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SPD party convention in 1988, with Nobel prize winner, chairman from 1964 to 1987 The foundation of the (: Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands, SPD) can be traced back to the 1860s, and for much of the 20th and 21st centuries it has represented the centre-left in German politics. The SPD has been the ruling party at several points, first under in 1918. The party was outlawed in Nazi Germany but returned to government in 1969 with. Meanwhile, the branch of the SPD was merged with the ruling. In the modern, the SPD are the second largest party after the and are currently (as of 2017) in government as a junior coalition partner to Chancellor 's CDU. The SPD last held the chancellorship under from 1998 to 2005. Contents.

Social Democracy in Germany until 1945 Pre-republic 1863–1918 The party considers itself to have been founded on May 23, 1863, by under the name Allgemeiner Deutscher Arbeiterverein (ADAV, ). In 1869, and founded the Sozialdemokratische Arbeiterpartei (SDAP, ), which merged with the ADAV at a conference held in Gotha in 1875, taking the name Socialist Workers' Party of Germany (SAPD). At this conference, the party developed the, which criticized in his. Through the, had the party outlawed for its pro-revolution, anti-monarchy sentiments in 1878; but in 1890 it was legalized again. That same year - in its convention - it changed its name to Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands (SPD), as it is known to this day.

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Anti-socialist campaigns were counterproductive. 1878–90 was the SPD's 'heroic period'.

The party's new program drawn up in 1891 at Halle was more radical than 1875's Gotha program. From 1881 to 1890 the party's support increased faster than in any other period.

In 1896, the National Liberals and Conservatives in replaced the democratic vote with a Prussian-style three-tiered suffrage, upper class votes counting the most. They did this to drive out the local SPD which lost its last seat in 1901. However, in the 1903 election the number of socialist deputies increased from 11 to 22 out of 23.

In 1863, co-chairman from 1892 to 1913 Because Social Democrats could be elected as list-free candidates while the party was outlawed, SPD continued to be a growing force in the, becoming the strongest party in 1912 (in imperial Germany, the parliamentary balance of forces had no influence on the formation of the cabinet). During this period, SPD deputies in the Reichstag were able to win some improvements in working and living conditions for working-class Germans, thereby advancing the cause of its policies in a general way and securing material benefits for its supporters. In the, the SPD was able to extract some concessions from time to time in areas for which the assembly was responsible, such as education and social policy. In Hesse, the party was successful in demanding that church tax be listed separately in assessments, and it was able to secure improvements in judicial procedure.

The SPD also had occasional successes in raising wages and improving the working conditions of municipal labourers. SPD pressure in the Reichstag in the late nineteenth century supported an expansion in the system of factory inspection, together with a minor reform in military service under which the families of reservists, called up for training or manoeuvres, could receive an allowance. In the 1880s, SPD deputies in Saxony successfully agitated in support of improved safety for miners and better control of mines.

In 1908, the same year the government legalized women's participation in politics, became the first woman appointed to the executive committee of the SPD. Despite the passage of anti-socialist legislation, the SPD continued to grow in strength in the early twentieth century, with a steady rise in membership from 384,327 in 1905/06 to 1,085,905 in 1913/14. SPD was seen as a populist party, and people from every quarter of German society sought help and advice from it. With its counseling service (provided free of charge by the mostly trade union maintained workers’ secretarial offices), the German social democratic movement helped large numbers of Germans to secure their legal rights, primarily in social security.

There also existed a dynamic educational movement, with hundreds of courses and individual lectures, theatre performances, libraries, peripatetic teachers, a central school for workers’ education, and a famous Party School, as noted by the historians Susanne Miller and Heinrich Potthoff, “ With all of this, the SPD and the Free Trade Unions were not only delivering the necessary tools for the political and social struggle, but were also a cultural movement in the widest sense of the term. ” Growth in strength did not initially translate into larger numbers in the Reichstag. The original constituencies had been drawn at the empire's formation in 1871, when Germany was almost two-thirds rural. They were never redrawn to reflect the dramatic growth of Germany's cities in the 1890s.

By the turn of the century, the urban-rural ratio was reversed, and almost two-thirds of all Germans lived in cities and towns. Even with this change, the party still managed to become the largest single faction in the Reichstag at the 1912 elections. It would be the largest party in Germany for the next two decades. In the states of, and, the SPD was successful in extracting various socio-political and democratic concessions (including the replacement of the class-based electoral systems with universal suffrage) through electoral alliances with bourgeois parties, voting for parliamentary bills and state budgets. In the Reichstag, the SPD resorted to a policy of tactical compromise in order to exert direct influence on legislation.

In 1894, the parliamentary SPD voted for a government bill for the first time ever. It reduced the import duty on wheat, which led to a reduction in the price of food. In 1913, the votes of SPD parliamentarians helped to bring in new tax laws affecting the wealthy, which were necessary due to the increase in military spending. The Social Democrats gave particular attention to carrying out reforms at the local level, founding a tradition of community politics which intensified after 1945. The establishment of local labour exchanges and the introduction of unemployment benefits can be credited in part to the SPD.

In 1913, the number of Social Democrats on municipal and district councils approached 13,000. As noted by Heinrich Potthoff and Susanne Miller, “ “Here, and in their work in the administration of industrial insurance, in community employment offices and courts of arbitration, lay one of the roots of the gradual penetration by the Social Democrats of the imperial German state.” ” As Sally Waller wrote, the SPD encouraged great loyalty from its members by organising educational courses, choral societies, sports clubs, and libraries. The party also ran welfare clinics, founded libraries, produced newspapers, and organised holidays, rallies, and festivals. As also noted by Weller, they played a role in shaping a number of progressive reforms: “ “The SPD also helped promote Germany’s extensive system of welfare support giving Germany the most comprehensive system of social insurance in Europe by 1913. They pressed successfully for some constitutional changes like the secret ballot (1904) and payment of MPs (1906), which permitted lower middle and working-class men, with no other income, to put themselves forward as deputies for the Reichstag.

In 1911, they supported measures whereby Alsace-Lorraine was given Reichstag representation and universal male suffrage at 21 years was introduced. They also successfully resisted the taxation proposals that would hit the working man harder and promoted progressive taxes, whereby those with the most would be forced to pay more.” ” And in this from historian Richard M.

Watt: “ “The political and organizational success of the Social Democrats had enabled them to demand and obtain a respectable body of legislation incorporating social reform, outlawing child labor and improving working conditions and wages, to the point where the German Social Democratic Party was the model for socialist parties in every other nation, and the German worker the most envied in Continental Europe.” ” As a reaction to government prosecution, the of 1891 was more radical than the Gotha Program of 1875, demanding of Germany's major industries. However, the party began to move away from at the turn of the 20th century. Authored a series of articles on the Problems of Socialism between 1896 and 1898, and later a book, Die Voraussetzungen des Sozialismus und die Aufgaben der Sozialdemokratie ('The Prerequisites for Socialism and the Tasks of Social Democracy'), published in 1899, in which he argued that the winning of reforms under capitalism would be enough to bring about socialism. Radical party activist accused Bernstein of and argued against his ideas in her pamphlet, and Bernstein's program was not adopted by the party.

However, the increasing loyalty of the party establishment towards Emperor and Reich, coupled with its antipathy toward the, led the party under Bebel's successor to support granting war credits to fund the German effort in. Bernstein left the party during the first world war, as did, who had played an important role as the leading theoretician and editor of the theoretical journal of SPD, “”.

Neither joined the Communist party after the war; they both came back to the SPD in the early Twenties. From 1915 on theoretical discussions within the SPD were dominated by a group of former Marxists, who tried to legitimize the support of the First World War by the German SPD group in the Reichstag with Marxist arguments. Instead of the class struggle they proclaimed the struggle of peoples and developed much of the rhetoric later used by Nazi propaganda (“Volksgemeinschaft” etc.). The group was led by, and (“Lensch-Cunow-Haenisch-Gruppe”) and was close to the Russian-German revolutionary and social scientist, who gave a public forum to the group with his journal “Die Glocke”. From the teachings of and Professor, there is a link to the current right-wing “” within the SPD founded by, Schumacher's former secretary. Those against the war were expelled from the SPD in January 1917 (including, and ) - the expelees went on to found the, in which the was influential.

In the, Ebert controversially sided with the against communists, while the elected him as. A revolutionary government met for the first time in November 1918. Known as the Council of People’s Commissioners, it consisted of three Majority Social Democrats (, and ) and three United Social Democrats (, and ).

The new government faced a social crisis in the German Reich following the end of the First World War, with Germany threatened by hunger and chaos. There was, for the most part, an orderly return of soldiers back into civilian life, while the threat of starvation was combated.

Wage levels were raised, universal proportional representation for all parliaments was introduced, and a series of regulations on unemployment benefits, job-creation and protection measures, health insurance, and pensions saw the institution of important political and social reforms. In February 1918, workers made an agreement with employers which secured them total freedom of association, the legal guarantee of an, and the extension of wage agreements to all branches of trade and industry. The People’s Commissioners made these changes legally binding. In addition, the SPD-steered provisional government introduced binding state arbitration of labor conflicts, created worker’s councils in large industrial firms, and opened the path to the unionization of rural labourers. In December 1918, a decree was passed providing relief for the unemployed. This provided that communities were to be responsible for unemployment relief (without fixing an amount) and established that the Reich would contribute 50% and the respective German state 33% of the outlay.

That same month, the government declared that labour exchanges were to be further developed with the financial assistance of the Reich. Responsibility for job placement was first transferred from the Demobilization Office to the Minister of Labour and then to the National Employment Exchange Office, which came into being in January 1920. Weimar Republic (1918–1933). Former SPD minister president of Oldenburg, Bernhard Kuhnt, humiliated by Nazis in 1933 Being the only party in the to have voted against the (with the prevented from voting), the SPD was banned in the summer of 1933 by the new Nazi government. Many of its members were jailed or sent to. An exile organization, known as, was established, initially in Prague. Others left the areas where they had been politically active and moved to other towns where they were not known.

Between 1936 and 1939 some SPD members for the Republic against Franco and the German. After the annexation of Czechoslovakia in 1938 the exile party resettled in Paris and, after the defeat of France in 1940, in London. Only a few days after the outbreak of World War II in September 1939 the exiled SPD in Paris declared its support for the Allies and for the military removal from power of the. History after World War II From occupation to the Federal Republic. World War I volunteer and concentration camp inmate, SPD chairman after the war The SPD was recreated after in 1946 and admitted in all four.

In, it was initially in opposition from the first election of the newly founded Federal Republic in 1949 until 1966. The party had a leftist period and opposed the republic's integration into Western structures, believing that this might diminish the chances for German reunification. The SPD was somewhat hampered for much of the early history of the Federal Republic, in part because the bulk of its former heartland was now in the Soviet occupation sector, which later became.

In the latter area, the SPD was forced to merge with the to form the (SED) in 1946. The few recalcitrant SPD members were quickly pushed out, leaving the SED as essentially a renamed KPD. In the British Occupation Zone, the SPD held a referendum on the issue of merging with the KPD, with 80% of party members rejecting such a fusion. This referendum was ignored by the newly formed SED. Nonetheless, a few former SPD members held high posts in the East German government. Served as East Germany's first prime minister from 1949 to 1964. For much of that time retained the perspective of a left-wing social democrat, and publicly advocated a less repressive approach to governing., son of former president Ebert, served as mayor of from 1949 to 1967; he'd reportedly been blackmailed into supporting the merger by using his father's role in the schism of 1918 against him.

During the fall of Communist rule in 1989, the SPD (first called SDP) was re-established as a separate party in East Germany , independent of the rump SED, and then merged with its West German counterpart upon reunification. Despite remaining out of office for much of the postwar period, the SPD were able to gain control of a number of local governments and implement progressive social reforms.

As noted by, SPD-controlled Lander governments were more active in the social sphere and transferred more funds to public employment and education than CDU/CSU-controlled Lander. During the mid-sixties, mainly SPD-governed Lander such as Hesse and the three city-states launched the first experiments with comprehensive schools as a means of as expanding educational opportunities. SPD local governments were also active in encouraging the post-war housing boom in West Germany, with some of the best results in housing construction during this period achieved by SPD-controlled Lander authorities such as West Berlin, Hamburg, and Bremen. In the, the SPD opposition were partly responsible for the establishment of the postwar under the Administration, having put parliamentary pressure on the CDU to carry out more progressive social policies during its time in office. In the Bundestag, The SPD aspired to be a “constructive opposition,” which expressed itself not only in the role it played in framing the significant amount of new legislation introduced in the first parliamentary terms of the Bundestag, but also in the fact that by far the biggest proportion of all laws were passed with the votes of SPD members.

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The SPD played a notable part in legislation on reforms to the national pensions scheme, the integration of refugees, and the building of public-sector housing. The SPD also had a high-profile “in judicial policy with the Public Prosecutor Adolf Arndt, in the parliamentary decision on the Federal Constitutional Court, and reparations for the victims of National Socialism.” In 1951, the law on the right of “co-determination” for employees in the steel, iron, and mining industries was passed with the combined votes of the SPD and CDU, and against those of the FDP. Governing party from 1966 to 1982. Logo of the Social Democratic Party during the 1960s and 1970s In 1966 the coalition of the (CDU) and the liberal (FDP) fell and a between CDU/CSU and SPD was formed under the leadership of CDU Chancellor.

The welfare state was considerably expanded, while social spending was almost doubled between 1969 and 1975. Changes were made to income maintenance schemes which met some of the SPD’s long-standing demands, and many other social reforms were introduced, including the equalising of wages and salaries between white-collar and blue-collar employees, the continuation of wage and salary payments, a law to promote employment, and a vocational training law. Although these measures were largely due to the efforts of the CDU minister, it is arguable that he would never have been able to push his programme through the cabinet (let alone envisage it) without the SPD. The 1969 Employment Promotion Act, which was based largely on a proposal prepared by the SPD in 1966, established active labour market intervention measures such as employment research, and offered “substantial state assistance to employees with educational aspirations.” Under the direction of the SPD, the federal government adopted Keynesian demand management for the first time ever.

Schiller called for legislation that would provide both his ministry and the federal government with greater authority to guide economic policy. In 1967, Schiller introduced the Law for Promoting Stability and Growth, which was subsequently passed by the Bundestag.

Regarded as the Magna Carta of medium-term economic management, the legislation provided for coordination of federal, Lander, and local budget plans in order to give fiscal policy a stronger impact. It also set a number of optimistic targets for four basic standards by which West German economic success would henceforth be measured, which included trade balance, employment levels, economic growth, and currency stability.

One of the rare German Keynesians of that era, Schiller believed that government had both “the obligation and the capacity to shape economic trends and to smooth out and even eliminate the business cycle,” and his adopted policy of Keynesian demand management helped West Germany to overcome the economic recession of 1966/67. Unemployment was quickly reduced (standing at just under 1% by Autumn 1968), while industrial output rose by almost 12% in 1968.