ADOLF A. BERLE, 1895-1971 - Biographical Sketch Adolf A. Berle was born on January 29, 1895, in Boston, Massachusetts, the second of four children of Dr. Adolf Augustus and Mary Augusta (Wright) Berle. He graduated from Harvard College in 1913, after majoring in history, and received his M.A, degree the following year. In 1916 at age twenty-one, he became the youngest man to receive an LL.B. degree from the Harvard Law School and began practicing with Louis D. Brandeis's firm. When the United States entered World War I, he enlisted in the Army. After receiving officer training at Plattsburg, New York, he was commissioned a second lieutenant and served at the Army War College in Washington, D.C. as an intelligence officer. In 1918 the Army sent him to Santo Domingo to settle land titles for U.S. sugar companies in order to increase sugar production for the war effort. He drafted a land law that is still operative in the Dominican Republic. After the armistice he remained in the Army and served with the American Commission to Negotiate the Peace at Paris as an advisor on Russian, Polish, and Baltic affairs. He protested the Versailles settlement in May 1919, and requested to be relieved from his duties with the Commission. His request was granted the following month. After his discharge in July 1919, Berle moved to New York where he resumed law practice with the firm of Rounds, Hatch, Dillingham, & Debevoise. He became a volunteer worker with the Henry Street Settlement and, at the request of the American Indian Defense Association, helped to secure the land titles of the Pueblo Indians in New Mexico and assisted in drafting the Pueblo Indian Land Law of 1924. He became a member of the firm of Lippitt & Berle in 1924, and in 1929, he organized with his brother, Rudolf, the firm of Berle & Berle. Meanwhile he had started teaching, first as a lecturer at the Harvard Business School from 1924 to 1927, and then as associate professor and professor of corporation law at Columbia University from 1927 to 1963. He was on leave of absence during World War II and became professor emeritus in 1963. He served as special counsel to a committee of the Ohio State Bar Association in revising the Ohio Corporation Law in 1926-27, and in the same capacity to the Wisconsin Public Service Commission in revising the Wisconsin Securities law in 1931-32. Berle's association with Franklin D. Roosevelt began as a member of the Brain Trust, a group headed by Raymond Moley which advised Governor Roosevelt during his campaign for the Presidency in 1932. Although he declined a full-time position in the Roosevelt administration, he helped to write a section of the Bankruptcy Act, assisted the Reconstruction Finance Corporation in railroad reorganizations, and was a special counsel to the R.F.C. from 1933 to 1938. He also participated in the Treasury Conference during the "Bank Holiday" in March 1933, and advised the government on stock exchange legislation in 1933 and 1934. He went to Cuba in August 1933, at the request of the State Department as financial adviser to the American Embassy in Havana. In 1934, he was elected a member of the Advisory Committee of the Board of Governors of the New York Stock Exchange. As Chamberlain of the City of New York from 1934 to 1937, Berle worked to improve the City's finances and to acquire and unify under public ownership and control the rapid transit railroads. When the office was abolished in 1937, on his recommendation, he became temporary chairman of the Planning Commission of the City of New York, a member of the City Housing Authority, and chairman of a committee to study New York's substitute teacher system. From 1938 to 1944, Berle was an Assistant Secretary of State. He took particular interest in Latin American affairs, serving as a U.S. delegate to inter-American conferences in Lima (1938), and Havana (1940). (He had been a U.S. delegate at Buenos Aires in 1936-37, and later attended the conference at Mexico City in 1945.) His duties at the Department of State included postwar planning, negotiating with Allied governments in exile, coordinating U.S. and foreign intelligence activities, evaluating trends in international finance, drafting government statements on international questions, and writing speeches for the President and administration officials. He was president of the International Conference on Civil Aviation in Chicago in 1944, and chairman of the United States delegation. He served as United States ambassador to Brazil in 1945-46. After the war Berle returned to law practice and teaching in New York. He was chairman of the Liberal Party of New York State from 1947 to 1955, and assisted such foundations as The Fund for the Republic, the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, the Rockefeller Foundation, and the Committee on Human Ecology during the 1950's and 1960's. He also maintained an interest in Central and South American affairs and in 1956 assisted in the settlement of a dispute between Nicaragua and Costa Rica. When John F. Kennedy was running for the presidency in 1960, he asked Berle to be chairman of a task force to study Latin American problems. On January 25, 1961, he was made Consultant to the Secretary of State and on January 31, President Kennedy set up the Interdepartmental Task Force on Latin America to coordinate "all policies and programs of concern to the Americas" with Berle as chairman. He reported to the President and Secretary of State Dean Rusk. He resigned from the State Department in July 1961, after submitting to the President the final report of the Task Force. In addition to his teaching at Columbia, Berle was a lecturer at the United States Air War College, Maxwell Air Force Base, Alabama, 1954-65, Chairman of the Board of the Ecole de l'Europe Libre (Strasbourg, France), 1948-59, and trustee of the University of the Andes Foundation. He was a Trustee (1934-51) and Chairman of the Board of the Twentieth Century Fund (1951-71), as well as a Trustee of the Free Europe Committee (1948-63), Director, Treasurer, and Chairman of the Board of the American Molasses Company (1946-71), Director of the Savings Bank Trust Company (1932-38), and counsel thereafter, and Director of Nationwide Corporation (1956-71). Mr. Berle's books include the immensely influential study THE MODERN CORPORATION AND PRIVATE PROPERTY (1932) written in collaboration with Gardiner Means, LIQUID CLAIMS AND NATIONAL WEALTH (1934) with Victoria Pederson, THE NATURAL SELECTION OF POLITICAL FORCES (1950), THE 20TH CENTURY CAPITALIST REVOLUTION (1954), POWER WITHOUT PROPERTY (1959), LATIN AMERICA: DIPLOMACY AND REALITY (1962), THE AMERICAN ECONOMIC REPUBLIC (1963), and POWER (1969). He wrote numerous articles and book reviews in law journals, SURVEY GRAPHIC, THE REPORTER, NEW YORK TIMES, VITAL SPEECHES, HARPER'S MAGAZINE, and other publications. Adolf A. Berle died on February 17, 1971, in his home at 142 East Nineteenth Street, in New York. In 1973, Beatrice Bishop Berle, whom Adolf A. Berle married in December 1927, and Travis Beal Jacobs produced an edited version of a diary kept by Mr. Berle from 1937 to 1971. It was published by Harcourt, Brace, Jovanivich under the title NAVIGATING THE RAPIDS 1918-1971. Since no formal diary was found for the years 1918-1936, the record was constructed from Berle's correspondence and writings; his handwritten diary entries for 1918-19, covering his service with the American Commission to Negotiate the Peace, and for 1923-24, describing his work with the Pueblo Indians; excerpts from his wife's diary; and passages from his Columbia University oral history transcript.

This series contains correspondence, diary entries, drafts of writings, memoranda, printed materials, and records of Mr. Berle's college and military activities, his services in Santo Domingo and on the staff of the American Commission to Negotiate the Peace, his efforts on behalf of the Henry Street Settlement, and his legislative work for the Pueblo Indians. The material is filed alphabetically by subject or surname of correspondent. Bulk of material is from 1917-1924.

The general correspondence is from Mr. Berle's law office in New York City and is essentially personal in nature. However, it also contains exchanges with prominent individuals and organizations about important issues. The correspondence was originally in chronological order but was rearranged alphabetically by surnames of individuals and names of institutions and organizations. There is a small file of letters from unidentified people and a container of receipts at the end of the series. Most letters bear the numbers 103, 103A or 103B.

Correspondence, drafts of legislation, printed materials, and reports relating to the revision of the Wisconsin securities or "Blue Sky" law. Mr. Berle served as special counsel to the Wisconsin Public Service Commission for this purpose.

Correspondence, memoranda, newspaper clippings, printed materials, speech drafts, and writings related to Mr. Berle's activities as a member of Franklin D. Roosevelt's "Brain Trust" during the 1932 Presidential campaign and the early months of the first Roosevelt administration. The material has been divided into three sub-series: general correspondence, subjects, and speeches and writings. Documents are numbered 524A - Correspondence, 524B - Various Material, 524D - Anti-Trust, 524E - Railroads, 524F - Regulation of Security Issues, 524G - Regulation of Branch Banking, 524H - Brain Trust. The Speech and Writings file was created by removing materials from file 524B and several other files.

This series contains general correspondence for 1933, arranged alphabetically, addressed to Mr. Berle at the Reconstruction Finance Corporation by public officials and private citizens on a variety of subjects, and business correspondence, arranged chronologically, dealing with R.F.C. matters particularly railroads. The business correspondence is file 103C. There is additional R.F.C. material in the State Department Subject File.

Articles, correspondence, drafts, memoranda, newsclippings, notes, pamphlets, and speeches detailing Mr. Berle's work on the Securities Act of 1933, and his research into federal securities legislation which was financed by the Commonwealth Foundation. A draft report based on his research entitled "Administrative Control of Security Issues" is contained at the end of the series. Not all the documents listed in the folder entitled "List of Materials in File 542" came to the Library with Mr. Berle's papers.

Correspondence, memoranda, newspaper clippings, notes, and proposals documenting Mr. Berle's work on the Securities Exchange Act of 1934. He served on a committee to study proposed stock exchange legislation appointed by Secretary of Commerce Daniel C. Roper in the fall of 1933. Correspondents include Frank Altschul, R. E. Desvernine, John Dickinson, Paul P. Gourrich, and James M. Landis.

Mr. Berle was elected a member of the Advisory Committee to the Board of Governors of the New York Stock Exchange in 1934 and was active on its Committee on Stock List. File 621 contains general correspondence and file 667 has projects worked on by the Committee on Stock List.

This correspondence was addressed to Mr. Berle at the Office of Chamberlain of the City of New York, at Columbia University, and at his home, 142 East 19th Street, New York, New York, and relates to personal affairs, business of the Chamberlain's office, and teaching at Columbia. The material is arranged alphabetically by subject or surname of correspondent.

This series contains correspondence from Mr. Berle's State Department files in Washington, D.C., arranged alphabetically by surname of correspondent. The first four foldeers in this series are from his New York office file 685 State Department, 1938-40. They contain lists of letters forwarded to his Washington office (many of which were not with the papers received at the Library); letters relating to State Department matters; correspondence between Mr. Berle and his sister, Lina W. Berle, about New York business; and material about refugees. Another folder from file 685 entitled "Monopoly Memorandum" was placed with materials on the Temporary National Economic Committee in the State Department Subject File. As Assistant Secretary of State, he was charged with coordination of financial questions with those of policy; general supervision over the Financial Division, the Passport Division, the Division of International Conferences (except fiscal), the Division of International Communications (aviation only), the Division of Foreign Activity Correlation, the Translating Bureau, and other matters connected with foreign nationalities in the United States. He was also involved with general supervision of affairs relating to Canada and Greenland and with coordinating wartime intelligence matters.

This series includes correspondence, drafts, memoranda, notes, printed materials, reports, and speeches relating to Mr. Berle's diplomatic and political activities while in the State Department and to the various departmental boards and committees on which he served. It contains copies of his memoranda to President Franklin D. Roosevelt, Secretary of State Cordell Hull, and Under Secretaries of State Edward J. Stettinius and Sumner Welles. There are also files on Inter-American conferences (1936-40) and the International Civil Aviation Conference of 1944. The files are arranged in alphabetical order. Boards and Committees on which Mr. Berle served include: the St. Lawrence Advisory Committee of the St. Lawrence-Great Lakes Waterway Project; the Joint Economic Conference, Canada and the United States; the Board of Trustees and Executive Committee, Export-Import Bank; the Inter-American Financial and Economic Advisory Committee; the Department of State Policy Committee; the Department of State Committee on Post-War Programs; the Interdepartmental Committee on Use of Lend-Lease Funds to carry out Hyde Park Agreement; the Board of Economic Operations of the Department of State; and the Special Interdepartmental Committee on Maritime Labor.

Correspondence and memoranda relating to Mr. Berle's diplomatic business while ambassador to Brazil, January 18, 1945-February 27, 1946. The material is arranged alphabetically by subject and surname of correspondent.

The file contains Mr. Berle's appointment diaries and appointment schedules kept by him on cardboard sheets for 1934 and 1936-39. The appointment diaries also list daily telephone calls. Appointments and phone calls are arranged alphabetically by subject or surname of correspondent on 3" X 5" slips of paper for the years 1939, 1940, 1941, and 1942. The indices in the front of the appointment diaries were apparently made from these slips.

This correspondence is divided into three time periods: 1946-58, 1961, and 1963-71. The 1946-58 and 1963-71 letters are from Mr. Berle's law office at 70 Pine Street in New York. They were originally arranged chronologically but were put in alphabetical order by surname of correspondent. The 1961 file has correspondence directed to Mr. Berle at the Department of State.

Correspondence, drafts, memoranda, minutes of meetings, printed materials, reports, and speeches relating to political affairs and international relations arranged alphabetically. The series was created from miscellaneous topical files and files grouped by Mr. Berle under the heading "Public Subjects." This and the following series, COMMITTEES 1946-71, document his work as consultant to both government and private organizations on economic, financial, foreign affairs, and political questions during the post-war years.

Correspondence, memoranda, minutes of meetings, notes, printed materials, and reports relating to committees of organizations to which Mr. Berle belonged or in which he was asked to participate. The files are arranged alphabetically by name of committee or organization.

Articles, correspondence, memoranda, pamphlets, and reports arranged in chronological order. The Commission was created by the Committee for Economic Development in 1957 to investigate the monetary and credit system of the United States. Mr. Berle was a member of the Commission from 1958 to 1960 when it completed its work.

Correspondence dealing with Mr. Berle's attempts to assist acquaintances through legal counsel, financial aid, recommendations, and support for their educational and publishing endeavors. The files are arranged alphabetically by surname of correspondent or organization.

Correspondence, memoranda, reports, and writings relating to Mr. Berle's academic activities at Columbia where he was Associate Professor and Professor of Law (1927-63) and Professor Emeritus of Law (1963-71). The files are arranged in chronological order.

Mr. Berle was a member of the Superior Education Council of Puerto Rico from 1958 to 1967, and was employed by the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico as chief counsel to draft a revised corporation law between 1953 and 1956. The correspondence, drafts of legislation, memoranda, notes, reports, and writings in this series pertain essentially to these jobs.

Addresses, correspondence, memoranda, minutes of meetings, printed materials, and reports relating to the official business of the Twentieth Century Fund. Mr. Berle was a Trustee (1934-51) and then Chairman of the Board of the Fund (1951-71). The Fund is an operating research institution conducting its own studies and publishing and distributing its findings. Its major fields of interest are economics and political and social problems.

This correspondence is arranged in chronological order with separate files on 26 individuals at the end. It includes introductions of friends and students to academic and business squaintances to promote their business and educational interests, letters recommending people for jobs, counseling them about careers, assisting businesses in locating prospective employees, supporting visa and passport applications, and sponsoring individuals for awards and memberships. It also includes character references for those investigated by government organizations and congressional committees, and formal messages and testimonials. Mr. Berle's letters occasionally contain observations on economics, international affairs, or politics.

This series includes Mr. Berle's articles, book drafts, book reviews, and speeches, frequently accompanied by the correspondence relating to them. There are also correspondence files containing reactions to his speeches and writings, invitations to speak, and requests for articles and reviews. In addition, acquaintances and friends asked for comments on their writings; scholars requested access to his diary and papers; and both students and writers asked for his observations and recollections of events (especially those in which he participated) for their articles, books, and papers. His replies included evaluations of their writings; discussions of current events, particularly the economy, financial investments, the stock market, and U.S. Latin American policy under Presidents Kennedy and Johnson, and accounts of his roles in the Brain Trust, the Spanish Civil War, the Greer incident, New York politics, Vatican diplomacy, and other past events. Present also are drafts of speeches and articles for James A. Farley and Louis Johnson. Though this file has most of Mr. Berle's speeches and writings, additional materials are scattered throughout his papers. The materials are arranged chronologically within six sub-series: Speeches, 1932-70; General Correspondence about Speeches, 1932-39, 1960-71; Articles and Book Reviews, 1921-1970; Berle Articles and Book Reviews in Journals, Periodicals, and Reprints, 1938-70; General Correspondence about Articles and Book Reviews, 1958-71; and Book Drafts, 1939-73.

Correspondence and speeches arranged chronologically relating to honorary awards, citations, and degrees conferred upon Mr. Berle.

This series contains transcripts of three of the four interviews of Adolf A. Berle conducted by the Columbia University Oral History Project. Topics covered include Mr. Berle's education; early law career; Justice Louis Brandeis's nomination to the Supreme Court; Versailles Peace Conference; service in the Dominican Republic; early teaching career; THE MODERN CORPORATION AND PRIVATE PROPERTY; impressions of Harlan Stone, Nicholas Murray Butler, William O. Douglas, and others; Henry Street Settlement; and Pueblo Indians in New Mexico. The text contains additions, corrections, and deletions by Mrs. Adolf A. Berle.

This series includes a copy of the Plattsburger (1917), one scrapbook (1932-34), newspaper clippings (1946-74) intended for additional scrapbooks, and two copies of the guide to the memorial exhibition in honor of Adolf A. Berle held at the Lenox Library in Lenox, Massachusetts. Additional newsclippings are located in other parts of the collection.

The diary consists of a series of memoranda in which Mr. Berle recorded his daily activities and his comments on personalities, domestic and foreign affairs, and national and New York politics. Diary entries are supplemented by letters, memoranda of conversations, and clippings. Such supporting material is particularly voluminous for the World War II period. Over one-half of the diary (6 1/2 containers) is concerned with Mr. Berle's services as Assistant Secretary of State and Ambassador to Brazil (1938-46). General topics covered in the diary include his personal and family affairs, his involvement in New York State and national politics, his teaching at Columbia University, his concern with the threat of communism in the United States, and his service as Assistant Secretary of State, Ambassador to Brazil, and head of President Kennedy's Latin American Task Force. The diary entries while Assistant Secretary of State reflect Mr. Berle's principal concern for relations with the Free French and governments in exile during World War II (including negotiations concerning Greenland with the exiled representative of the Danish Government), coordination of U.S. and foreign intelligence activities, speechwriting for the President and administration officials, international avaition policy, and domestic economic policy.

This series includes correspondence, memoranda, drafts, notes, printed materials, minutes, radio scripts, scholarly papers and research reports, course outlines, budgetary information, legal material, speeches, and _curriculae vitae_ relating to Mr. Berle's activities as a member of the Board of Directors of the said committees. The material contains much information concerning the work of the Committees, but relatively little about Berle. The National Committee for a Free Europe (NCFE) was incorporated in 1949. Its name was changed to Free Europe Committee (FEC) in 1954. These committees grew out of the U.S. commitment during the Second World War to ensure freely elected governments in the liberated nations of Eastern Europe. It worked to keep alive hopes of the eventual freedom of these "satellite nations" from the domination of the Soviet Union, not by force of arms, but through a nourishment of the cultural heritage and patriotic ferver of the "captive peoples," and a campaign of psychological warfare against the USSR and her colloborators in Eastern Europe. The work of the Committees was divided among three sub-committees: 1) the Committee of Intellectual Activity, 2) the Committee of Radio and Press, and 3) the Committee on American Contacts. The first of these committees was chaired by Berle. It provided East European refugees with opportunities and funding for education, research, and other intellectual pursuits, arranged for the publication and distribution of the research generated by the refugees, and attempted to find suitable employment for those refugees who needed it. It co-sponsored the East European Inquiry in cooperation with New York University and the Carnegie Endowment, founded and administered the Mid-European studies Center which provided research grants for refugee scholars, artists and intellectuals residing in the United States, and created the Free Europe University in Exile which granted scholarships and provided other aid and assistance to refugee scholars residing in Western Europe. The FEUE was situated at the University of Strasbourg in France, where, generally, FEUE students were enrolled in some course of study. FEUE supplemented the students' regular courses with tutorials in national culture, the French language, and symposia focusing on issues of importance in the East-West struggle. FEUE grants were reserved for those refugee scholars who expected to return eventually to their native countries in positions of importance and leadership, once their homelands freed themselves from Soviet domination. The FEC began to phase out the FEUE in 1956 following the debacle in Hungary and disenchantment on the part of the refugee students with the French system of higher education. As chairman of Committee One, Berle routinely received reports on its various operations, most particularly on the administration of the FEUE. Berle also sat on the board of review for grants and publications of the MESC, and often addressed those students who attended the FEUE Summer Sessions. Committee Two sponsored the operations of Radio Free Europe, the Free Europe Press and other organs of pro-Western propaganda. As a director of NCFE, Berle received copies of selected RFE scripts for his review, reports on political conditions in Europe from the Committee's information gathering services, memoranda on electronic jamming of FEC broadcasts by the Soviet Union, the effectiveness of the propaganda effort, etc. He was directly involved as a legal counselor in RFE's labor dispute with the Newspaper Guild of New York and in seeking employment for FEUE students in Committee Two operations. The work of Committee Three involved arranging speaking engagements, lecture tours, etc., for East European refugees. It was the least active of the Committees, and there is very little information about it in this series. Mr. Berle also served on the editorial committee of the American Friends of Captive European Nations, which co-sponsored, with the Assembly of Captive European Nations, the compilation and publication of the annual report, HUNGARY UNDER SOVIET RULE. This report grew out of a need for accurate information about conditions in Hungary following the Soviet invasion of 1956. These reports were created primarily for the benefit of the United Nations Special Committee on Hungary. ACEN material in this series includes drafts of and correspondence concerning the annual report and other related projects.