Adolf Sturmthal

Who is Adolf Sturmthal?

Adolf Sturmthal was an U.S. political scientist, sociologist and journalist of Austrian descent who specialised in labour studies and international relations.

Sturmthal earned a PhD in Political Science in 1925 at Vienna University. He was chairman of the Association of Austrian Social Democratic Students and Academics. He moved to Zurich in 1926 to assist Friedrich Adler, the secretary of the Labour and Socialist International, and was editor of International Information. In 1933 and 1934 he organised international aid for German and Austrian socialist refugees from the Austrofascist Dollfuss and Nazi regimes. Following persecution for passport abuse, he emigrated to Belgium and Great Britain and then to the United States in 1938.

Sturmthal was the first Philip Murray Professor of International Studies at Roosevelt University in Chicago. From 1960 he was a professor of labour and industrial sociology at the University of Illinois.