Victor Adler

Victor Adler (24 June 1852 – 11 November 1918) was an Austrian politician, a leader of the labour movement and founder of the Social Democratic Workers' Party (SDAP).

Life

Adler was born on 24 June 1852, in Prague, the son of a Jewish merchant, who came from Leipnik in Moravia. His family moved to the Leopoldstadt borough of Vienna when he was three years old. He attended the renowned Catholic Schottenstift gymnasium, together with Heinrich Friedjung one of the few Jewish students, whereafter he studied chemistry and medicine at the University of Vienna. Having graduated in 1881, he worked as assistant of Theodor Meynert at the psychiatric department of the General Hospital.

In 1878, he had married Emma Braun. Their son Friedrich was born in 1879. From 1882 to 1889, the couple resided at 19 Berggasse in the Alsergrund borough of Vienna, an address that later became famous as the office of Sigmund Freud (the present-day Sigmund Freud Museum).

Adler initially supported the German national movement led by Georg von Schönerer and worked on the 1882 Linz Program. However, Schönerer's increasingly antisemitic policies, culminating in the amendment of an Aryan paragraph, led to an estrangement with Adler, who focussed on issues. From 1886, he published the journal (), covering the working conditions of the brick factory and agitating against the . After was banned, he issued the () from 1889. Adler travelled to and , where he met with , and . He was charged several times for his activities and spent nine months in prison.