He was born in Fribourg, the illegitimate son of Swiss citizen Mary Moor of Vordemwald, and the Swiss aristocrat Ernest de Stoeklin of Fribourg. Moor studied at universities in both Switzerland and Germany. In the 1870's, his passion for the ideas of socialism led him to take part in the banned Social Democratic Party of Germany. In the spring of 1881, he was expelled from Bavaria and then moved to Basel. There, he became one of the more prominent functionaries of Swiss social democracy. In 1889, he lived in Bern, where he edited the social-democratic newspaper Berner Tagwacht. During this period, he provided assistance to political exiles from Russia, as well as the leaders of the Peoples' First Polish Socialist Party, "Proletariat," and the Bolsheviks-Lenintsev.
