Partner Margaret Hamilton, buried together
Queer Places:
420 E Main St, Rochester, NY 14604, USA
Bryn Mawr College (Seven Sisters), 101 N Merion Ave, Bryn Mawr, PA 19010
Hull House, 800 S Halsted St, Chicago, IL 60607
159 Ferry Rd, Lyme, CT
06371
Cove Cemetery, 97 CT-148, Lyme, CT 06371, USA
Clara Landsberg (1873 – April 10, 1966) was an American educator. She
was the leader of the adult education programme at Hull House, and was a
close collaborator of Nobel laureate
Jane Addams. She
later taught at Bryn Mawr School with her lifelong friend
Margaret Hamilton.
Clara Landsberg was born in 1873, the daughter of Max Landsberg, a German-American Reform rabbi from Rochester, New York, and Miriam Isengarten, a good friend of Susan B. Anthony.[1][2][3]
She was one of the first graduates of Bryn Mawr College,[4] where she was a classmate and friend of Margaret Hamilton.[1] She attended the Sorbonne as a student of German in the winter 1898-1899, while Margaret Hamilton studied Biology and Norah Hamilton Art).[5] Landsberg was to become Margaret Hamilton's lifetime companion.[1][6] The few surviving letters that Clara wrote to Margaret suggest that Clara fell in love with Margaret during college, though without formal marriage records, it is difficult to determine precisely when the two became committed to one another. A year after graduation, they studied and lived together in Paris, where women lived openly as lesbians long before it was customary to do so in the United States. In 1917, Clara would formalize their relationship when she named her sole heir as “my friend Margaret Hamilton.”
After the Sorbonne, while Hamilton was a student at Johns Hopkins University, Landsberg became the Reference Librarian at the Reynolds' Library, Rochester, New York.[5]
Portrait of Clara Landsberg, class of 1897, in her cap and gown. Bryn Mawr College photo archives, 1885-2000s
.JPG)
Hull House
In 1899 Clara Landsberg became a resident at Hull House, where she was in charge of the adult education (evening school) programs from 1900 to 1920,[7] and shared a room with Alice Hamilton.[2][8] Landsberg and Ethel Dewey interviewed each new student, and each was carefully placed according to his attainments and later was graded upon reports made by the teachers.[9] For the most part of her time at Hull House, Landsberg taught German at the University School for Girls.[1] Hilda S. Polacheck, a Polish immigrant, was later to said about Landsberg: "She opened new vistas in reading for me. In her class we would be assigned a book, which we were to read during the week and then discuss the following session of the class. The class met once a week. I not only read the assigned books but every book I could borrow. Dickens, Scott, Thackeray, Louisa May Alcott, Victor Hugo, Alexander Dumas, and many others now become my friends. The daily monotony of making cuffs was eased by thinking of these books and looking forward to evenings at Hull House."[10] Using today’s terminology, many Hull House residents would be described as lesbians. In 1963—when Alice Hamilton was in her 90s—the biographer Allen F. Davis asked her about the nature of female relationships at Hull House. He wrote: She denied that there was any open lesbian activity involving Hull House residents, but agreed that the close relationship of the women involved an unconscious sexuality. Because it was unconscious it was unimportant she argued. Then she added with a smile that the very fact that I would bring the subject up was an indication of the separation between my generation and hers.
In her 1912 Twenty Years at Hull-House with Autobiographical Notes, Jane Addams said she was grateful to Landsberg "for the making of the index and for many other services".[11]
In May 1914, Landsberg, together with Louise DeKoven Bowen, joined Addams and Mary Rozet Smith in Naples, and the four women travelled together to Sicily and Rome. Landsberg and Smith sailed back to the United States in June.[8] In 1933, together with Alice Hamilton, went on a trip to Germany to protest the discharge of Jewish doctors.[2][8][1]
Landsberg eventually left Hull House to teach Latin at Bryn Mawr School, where Edith Hamilton was headmistress. Margaret Hamilton also became a teacher at Bryn Mawr School, science, and took over as headmistress in 1933 before retiring in 1935.[1]
Alice Hamilton considered Clara Landsberg part of the Hamilton family, one remarked, "I could not think of a life in which Clara did not have a great part, she has become part of my life almost as if she were one of us."[1]
The Hamilton sisters, their mother, Edith's companion, Doris Fielding Reid, and Landsberg, spent their retirement years in Hadlyme, Connecticut, at the house they purchased in 1916.[12][1] Although Margaret and Alice were both happy to share the house with Clara, it seems that Edith had some reservations about Clara, possibly linked to her Jewishness. In 1921, Clara finally moved to Baltimore, where she lived with Margaret and taught Latin and German at the Bryn Mawr School. Clara, Margaret, and Alice spent their summers together at Hadlyme, where they lived together in retirement for three decades—until their deaths in extreme old age. Late in life, Alice described Clara, perhaps somewhat disingenuously, as “a friend who lives with us, a Bryn Mawr classmate of my sister.” In her memoir, “Exploring the Dangerous Trades,” Alice Hamilton devoted many pages to the house in Hadlyme, which she described as “the house where Margaret and I live,” never mentioning Clara. When an Englishwoman approached a 90-year-old Alice about writing a biography of the Hamilton sisters, Margaret refused to “have anything to do with it,” and Alice concluded that the idea was “quite impossible.” This decision, which the sisters probably made with the aim of protecting Margaret’s reputation, has had the unfortunate effect—until now—of virtually erasing Clara Landsberg from women’s history.
Landsberg died on April 10, 1966, and is buried with Margaret Hamilton at Cove Cemetery in Hadlyme, Connecticut, in the same cemetery as Hamilton's mother (Gertrude) and her sisters (Alice, Norah, and Edith), and Edith's life partner, Doris Fielding Reid.[13][4]
The Clara Landsberg papers consisting of correspondence addressed to Clara Landsberg are preserved at the Special Collections and University Archives, University of Illinois at Chicago.[2]
My published books:
