T. Merchant, Barbara M. Brandin, Robert Mead Brandin, Bernard A. Gufler, Abbot Washburn, Idar Rimestad, Edwin Daniel Crowley, Albert Ernst Hemsing, Brewster H. Morris, Charles E. Hulick, James E. Hoofnagle, Jay Warner Gildner, John W. Byrnes, Bob Harlan, John Goodyear, Elwood Williams III, Viola Drath, Pat Gates, and Henry Beverly Cox. U.S. Army Generals James H. Polk, Charles L. Dasher, Barksdale Hamlett, and Frank Howley, as well as U.S. Navy Captain George E. Dawson, also appear.
She also includes photographs of important American cultural figures who came to Berlin, such as Vinie Burrows, Martha Graham, Eileen Farrell, Ethel Waters, Agnes De Mille, Melvin Lasky, Thornton Wilder, Lillian Gish, and Virginia Inness-Brown, as well as British historian Arnold J. Toynbee, who also visited Berlin. American author Harper Lee, Senator Margaret Chase Smith, and Eleanor Dulles appear in a group photograph upon receiving honorary degrees from Mount Holyoke College.
Important people from West Germany and West Berlin in the series include Konrad Adenauer, Willy Brandt, Theodor Heuss, Ludwig Erhard, Otto Busack, Heinz Krekeler, Franz Blücher, Willy Henneberg, Walther Schreiber, Franz Amrehn, Ernst Lemmer, Klaus Schütz, Otto Suhr, Siegfried Aufhäuser, Jakob Kaiser, Walter Sickert, Käte Strobel, Werner Dollinger, Felix von Eckardt, Matthias Föcher, Paul Hertz, Paul Löbe, Karl Heinrich Knappstein, Wilhelmine Lübke, Walter Klein, Franz Lippert, Arno Scholz, and Heinz Ullstein.
The series also features foreign leaders and dignitaries from other countries including Queen Elizabeth II, Prince Philip, May-ling Soong Chiang, Pedro Correia de Barros, Shinsaku Hogen, Ahmedou Ould-Abdallah, and Bishweshwar Prasad Koirala. Eleanor Dulles included photographs from her trips to Japan, Taiwan, Kathmandu (Nepal), Liberia, Angola, and Mexico as well.
