Victor Luitpold Berger (February 28, 1860 – August 7, 1929) was a founding member of the Social Democratic Party of America and its successor, the Socialist Party of America.
Born in Austria-Hungary, 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.
Also a politician, 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 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.
The verdict was eventually overturned by the Supreme Court in 1921, and Berger was elected to three successive terms in the 1920s.