Eleanor Lansing Dulles

Eleanor Lansing Dulles (born 1 June 1895 in Watertown, New York; † 30 October 1996 in Washington, DC) was an American diplomat and economics activist. When Berlin - charge of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, she was known instrumental in building the city and at the time of their work as " mother Berlin".

Life and work

1895-1945: First political steps

Eleanor Dulles came from a Presbyterian family, which at that time already used far-reaching political contacts. Her brothers Allen Dulles and John Foster Dulles also proposed a successful political careers.

In June 1917, she graduated from Bryn Mawr College. She then worked for two years in a charity in France. Dulles also learned about 1922 a year at the London School of Economics. During this time she visited for a holiday in the Black Forest for the first time Germany. She received her PhD after two Master of Arts degrees in 1926 with a thesis on the French franc. Eleanor Dulles then initially proposed a high school career. So they finally came in 1930 to study in Bonn and Berlin. A year before, she had received a grant to write a book about the Bank for International Settlements.

Upon her return to the United States, she married the end of 1932 David S. Blondheim ( 1884-1934 ), who died suddenly just two years later. After his death, she brought in the fall of 1934 a son to the world, in 1937 they adopted a girl. Your college career gave Dulles in 1936 and instead began a six-year employment in the finance department of the Social Security Board, the Social Security Office, in Washington. After the war, the United States entered Eleanor Dulles joined in 1942 in the Germany Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

1945-1959: Politics in Berlin

Immediately after the war, Dulles was sent by the Foreign Ministry in Vienna. From May 1945 to October 1948 she worked as a consultant for financial questions in the bar of the U.S. Supreme Allied Commander, General Mark W. Clark. From there, she traveled several times to Hungary, Italy, Germany, Czechoslovakia and Switzerland. In the early 1950s belonged to the Dulles also CoCom.

In 1952, Eleanor Dulles head of the Berlin desk of Berlin resorts, in the then Bureau of German Affairs of the Foreign Ministry. The job was offered to her by James Riddleberger, whom she met by chance in 1952. From 1952 to September 1959, until she retired from the service, became famous for Eleanor Dulles to their services in Berlin. Its main tasks were in the expansion of aid programs and the coordination of cooperation of the Marshall Plan authority with Allied and German authorities. Your first important and spectacular action was the provision of food parcels in July 1953 at the East German population, were asked for 15 million dollars. The construction of the Convention Centre goes back to Dulles. In this context also the Benjamin Franklin Foundation was founded, which was built by the University Hospital Benjamin Franklin.

The student village in Schlachtensee was also built at the initiative of Dulles. You could move the U.S. State Department to a donation of 7.5 million DM at the Free University. In October 1957 it was established by the Governing Mayor Willy Brandt and Eleanor Lansing Dulles, the foundation stone.

Always connected with Germany: 1959-1996

Dulles had in September 1961, relying on pressure from John F. Kennedy, the State Department. Prior to her brother, Allen Dulles had already been dismissed from the CIA service. With 67 years she found it difficult, however, to find a new job. She was encouraged to go into retirement, she refused vehemently. So Dulles took first on his own behalf and at its own expense diplomatic trips to seven countries. Then it was finally appointed as a lecturer and completed a lecture tour of 20 states.

As a guest of the Free University, she returned in 1967 but back to Bonn and Berlin, where she found an opportunity to speak to the former Chancellor Kurt Georg Kiesinger and the Governing Mayor Heinrich Albertz. She also represented the United States at the funeral of Konrad Adenauer.

Eleanor Dulles died at the age of 101 years in a Washington nursing home.

Awards

Works

• Berlin - The Wall is not forever, 1967 ( in the German edition as Berlin and the Americans )
• Chances of a Lifetime ( in the German edition as this is Eleanor )