By Jane Lincoln Taylor, U.S. Correspondent

Editor’s Note: New York Correspondent Jane Lincoln Taylor reported on the semiannual Dorothy O. Helly Works-in-Progress Lecture given at the Women Writing Women’s Lives Seminar on October 18, 2021. BIO member Victoria Phillips, author of Martha Graham’s Cold War: The Dance of American Diplomacy, was the lecturer.  

 

 Illuminating a Hidden Subject 

In her Helly Lecture, Victoria Phillips discussed an enthralling phenomenon that many biographers may grapple with at some point in their writing lives: when researching one’s primary subject leads to the discovery of another intriguing character worthy of exploration in their own right. Phillips presented “From Martha Graham to Eleanor Lansing Dulles: Women, Power, and Intrigue in Cold War Berlin,” her explanation of how researching one of the preeminent modern American dancers led her to Eleanor Lansing Dulles, a cultural diplomat instrumental in restoring Berlin after World War II, who seemed content to be elided from the pages of history.  

 

One Subject Sparks Another 

Phillips, a visiting fellow at the London School of Economics, is a polymath, well versed in economic and cultural issues, with a B.A., M.B.A., and Ph.D. from Columbia, and an M.F.A. in creative writing and an M.A. in history and performance studies from N.Y.U. She’s written for publications ranging from The New York Times to Dance Chronicle. 

Her 2020 book, Martha Graham’s Cold War: The Dance of American Diplomacy, explores Graham’s contributions to American postwar ideology. The dancer claimed to be apolitical, though her overseas tours were funded by the State Department. In researching a “terrible performance” of Graham’s in Berlin in 1957, Phillips found a thank you note to Graham from a diplomat named Eleanor Lansing Dulles. Phillips, intrigued, pondered if this Dulles was connected with John Foster Dulles, secretary of state under Eisenhower, or his brother Allen, a CIA director. When Phillips learned Dulles was their sister, it sparked a new goal: investigating the forgotten but crucial role Dulles played in the postwar scene. 

 

Rebuilding Berlin 

Dulles’s childhood dream of being a medical missionary ended at Bryn Mawr; finding biology daunting, she gravitated to finance. Following her 1917 graduation, she studied at the London School of Economics, Radcliffe, and Harvard. Her brother Foster sent her first book, on the French franc, to John Maynard Keynes, who replied “This is much the best chronicle of postwar financial and monetary history I have seen yet for any country.” 

After several government posts, Dulles arrived in Germany in 1952 to help Berlin’s renewal. She oversaw the design and construction of Congress Hall, whose architecture was modernist, and its curved roof was innovative. “The glass was supposed to show the transparency of democracy,” Phillips said, “and Eleanor had the roof painted white, saying that a building built right on the border between East and West Berlin should be a shining beacon of freedom.” It opened in 1957, with a gala featuring Martha Graham. 

 

Deliberately Invisible? 

Dulles’s projects—from championing culture to distributing food for starving refugees—were impressive, but historians paid them little heed. Were they overlooked because she was female? Or did she deliberately deflect attention? Possibly both, Phillips suggested. “There’s no lack of books about Dulles’s brothers,” she said. But few works mention Dulles, and the American press ignored her (though she was vilified in Soviet-controlled newspapers as “Sister von Spymaster”). Dulles wrote or co-wrote 13 books, none of which is still in print. 

Her “invisible position” may have been intentional, however. To achieve her aims, she resorted to what Phillips called “hidden methods” and “financial shell games.” In top-secret meetings, people overlooked her, assuming she was a secretary. And, said Phillips, “unlike Martha Graham, who said ‘Center stage is wherever I am,’ Eleanor used her invisibility.” 

She also slyly capitalized on family connections, intercepting memos marked “Eyes Only Dulles,” intended for Allen or Foster. And while pursuing funding, Phillips said, Dulles would request money in Berlin, fly to Washington, “wait for the memo she had written to be decoded, receive it at her desk, approve the funds, and fly back to Berlin to spend them.” 

 

Family Parallels 

Phillips found numerous female ancestors whose lives resonated with Dulles’s. A forebear named Harriet, a missionary in Ceylon, published a memoir in 1835, describing bringing medical care, food, and education to families while her husband stood on a box and preached. Dulles’s mother had told her children missionary work was fine, “but you can effect more significant change through politics.” Dulles pursued social change through political means with a missionary zeal bred in the bone. 

 

A Complex Legacy 

 Food relief was powerful in the Cold War. “Milk was the new weapon of democracy,” said Phillips. “Eleanor became an ambassador for America with her food, getting ‘delicacies’ into the homes of hungry people. The cans were thick, the colors were good, the flour was white”—in stark contrast to Soviet offerings. 

“But what are the problems that come with gifts?” Phillips asked. Political intent was detected behind American aid; democratically designed student campuses were hotbeds of CIA recruitment. Gratitude for America’s charity turned to resentment. And though Dulles had once been called “the mother of Berlin,” she’s been forgotten. Phillips’s research into Dulles’s aims and means promises to illuminate this complex, influential woman—altruist? propagandist?—who’s been “hiding in plain sight.” 

 

Jane Lincoln Taylor is a freelance book editor and writer with a particular interest in biography.