Constance Drexel (1894 – 1956)

Research and Text by Jacqueline YuB.A. in Art History and East Asian Languages and Culture, Columbia University in the City of New York, 2024. Columbia Global Virtual Intern, 2023 – 2024.

Photograph of Constance Drexel. “The Woman of the Day.” The Paris Times, no. 489, 9 October 1925, pg. 3. Bibliothèque nationale de France.

Constance Drexel was born in Darnstadt, Germany on November 28, 1894 to Theodore Drexel and Zela Audeman Drexel. The following year, her father brought her to Boston, Massachusetts, where she was naturalized as an American citizen in 1898. Constance grew up with generational wealth; her father was the descendant of a wealthy Frankfurt family, and her mother was the daughter of a prominent Swiss watch manufacturer. Although Constance’s permanent residence was in Roslindale, Massachusetts, she traveled constantly between Europe and the U.S., eventually attending school in four different countries. She pursued higher education in Paris at the Sorbonne while also taking supplementary classes at the École du Louvre. During this period, she stayed at the American Girls’ Art Club, an experience she described as positive in a 1920 article for the New York-Tribune. She stated “... I am so much interested in the continuance of the American Girls’ Club in Paris and the New York Studio Club as such a help to the American girl choosing an art career. We Americans, including the American girl, are too prone to think of business and commercial openings; it would be much better for the American girl to think more of perfecting herself in the arts, which, after all, add so much to the joy and happiness of life… Both clubs are very real contributions to the welfare of the American girl student” (February 15, 1920). After graduating from the Sorbonne, she continued living in France with her mother and sister until the onset of World War I. 

Photograph of Constance Drexel as a Nurse. “Deauville – l’Infirmière,” by Constance Drexel. Harper’s Bazaar, vol. 50, no. 6, June 1915, pg. 20-21, 86. ProQuest Periodicals Index Online.

During that fateful summer of 1914, Constance had been vacationing with friends in Deauville, a French northern seaside town, when the conflict broke out. Drexel and her friend “Mrs. P.” volunteered as Red Cross nurses at the ad hoc hospital established in the local casino. This proved to be a formative experience for Constance. Not only did she discover “the meaning of war…,” but it also launched her journalism career (“Deauville – L’Infirmière” 21). As she explained in a January 1926 interview, when Drexel returned to Paris in December of 1914, she “held a firm conviction… that women were even heavier sufferers from war than men. I put this feeling into some magazine articles – I had begun to write for publication” (“Our Family Album” 26). Her claim that she was one of the first American women to volunteer as a Red Cross nurse also garnered her a modicum of fame. When Drexel left Paris for New York at the beginning of 1915 to join the fight for women’s suffrage, the New York Tribune, Washington Post, and San Francisco Examiner covered her journey, highlighting her former service in the war effort. The Post even mistook her for the heiress of the famed Philadelphian banking family helmed by Anthony Joseph Drexel (“Heiress Helps Cause” 4). Constance used her fame to highlight how the fight for women’s suffrage in America was intimately connected to a European movement. In 1915, Drexel stated: “The more I saw of the women of France in their calamity the more I felt their hope was fixed on America. If the women of New York City – which in France means America – if they get the vote it will do more to encourage those poor women over there than anything else. They are discouraged. The future looks dark. They have no hope but that war will come again, even if the present one ends” (“Quits Patching Up Soldiers to Work Here for Suffrage” 12). 

German-American journalist and suffragette, Constance Drexel. 12 March 1915. Mount Pleasant Pyramid, p. 2. Wikimedia Commons.

In April 1915, the New York Tribune hired Drexel to cover the International Woman’s Congress at The Hague. From then on, Drexel worked as a full-time professional journalist, writing galvanizing pieces about the state of gender equality in Europe during World War I and the ongoing struggle for women’s suffrage for publications like The Delineator and Harper’s Bazaar. She was a vocal anti-war advocate and, thus, supported Woodrow Wilson in the 1916 presidential election, with her political sentiments being reported by the New York Times (“Warns Suffragists of Hughes’s Record” 4). In 1919, Drexel covered the Paris Peace Conference for both European and American newspapers alike. She also participated in the International Women’s Suffrage Alliance and the International Council of Women’s fight to obtain the women’s equality clause in the Covenant of the League of Nations. Following the signing of the Treaty of Versailles, she was invited to Czechoslovakia and Poland to study the status of women. 

Constance Drexel standing on the deck of the ship Leviathan. 1925. New York World-Telegram and the Sun Newspaper Photograph Collection, Library of Congress.

Drexel returned to America in 1920 and was promptly sent to Washington, D.C. by the Philadelphia Public Ledger. According to Drexel, this made her the first woman political correspondent in the country, an unsubstantiated claim. Until 1923, she devoted much of her attention to investigating the effects of the recently-passed 19th Amendment to the Constitution, which gave women the right to vote. During this time, she would journey to Europe during the summers and to Geneva every September, covering the Assembly of the League of Nations. Back in the U.S., Drexel witnessed the passage of the Sheppard-Towner Maternity and Infancy Protection Act as well as the participation of women at the Washington Conference for the Limitation of Armaments. 

After nearly a decade of focusing almost exclusively on women’s rights, Constance decided to broaden her scope, spurred by her disappointment in the meager accomplishments of the suffrage movement. In 1926, she stated “I should have preferred to continue my journalistic work covering the interests of women in politics, but frankly, they were not doing enough to make it worth while [sic]. So I have enlarged my scope of writing, spending at least half of each year in Europe, where I am particularly interested in following the League of Nations. Perhaps you will also see me writing fiction some day, or an account of my journalistic experiences” (“Our Family Album” 26).

As a freelance reporter, Drexel wrote for Harper’s Bazaar, the Chicago Tribune, and the McClure Syndicate, among other major publications. She continued to cover feminist topics while also documenting post-war reconstruction efforts, travel trends, and international conflicts. She did not separate politics from her writing and was an open supporter of the League of Nations, world peace, and international reform movements. Drexel was particularly critical of the opium crisis, writing in a 1924 article for Harper’s Monthly Magazine that “races of the human family in Asia are being steeped in this vice through the consent and encouragement of European governments, which are frankly using the system of opium monopoly to obtain revenue and may be suspected of using this insidious power to retain their colonial empires intact” (“Are we our brothers’ keepers?” 736). She also adopted a strong stance in support of international arms control. In 1935, a plan that Drexel drafted for disarmament was presented by Senator James P. Pope to the 74th Congress. Pope wrote in the foreword that the blueprint was:

[…] the result of 20 years’ study begun when the author was living in France and served as a Red Cross nurse at the outbreak of the World War. Miss Drexel was an accredited correspondent at the Paris Peace Conference and the Washington Naval Conference and has attended innumerable meetings of the League of Nations, including the present Disarmament Conference. She has a personal letter from President Wilson thanking her for her efforts in behalf of world peace, and in a preface to her pamphlet on Armament Manufacture and Trade, Dr. Nicholas Murray Butler states that Miss Drexel ‘has specialized for many years on the subject of disarmament and has had ample opportunity to consult the archives at Geneva. (“Disarmament, Security and Control” 3).

Portrait of Constance Drexel. “Defiance Reigns in the Ruhr while Germany is Digging In,” by Constance Drexel. Washington Post, 27 May 1923, pg. 35. ProQuest Historical Newspapers.

In all the time that Drexel openly campaigned against war, she also paradoxically approved of Adolf Hitler. She often visited the country of her birth, and even penned pieces for the German Propaganda Ministry. This skewed perspective impacted her journalism career in the late 1930s. After a brief stint with the WPA in the Writers’ Project and the Education Project, she was hired by Richard H. Waldo to report for his newspaper chain. Famed muckraker George Seldes accused Drexel of being a Nazi propagandist and stated that her articles were often censored by Waldo for their extremism. 

In 1939, Drexel left for Berlin on a trip paid for by the German government. She reportedly left to take care of her ailing mother in Wiesbaden, but this was called into question when, the following year, she began broadcasting for the Nazis. According to John Carver Edwards in Berlin Calling: American Broadcasters in Service to the Third Reich, Drexel was introduced by the Propaganda Ministry as “‘a famous American journalist’ and a member of ‘a socially prominent and wealthy Philadelphia family,’ which she was not” (19). Every Sunday at 8:45 PM from 1940 to 1944, Drexel covered the concerts and exhibitions being held in Berlin, painting pictures of a vibrant, high-class, and thriving cultural environment in wartime Germany. Although it was never explicit, Edwards speculates that Drexel was trying to “convince her listeners of Germany’s stability under the pressures of war and to contrast the conditions with life in the United States” (19). She admitted to journalist Joseph C. Harsch that the Propaganda Ministry drafted all of her scripts. Berlin’s American population largely saw her as a hack, a label that was supported by her eccentric public appearance. After meeting her at a ministry banquet, Harry W. Flannery described her as an “ebullient character and often dressed in bizarre fashion. On this occasion she wore a loose-hanging red and brown dress that looked as if it had been made of burlap. I asked her about it. She posed, with one hand adjusting her hair at the back, and said it was her own creation” (Edwards 20). 

Portrait of Constance Drexel. “Our Family Album.” Ladies’ Home Journal, vol. 43, no. 1,  January 1926, pg. 26. ProQuest Historical Newspapers.

In 1943, Drexel was indicted for treason along with seven other Americans who had broadcasted in Germany. Two years later, on August 16, 1945, American GIs arrested the former journalist in Vienna. After her indictment and the death of her mother, Drexel had apparently gone into hiding in Austria, and she was only discovered after revealing her past to American war correspondent Fred Wackernagel, Jr. The Hartford Courant reported that Wackernagel “learned Miss Drexel’s identity by accident when he was approached by an elderly woman who said she wanted to talk to him because he wore an American uniform. Encouraging conversation in the hope of learning the reaction of the Viennese to the war’s outcome, Wackernagel said the woman disclosed her identity and mentioned the indictment” (“Constance Drexel Nazi Broadcaster Found in Vienna” 2). She spent a year in jail and internment camps. Drexel claimed that she was “never a propagandist for the Germans” and that her broadcasts were “purely cultural, about art, music and literature” (“Constance Drexel is Released Here” 19). She further argued that she only “broadcast for the German radio… to make a living, not to give aid and comfort to the enemy” (“Constance Drexel Freed of Charges” 8). In 1946, she was able to travel to New York City but was again detained due to immigration issues. Lawyers stated that she had been abroad for too long, enough years to forfeit her citizenship. Drexel was eventually released, and in 1948, the treason charges against her were dismissed by federal judge David A. Pine after eight months of investigations did not produce enough evidence to convict her.

With her reputation and career in shambles, Constance Drexel faded into obscurity. She authored a few articles in retirement, including a piece on Franklin Roosevelt’s childhood, and she was appointed to the Woodrow Wilson Centennial Committee. On August 28, 1956, Drexel died suddenly at the age of 68 after collapsing at the home of a cousin in Waterbury, Connecticut. She had apparently planned on leaving for Europe that very afternoon to stay with her mother’s remaining family in Geneva. 

 

 

Sources

  • Drexel, Constance. United States, Congress, Senate. Disarmament, Security and Control: Draft of Convention for Disarmament, Security, and Control Based on the Kellogg Pact. Government Printing Office, 13 March 1935. 74th Congress, 1st Session, Document no. 33. 
  • Drexel, Constance. “Are we our brothers’ keepers?” Harper’s Monthly Magazine, vol. 149, no. 894, 1 November 1924. ProQuest Periodicals Index Online.  
  • Drexel, Constance. “Deauville – l’Infirmière.” Harper’s Bazaar, vol. 50, no. 6, June 1915, pg. 20-21, 86. ProQuest Periodicals Index Online.
  • Drexel, Constance. “Defiance Reigns in the Ruhr while Germany is Digging In.” Washington Post, 27 May 1923, pg. 35. ProQuest Historical Newspapers.
  • Drexel, Constance. “Equal Rights Bill Foes Find Leader.” Washington Post, 31 January 1922, pg. 5. ProQuest Historical Newspapers.
  • Drexel, Constance. “Feminism More Effective in Europe than America.” Constance Current History, vol. 24, no. 2, 1 May 1926, pg. 211. ProQuest Historical Newspapers. 
  • Drexel, Constance. “Paris Becomes Paradise for Americans who are Lured by Joy and Jazz.” Washington Post, 28 October 1923, pg. 14. ProQuest Historical Newspapers. 
  • Drexel, Constance. “Predict War with U.S.” The Washington Post, 21 May 1915, pg. 2. ProQuest Historical Newspapers.
  • Drexel, Constance. “The Continuing Curse of Opium.” Ladies’ Home Journal, July 1925, vol. 42, no. 7, pg. 6. ProQuest Historical Newspapers. 
  • Drexel, Constance. “The Munitions Traffic.” The North American Review, vol. 236, no. 1, July 1933, pgs. 64-72. https://www.jstor.org/stable/25114243.
  • Drexel, Constance. “The Peace Conference: Where Women Failed.” Harper’s Bazaar, vol. 50, no. 8, August 1915, pg. 10, 70. ProQuest Periodicals Index Online.
  • Drexel, Constance. “The Role Women Will Play in Party Politics.” Detroit Free Press, 25 April 1920, pg. D5. ProQuest Historical Newspapers. 
  • Drexel, Constance. “The Woman Behind the Gun: What the Wives and Sweethearts of Europe do While Husbands and Lovers are at the Front.” The Delineator, November 1915, pg. 19. Digitized by Google from the University of Iowa. 
  • Drexel, Constance. “The Woman Pays.” The Delineator, vol. 87, no. 19, July 1915, pg. 1. Digitized by Google on HathiTrust. 
  • Drexel, Constance. “Where are you going this summer?” Harper’s Bazaar, no. 2540, June 1924, pgs. 51-53, 146. ProQuest Periodicals Index Online. 
  • Drexel, Constance. “Why I am for Wilson.” Courier-Journal, 6 November 1916, pg. 5. ProQuest Historical Newspapers.
  • Edwards, John Carver. Berlin Calling: American Broadcasters in Service to the Third Reich. 1991. Praeger Publishers: New York, NY. 
  • Reston, John and Constance Drexel and Winfred Boulter. “Women in Three Lands at War: The Home Fronts in Britain, France and Germany.” New York Times, 8 October 1939, pg. 116. ProQuest Historical Newspapers. 
  • Rolo, Charles J. “Germany Calling.” Current History and Forum, vol. 52, no. 2. 22 October 1940, pg. 27. ProQuest Historical Newspapers.  
  • “2 U.S. Citizens Held in Austrian Jail.” New York Times, 21 August 1945, pg. 5. ProQuest Historical Newspapers.
  • “Constance Drexel Freed of Charges.” New York Times, 14 April 1948, pg. 8. ProQuest Historical Newspapers.
  • “Constance Drexel is Released Here.” New York Times, 2 October 1946, pg. 19. ProQuest Historical Newspapers. 
  • “Constance Drexel Nazi Broadcaster Found in Vienna.” Hartford Courant, 18 August 1945, pg. 2. ProQuest Historical Newspapers.
  • “Constance Drexel, Ex-Newswoman, Dies; Broadcast for the Nazis During War.” New York Times, 29 August 1956, pg. 28. ProQuest Historical Newspapers.
  • “Constance Drexel, Nazi Agent, Well Known Here.” Washington Post, 28 July 1943, pg. B4. ProQuest Historical Newspapers.
  • “Constance Drexel.” Washington Post and Times Herald, 1 September 1956, pg. 16. ProQuest Historical Newspapers. 
  • “Heiress Helps Cause: Miss Constance Drexel Joins Congressional Union.” Washington Post, 30 January 1915, pg. 4. ProQuest Historical Newspapers.
  • “Making Bohemia Comfortable for Girl Art Students.” New-York Tribune, 15 February 1920, pg. 65. Newspapers.com.
  • “Miss Constance Drexel A Former WPA Writer.” The Sun, 18 August 1945, pg. 5. ProQuest Historical Newspapers.
  • “Miss Drexel is Back to Aid Suffragists.” The San Francisco Examiner, 2 February 1915. ProQuest Historical Newspapers. 
  • “Our Family Album.” Ladies’ Home Journal, vol. 43, no. 1,  January 1926, pg. 26. ProQuest Historical Newspapers. 
  • “Quits Patching Up Soldiers to Work Here for Suffrage.” New York Tribune, 21 February 1915, pg. 12. ProQuest Historical Newspapers. 
  • “Social Notes.” New York Times, 4 September 1909, pg. 7. ProQuest Historical Newspapers.
  • “Warns Suffragists of Hughes’s Record.” New York Times, 5 August 1916, pg. 4. ProQuest Historical Newspapers.

“Women Voters Plan Luncheon for Discussion of Munitions.” Washington Post, 17 March 1935, pg. A4. ProQuest Historical Newspapers.