Early Life
Adolph Fischer was born in Bremen, Germany and attended school there for eight years. His father frequently attended socialist meetings, but in school Fischer was taught that socialism was an unhealthy lifestyle. However, after observing the working conditions in Germany, Fischer reached the opposite conclusion.
Fischer immigrated to the United States in 1873 at the age of 15. He became an apprentice compositor in a printing shop in Little Rock, Arkansas. Later, in 1879, he moved to St. Louis, Missouri, where he joined the German Typographical Union and in 1881, married Johanna Pfauntz (they would have three children – one daughter and two sons). Adolph and his wife moved in 1881 to Nashville, Tennessee, where he worked for his brother as a compositor for Anzeiger des Südens, a journal for German immigrants.
In 1883, he moved his family to Chicago, where he became a compositor at the Arbeiter-Zeitung, a pro-labor newspaper run by August Spies and Michael Schwab. It was around then that he also joined the International Working Person's Association and the Lehr-und-Wehr Verein, a radical offshoot which was formed to teach workers to defend themselves.
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