Basic Information
Name: Victor Berger
Nicknames: Vic the Red, Vic's VapoRub, Trader Vic
Born: February 28,1880
Died: August 7, 1929
Nationality: German; became U.S. citizen
Hometown: Nieder-Rehbach, followed by Milwaukee
WORK & EDUCATION
Occupation: Journalist and congressman
Education: University of Vienna and University of Budapest
FAMILY & FRIENDS
Spouse: Meta Schlicting
Children: Dorothea, Jack, and Elsa
Friends: Eugene Debs, Max Eastman, citizens of Milwaukee who kept electing him to Congress
Foes: Wilson Administration
Analysis
Calling Bernie Sanders
Victor Berger, who played a crucial role in Debs' early days as a Socialist, was the first Jewish Socialist elected to the U.S. Congress (in 1910). Mazel tov, Vic.
Thanks in part to his European background and education, Berger had read and studied Marx (in the original German, naturally). Berger was the person who introduced Debs to the Socialist ideology in 1895, while visiting Debs in prison.
As Debs lovingly recalled:
It was at this time, when the first glimmerings of socialism were beginning to penetrate, that Victor L. Berger—and I have loved him ever since—came to Woodstock [prison], as if a providential instrument, and delivered the first impassioned message of socialism I had ever heard—the very first to set the wires humming in my system. (Source)
Berger brought Debs a copy of Das Kapital—not exactly fun, light jailhouse reading, but a book that changed Debs' life.
Berger was Debs' co-founder of the American Socialist Party and was the party's most prominent political success story. Milwaukee was a city full of German immigrants, and they kept electing Berger to office…even after he was indicted under the Espionage Act and the U.S. Congress refused to seat him. Unlike Debs, Berger's conviction was overturned on a legal technicality, so Berger never went to jail.