Dresden Literary American Club
In the Spring of 1873 TR, his brother Elliot and their sister Corinne were living in Germany. TR’s aunt Lucy Elliot was in Dresden for the summer. They stayed with the Minkwitz family and were being tutored in German culture and language.
In the meantime TR’s dad returned to the states to oversee the final construction of their new home on 57th street while TR's mother Mittie and older sister Anna traveled to Paris. Germany had just become an independent country in 1871.
While there the gang created what they called the Dresden Literary American Club or the D.L.A. C. It was literary club that met every Sunday. Elliott came up with the club’s secret motto, “we are no asses.” Everyone in the club wrote and shared short stories and poetry they had written.
Corinne described TR’s writings in two categories: either solemn pieces about nature., or stores that were amusing such as his ”Mrs. Field Mouse’s Dinner Party.”
The club met every Sunday at the temporary home of their aunt Lucy Elliot who was staying in Dresden for the summer. When they weren’t cracking the books they visited Dresden’s museums, libraries, the symphony, parks, and in the evening they studied their language lessons. TR spent much of his time studying natural history and taxidermy. The chemical odor annoyed everyone in the Minkwitz family including the maids.
It was in Dresden where TR first read the Nibelungenlied, or the Song of the Nibelungs.
That summer he suffered through several attacks of asthma. An August outbreak of smallpox forced his mother to send the kids to Switzerland. After three weeks the epidemic passed and they returned to Dresden before sailing home in October 1873 and moving into their new home at 6 West 57th Street.
Ten years later Cornelius Vanderbilt II built his home down the block from the Roosevelts at 1 West 57th Street. The next year his mother Mittie died and within a week of her burial the house was sold to John Kennedy who had been an old friend of TR’s dad. He was the director of the Museum of Natural History.
The Dresden Literary American Club didn’t survive beyond Dresden. It was replaced by the P.O.R.E. THE Paradise of Ravenous Eaters established by Corinne and her best friend Edith Kermit Carow.