Social Democratic Party of Germany

Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD), Germany’s oldest political party and one of the country’s two main parties (the other being the Christian Democratic Union). It advocates the modernization of the economy to meet the demands of globalization, but it also stresses the need to address the social needs of workers and society’s disadvantaged.

History

The Social Democratic Party (SPD) traces its origins to the merger in 1875 of the General German Workers’ Union, led by Ferdinand Lassalle, and the Social Democratic Workers’ Party, headed by August Bebel and Wilhelm Liebknecht. In 1890 it adopted its current name, the Social Democratic Party of Germany. The party’s early history was characterized by frequent and intense internal conflicts between so-called revisionists and orthodox Marxists and by persecution by the German government and its chancellor, Otto von Bismarck. The revisionists, led at various times by Lassalle and Eduard Bernstein, argued that social and economic justice could be achieved for the working class through democratic elections and institutions and without a violent class struggle and revolution. The orthodox Marxists insisted that free elections and civil rights would not create a truly socialist society and that the ruling class would never cede power without a fight. Indeed, German elites of the late 19th century considered the very existence of a socialist party a threat to the security and stability of the newly unified Reich, and from 1878 to 1890 the party was officially outlawed.

Despite laws prohibiting the party from holding meetings and distributing literature, the SPD attracted growing support and was able to continue to contest elections, and by 1912 it was the largest party in the Reichstag (“Imperial Diet”), receiving more than one-third of the national vote. However, its vote in favour of war credits in 1914 and Germany’s disastrous fate in World War I led to an internal split, with the centrists under Karl Kautsky forming the Independent Social Democratic Party and the left under Rosa Luxemburg and Liebknecht forming the Spartacus League, which in December 1918 became the Communist Party of Germany (KPD).

The right wing of the SPD, under Friedrich Ebert, joined with liberals and conservatives to crush the Soviet-style uprisings in Germany in 1918–20. Following World War I, the SPD played a central role in the formation of the Weimar Republic and in its brief and tragic history. In the general election of 1919 the SPD received 37.9 percent of the vote (while the Independent Social Democrats received another 7.6 percent), but the party’s failure to win favourable terms from the Allies at the Paris Peace Conference in 1919 (terms embodied in the Treaty of Versailles) and the country’s severe economic problems led to a drop in support. Nevertheless, together with the Roman Catholic and liberal parties, it was part of several coalition governments, but it was forced to expend much effort on its competition with the KPD for the support of the working class. In 1924 the SPD, which had by then reunited with the Independents, won only one-fifth of the vote. Although its core support among blue-collar workers remained relatively stable, the SPD lost support among white-collar workers and small businessmen, many of whom switched their allegiance to the conservatives and later to the Nazi Party. By 1933 the SPD held only 120 of 647 seats in the Reichstag to the Nazis’ 288 and the Communists’ 81.

The SPD was outlawed soon after the Nazis came to power in 1933. However, in 1945, with the fall of Adolf Hitler’s Third Reich, the SPD was revived. It was the only surviving party from the Weimar period with an unblemished record of opposition to Hitler; unlike other Weimar parties, the SPD had maintained exile organizations in Britain and the United States during the Third Reich. In addition, an underground organization had operated within Germany and managed to survive fairly intact. Thus, when democratic elections resumed in occupied Germany after the war, the SPD had a large advantage over its rivals, and it was expected to become the country’s governing party.

The SPD did indeed do very well in most Land- (state-) level elections held between 1946 and 1948. However, in West Germany’s first national election, held in 1949, the SPD was narrowly defeated by the newly formed Christian Democrats, who were able to put together a majority coalition with several smaller centre-right parties. The 1949 loss was followed by decisive defeats in 1953 and 1957.

Following the 1957 election, a group of reformers drawn largely from areas where the party was strongest (e.g., West Berlin, North Rhine–Westphalia, and Hamburg) initiated a reassessment of the party’s leadership, organization, and policies. They concluded that the SPD had badly misread postwar public opinion. Most Germans, they believed, were tired of ideological rhetoric about the class struggle, economic planning, and government takeovers of industry—policies then central to the party’s program. Voters were also satisfied with West Germany’s membership in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and the European Economic Community and had little interest in the SPD’s emphasis on reuniting the country through a neutralist foreign policy. Thus, at a special party conference in Bad Godesberg in 1959, the SPD formally cast off nearly a century of commitment to socialism by embracing the market economy; the party also endorsed the NATO alliance and abandoned its traditional anticlerical attitude.

Get Unlimited Access

Try Britannica Premium for free and discover more.

Subscribe

The Bad Godesberg program proved successful. From 1961 to 1972 the SPD increased its national vote from 36 to nearly 46 percent. In 1966 it entered a grand coalition with its chief rival, the Christian Democratic Union–Christian Social Union (CDU-CSU) alliance, and from 1969 to 1982 the SPD governed as the dominant coalition partner with the Free Democratic Party (FDP). During the party’s tenure in office in this period, both SPD chancellors, Willy Brandt and Helmut Schmidt, initiated major changes in foreign and domestic policy; for example, Brandt pursued a foreign policy of peace and reconciliation with eastern Europe and the Soviet Union, and Schmidt successfully guided Germany through the turbulent economic crises of the 1970s. By 1982, however, 16 years of governing had taken their toll. The party was deeply divided over both environmental and military policies, and the party’s leaders had lost support among much of the rank and file. For example, Schmidt’s support for a new generation of NATO nuclear missiles to be deployed in Germany was opposed by the great majority of the party’s activists. In 1982 the party’s coalition partner, the FDP, ousted the SPD from office and in turn helped elect the CDU’s Helmut Kohl chancellor.

The SPD remained out of power at the national level from 1982 to 1998, suffering four successive election losses. In 1998, led by Gerhard Schröder, the SPD, running on a centrist agenda, was able to form a governing coalition with the Green Party. Schröder had campaigned on a platform of lower taxes and cuts in government spending to spur investment and create jobs. Despite the inability of Schröder’s government to revive the economy and reduce unemployment, the SPD was narrowly reelected in 2002, a victory largely credited to the popular appeal of Schröder’s response to historic floods in the country and his pledge not to endorse or participate in U.S. military action against Iraq.

During its second term in government, the SPD was unable to reduce unemployment or revive the country’s stagnant economy, and it suffered a series of devastating losses in state elections. Thousands of party members left the SPD in protest over cuts in what were considered sacred programs, such as unemployment benefits and health care, and some ex-SPD members formed an alternative party under former SPD leader Oskar Lafontaine; the new party jointly campaigned in 2005 with the eastern-based Party of Democratic Socialism (PDS). Despite the split and dissatisfaction with the SPD government, Schröder still retained widespread popularity, and the SPD captured 34 percent of the national vote. It fell only four seats shy of the CDU-CSU, but neither was able to form a majority government with its preferred coalition partner because of the success of Lafontaine’s new party and the PDS. After negotiation, the SPD entered into a grand coalition with the CDU-CSU as the junior partner, and Schröder resigned the chancellorship.

In Germany’s 2009 parliamentary elections, the SPD experienced a devastating drop in support. The party won just 23 percent of the national vote, and its number of seats in the Bundestag fell from 222 to 146—a number well below the CDU-CSU’s 239 seats. The SPD was thus forced out of Germany’s coalition government and into a position of opposition. Its position improved as a result of the 2013 parliamentary elections. Although it finished second with about 26 percent of the vote, the SPD joined the government of the election-winning CDU-CSU alliance in a “grand coalition.” The CDU-CSU’s previous coalition partner, the FDP, had failed to reach the threshold necessary for representation in the Bundestag.

Participation in the grand coalition did not help the SPD’s popularity, and minor parties saw their support increase in the face of steady, if unspectacular, economic growth and rising anti-immigrant feeling. In the September 2017 general election, the SPD won just 20 percent of the vote, its worst performance in the postwar era. Although party leader Martin Schulz had vowed that the SPD would not participate in another grand coalition, months of failed talks and the prospect of fresh elections led Schulz to reverse his pledge. Schulz resigned in February 2018, and the following month party members approved a continuation of the grand coalition with Angela Merkel’s CDU-CSU. In October Merkel announced that she would step down after her fourth term as chancellor, and the race began to determine who would replace her. SPD members pinned their hopes on Olaf Scholz, who had served as vice chancellor and finance minister under Merkel since 2018. Scholz won widespread approval for his handling of Germany’s federal COVID-19 economic aid package, and he was seen by many as the best option for a continuation of Merkel’s steady leadership.

When Germans went to the polls in September 2021, they returned a historically low result for the country’s two mainstream parties. The SPD and the CDU-CSU combined to win less than half of the total vote, while the Greens and Free Democratic Party (FDP) posted exceptionally strong performances. Still, the SPD was the overall winner, claiming 25.7 percent of the vote and 206 seats in the Bundestag, and eyes immediately turned to Scholz as the coalition-building process began.