Clara Landsberg

Clara Landsberg (March 8, 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.

Early life Clara Landsberg was born in Rochester, New York, the daughter of Max Landsberg, a German-American Reform rabbi, and Miriam Isengarten, a good friend of Susan B. Anthony.

She was one of the first graduates of Bryn Mawr College, Landsberg was to become Margaret Hamilton's lifetime companion.

After the Sorbonne, while Hamilton was a student at Johns Hopkins University, Landsberg became the Reference Librarian at the Reynolds' Library, Rochester, New York. and shared a room with Alice Hamilton. For the most part of her time at Hull House, Landsberg taught German at the University School for Girls.

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".

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. In 1933, together with Alice Hamilton, went on a trip to Germany to protest the discharge of Jewish doctors.

Landsberg, the Hamilton sisters and Edith's companion, Doris Fielding Reid, spent their retirement years in Hadlyme, Connecticut, at the house they purchased in 1916. in 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 Doris Fielding Reid.

Legacy 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.