Adolph F. Germer

Adoph F. Germer (January 15, 1881 – May 26, 1966) was an American socialist political functionary and union organizer. He is best remembered as National Executive Secretary of the Socialist Party of America from 1916 to 1919. It was during this period that the Left Wing Section of the Socialist Party emerged as an organized faction. Germer was instrumental as one of the leaders of the SPA's "Regular" faction in orchestrating a series of suspensions, expulsions, and "reorganizations" of various Left Wing states, branches, and locals and thereby controlling the pivotal 1919 Emergency National Convention of the SPA, and thus forcing the Left Wing to establish new organizations of their own, the Communist Labor Party of America and the Communist Party of America.

Early years

Adolph F. Germer was born January 15, 1881, in Welan, East Prussia, Germany the son of a miner. Germer emigrated to the United States with his family in December 1888 and attended public school in Braceville, Illinois. He also attended a Lutheran parochial school and completed his high school coursework via correspondence school. Upon his release, Germer continued to work as a UMWA organizer in the bitterly fought Colorado coal strike.

In 1914 Germer was elected vice president of the Illinois Mine Workers, the state affiliate of the UMWA. He remained in that position until some time the next year.

Return to union organizing

Thereafter, he left the employment of the Socialist Party, obtaining a job as a worker in the oil industry in California in 1923, where he was a member of the Oil Field, Gas Well and Refinery Workers Union. He later worked as an organizer for that union.

Germer was active in the 1924 Presidential campaign of Robert M. La Follette.

In 1926, Germer returned to Chicago, where he worked for a large real estate firm, remaining in that occupation until the onset of the depression in 1930.

In 1930, Germer was elected a vice president of the reorganized United Mine Workers of America. The following year, he returned to his hometown of Mt. Olive, Illinois and went to work again as a miner until the mine was closed due to the economic downturn.

In June 1931, Germer took a position as editor of the Rockford Labor News, remaining in that role until the end of 1933.

In November 1935, Germer was appointed by John L. Lewis as the first field representative for the Congress of Industrial Organizations. It this capacity, Germer was a participant in the organizing campaigns and strike activities of the auto and rubber workers of the upper Midwest. Germer was particularly important as a key organizer in the 1937 United Auto Workers strike against General Motors.

Germer officially retired from the AFL-CIO on April 1, 1955, but he continued to serve the organization on special assignments.

Death and legacy

After retirement, Germer moved back home to Illinois, and died of cancer in Rockford, IL on May 26, 1966 at the age of 85.

The main part of Germer's papers are held by the State Historical Society of Wisconsin located at Madison and are available on microfilm. Another smaller assortment, relating to his activity from 1945 to 1947 with the World Federation of Trade Unions, reposes at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York.

An oral history interview was conducted with Germer on his experience as a United Auto Workers organizer in 1959. That material rests at the Reuther Library of Wayne State University, located in Detroit, Michigan.

Works "Report to the National Executive Committee," The American Socialist, Special Business Supplement, circa January 1, 1917. Organize or Pay!, Organizational leaflet no. 1. Chicago: National Office of the Socialist Party, Jan. 1917. Report of Executive Secretary [to the] Emergency National Convention, St. Louis, April 7, 1917. St. Louis: n.p., 1917. Not Guilty: Charge of Federal Judge Clarence W. Sessions in the Conspiracy Case against Adolph Germer et al. in the District Court of the United States for the Western District of Michigan, Southern Division, Grand Rapids, Michigan, October 9, 1917, to October 18, 1917. Chicago: National Office of the Socialist Party, 1917. Defeated? Organizational leaflet no. 13. Chicago: National Office of the Socialist Party, 1918. "Report of Executive Secretary to National Executive Committee," August 8, 1918. Published by 1000 Flowers Publishing, Corvallis, OR, 2007. In the United States Circuit Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit. October term, A.D. 1918. Victor L. Berger, Adolph Germer, William F. Kruse, Irwin St. John Tucker and J. Louis Engdahl, plaintiffs in error, vs. United States of America, defendant in error. Error to the District Court of the United States for the Northern District of Illinois, Eastern Division, K.M. Landis, Judge ... Brief for the plaintiffs in error. With Messrs. Berger, Kruse, Tucker, and Engdahl. Chicago: The Court, 1919. 100 years — For What? Being the Addresses of Victor L. Berger, Adolph Germer, J. Louis Engdahl, William F. Kruse and Irwin St. John Tucker to the Court that Sentenced Them to Serve 100 years in Prison. With Messrs. Berger, Kruse, Tucker, and Engdahl. Chicago: National Office, Socialist Party, n.d. . "Letter to Morris Hillquit in Upstate New York from Adolph Germer in Chicago," March 22, 1919. Corvallis, OR: 1000 Flowers Publishing, 2005. "A Report to NEC," The Socialist, June 4, 1919. Corvallis, OR: 1000 Flowers Publishing, 2005. "National Secretary Germer's Letter of Resignation," New York Call, vol. 12, no. 261 (Sept. 18, 1919).