He was born on December 13, 1864 in Ashland, Pennsylvania, United States, the eldest of nine sons and two daughters of Otto Carl Ferdinand Seidel and Henrietta Christine Friederika (Knoll) Seidel. His father, a carpenter from Golchen in the Demmin district of western Pomerania in Prussia, had immigrated to eastern Pennsylvania. A year after Emil's birth the family moved to Prairie du Chien, Wiscosin, then to Madison in 1867 and to Milwaukee two years later.
Seidel completed elementary school in Milwaukee, later he studied nights at the Berlin Kunstgewerbe Schule.
He was apprenticed as a woodcarver in the furniture factory that employed his father as a cabinetmaker. In his teens he participated in a woodcarver's strike over piecework rates, helped organize the Wood Carvers Association of Milwaukee, and represented the association as the Minerva Assembly in the Knights of Labor District Assembly.
In 1886 Seidel left for a six-year stay in Germany, visiting relatives in Pomerania, working to improve his craft. In Berlin he chaired a woodcarver's strike committee for the eight-hour day and was converted to the radical wing of German socialist thought.
In August 1892 Seidel returned to Milwaukee and worked at his trade for the next decade in various capacities. About 1893 Seidel became involved with the Milwaukee socialists, a group of thirty-five to forty persons loosely organized by Victor L. Berger, who had recently founded the Wisconsin Vorwarts as a labor and socialist weekly.
After running unsuccessfully for governor in 1902, he was one of nine members elected to the Milwaukee Common Council in 1904. He was reelected in 1906 and lost the mayoralty election of 1908 to incumbent Democrat David S. Rose by only 2, 219 votes. His party's candidate for mayor in 1910, he won easily with 27, 608 votes to the Democrat's 20, 530 and the Republican's 11, 346. The socialists swept all citywide races, gained 21 of the 35 council seats, elected Berger alderman, and chose Edmund D. Melms, who had organized the party's campaign, as council president. The Social-Democrats also won control of the County Board.
The Social-Democrats gradually lost public esteem, and Seidel was defeated in 1912 by a nonpartisan fusion candidate, former health commissioner Dr. Gerhard Bading. The party also lost control of the council and other citywide offices.
Seidel campaigned actively as the vice-presidential candidate of the Socialist Party of America in 1912, traveling more than 25, 000 miles in ninety days. The 901, 062 votes for Debs and Seidel constituted the highwater mark for the socialists. The following year Seidel toured the country for the socialist lyceum department and, after losing to Bading again in the 1914 campaign, lectured for the Redpath Chautauqua.
From 1920 to 1923 Seidel toured Wisconsin as state secretary of the Socialist party in a vain effort to regain the party's prewar momentum. Hoan appointed him to the City (Civil) Service Commission in 1926, a post he held until 1932. He ran again unsuccessfully for United States senator in 1932 but was returned to the Common Council for the last time in the socialist surge of 1932. He refused to run for reelection in 1936.
He died in Milwaukee of a heart condition and the complications of old age.
Being the first socialist mayor of a major American city, George Lukas Seidel introduced modern, scientific methods of government, insisted upon municipal economy, and launched programs for child welfare, public health, housing, city planning, and harbor development. He organized a Bureau of Economy and Efficiency to investigate government organization and social welfare problems. He was remembered as the first mayor, who made so valiant effort at public education, he became the first Social-Democratic alderman-at-large.
Although he had previously supported Daniel de Leon's Socialist Labor party, in 1897 Seidel joined the Milwaukee Branch of the Social Democracy of America, which had been formed by Eugene V. Debs and Berger. As a native American who spoke German, Seidel rose rapidly among the Germanic Social-Democrats.
In the Common Council the honesty and integrity of Seidel and his fellow socialists contrasted with Democratic and Republican corruption. Seidel emphasized such everyday needs as parks, public baths, street lighting, and an improved water supply, and championed wider educational opportunities.
His outspoken views against World War I caused trouble for him, but he was not indicted.
Seidel sustained a lifelong optimism about mankind and a vision of man's unlimited potential.
Sickly as a child, never robust, Seidel suffered a serious breakdown after his divorce.
He was largely self-educated, modest, and self-effacing, of unquestioned sincerity and integrity.
He married, on May 8, 1895, Lucy Geissel, a native Milwaukeean. The had two children, Lucius Julian, who died in infancy, and Viola Emeline. Continued absorption in socialist politics (he ran for United States senator in 1914, governor in 1918, and city treasurer in 1920) strained his marriage; and following a separation, his wife won an uncontested divorce on April 28, 1924, on grounds of desertion.
