Victor L. Berger

Victor Berger
Member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Wisconsin's 5th district
In office March 4, 1923 – March 3, 1929
Preceded by	William H. Stafford
Succeeded by	William H. Stafford
In office March 4, 1919 – November 10, 1919 Unseated
Preceded by	William H. Stafford
Succeeded by	William H. Stafford (1921)
In office March 4, 1911 – March 3, 1913
Preceded by	William H. Stafford
Succeeded by	William H. Stafford
Personal details
Born	Victor Luitpold Berger (1860-02-28)February 28, 1860 Nieder-Rehbach, Austria (now Romania)
Died	August 7, 1929(1929-08-07) (aged 69) Milwaukee, Wisconsin, U.S.
Political party	Socialist

Victor Luitpold Berger (February 28, 1860 – August 7, 1929) was an Austrian–American socialist politician and journalist who was a founding member of the Social Democratic Party of America and its successor, the Socialist Party of America. Born in the Austrian Empire (present-day Romania), Berger immigrated to the United States as a young man and became an important and influential socialist journalist in Wisconsin. He helped establish the so-called Sewer Socialist movement, but also sparked the American Socialist Party's nativist turn. In 1910, he was elected as the first Socialist to the U.S. House of Representatives, representing a district in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

In 1919, Berger was convicted of violating the Espionage Act of 1917 for publicizing his anti-interventionist views and as a result was denied the seat to which he had been twice elected in the House of Representatives.^[1] The verdict was eventually overturned by the Supreme Court in 1921 in Berger v. United States, and Berger was elected to three successive terms in the 1920s.^[2]