1901–1985 · Austrian-born American diplomat and refugee-relief official
Born in Judenburg, Austria, Kotschnig became general secretary of the International Student Service in Geneva in 1927, and from 1934 served under High Commissioner James G. McDonald as director of the League of Nations’ High Commission for Refugees Coming from Germany — placing displaced scholars as the Nazi purges emptied German universities. He moved to the United States in 1936, took citizenship in 1942, and spent the rest of his career in the State Department, taking part in the Dumbarton Oaks and San Francisco conferences that established the United Nations and retiring as Deputy Assistant Secretary of State in 1971. The line that outlived all of that was an aside to a room of college students — and even that credit is offered only tentatively.