Walter Kotschnig

He was born in Judenburg, Austria-Hungary in 1901.^[3] His father, Ignaz Kotschnig, was from Mahrenberg, which would later become part of Slovenia.^[3] Kotschnig studied at the University of Graz from 1919 to 1922.^[3] He completed a PhD in Political Science at the Institut für Weltwirtschaft (Institute for the World Economy), University of Kiel in 1924.^[3][4] He wrote a PhD thesis, entitled ‘Univeral Oekonomie und Weltwirtschaft’ (Universal Economics and the World Economy).^[3]

In much of the 1920s and 1930s, he worked for international organizations in Geneva, Switzerland.^[3] He worked for the International Student Service from 1925. He began working for the League of Nations High Commissioner for Refugees in 1934.^[3] He moved to the United States in 1936.^[3] He lost his Austrian citizenship in 1938 following the Anschluss.^[3] He became an American citizen in 1942.^[3]

He worked for the U.S. State Department, helping to establish what would become the United Nations.^[3] He took part in the Dumbarton Oaks Conference in Washington in 1944 and the San Francisco Conference in 1945.^[1]

He retired as Deputy Assistant Secretary of State in 1971.^[1]

He married a Welsh woman, Elined Prys, in 1921.^[3] They had three children.^[3]