Stella Hanau papers, 1904-1998

Stella Bloch was born July 24, 1890, in Manhattan, New York. Her parents moved from Alabama to New York to go into the silk business. After public school Stella Bloch went to Barnard College, class of 1911, where she majored in English literature. She also pursued her lifelong interest in plays and the theater. Shortly before college, Stella Bloch met Hella Bernays, niece of Sigmund Freud, who became and remained her best friend throughout life. Hella was the class of 1913 at Barnard.

Leo and Stella Hanau married in 1914. Leo Hanau was born in Germany and immigrated to the US in 1906. Their son Richard Hanau was born just as the United States entered World War I. After the war, the Bloch family set up a joint household with Hella Bernays’s family on East 124th Street. During the 1920s, Stella Bloch was active in the experimental theaters in lower Manhattan: The Neighborhood Playhouse on the East Grant Street, the Provincetown Playhouse off Washington Square, and the Playwrights Theater. As publicity agent for these theaters, Stella Hanau was in charge of program distribution, newspaper publicity, and dealing with theater critics. Her theater connections plus her left wing politics attracted Stella Hanau to poets, writers, and political activists. Leo and Stella Hanau separated in 1923 and were divorced in the early 1940s.

Stella Hanau and Hella Bernays were active in the women’s suffrage movement. Stella was also active in the American Birth Control League, the Works Progress Administration, and Planned Parenthood Federation of America. The two women also shared a common interest in psychiatry and fostering community mental health programs. By 1929 Stella Hanau ended her theater interests and concentrated fully on editing the Birth Control Review. In 1935 she went to Washington D.C. to undertake publicity for Margaret Sanger, a job she continued until 1949. Stella Hanau also edited organizational newsletters such as The National Birth Control News and the Birth Control Review.

In the1940s, Stella Hanau served as editor for the Works Progress Administration Writers Program and wrote publicity for the Department of Commerce and the War Production Board. In 1948, the Loyalty Board of the Department of Commerce investigated Stella Hanau. The board scrutinized her friends and acquaintances, affiliations with left wing politics, and her Jewish heritage. Stella Hanau was cleared of all charges in 1949. During the post-war years, Stella Hanau was self-employed doing editorial and rewrite work for professionals in the area of psychiatry and for the American Psychiatric Association.