Tradition

Social Democratic Party of Germany

Overview

The Social Democratic Party of Germany is a social democratic political party in Germany. It is one of the major parties of contemporary Germany. Lars Klingbeil has been the party's leader since the 2021 SPD federal Party convention together with Bärbel Bas, who joined him in June 2025. After losing the 2025 federal election, the party is part of the Merz government as the junior coalition partner. The SPD is a member of 12 of the 16 German state governments and is a leading partner in seven of them, but has dropped to single digit % in some states, namely the two large states in the south where Alliance 90/The Greens is the stronger force of the center-left.

The SPD was founded in 1875 from a merger of smaller socialist parties, and grew rapidly after the lifting of Germany's repressive Anti-Socialist Laws in 1890 to become the largest socialist party in Western Europe until 1933 when it was outlawed by the Nazi Party. In 1891, it adopted its Marxist-influenced Erfurt Program, though in practice it was moderate and focused on building working-class organizations. In the 1912 federal election, the SPD won 34.8 percent of votes and became the largest party in the Reichstag, but was still excluded from government. After the start of the First World War in 1914, the party split between a pro-war mainstream and the anti-war Independent Social Democratic Party, most members of which later formed the Communist Party of Germany (KPD). The SPD played a leading role in the German revolution of 1918–1919 and in the foundation of the Weimar Republic. The SPD politician Friedrich Ebert served as the first president of Germany from 1919 to 1925.

After the rise of the Nazi Party to power, the SPD was the only party in the Reichstag which voted against the Enabling Act of 1933; the SPD was subsequently banned, and operated in exile as the Sopade. After the Second World War from 1939 to 1945, the SPD was re-established. In the Soviet occupation zone, it was forced to merge with the KPD to form the Socialist Unity Party of Germany. In West Germany, the SPD became one of two major parties alongside the CDU/CSU. In its Godesberg Program of 1959, the SPD dropped its commitment to Marxism, becoming a big tent party of the centre-left. The SPD led the federal government from 1969 to 1982 (under Willy Brandt and Helmut Schmidt), 1998 to 2005 (under Gerhard Schröder) and again from 2021 to 2025 under Olaf Scholz. It served as a junior partner to a CDU/CSU-led government from 1966 to 1969, 2005 to 2009, 2013 to 2021 and again since 2025.

The SPD holds pro-European stances and is a member of the Party of European Socialists and sits with the Progressive Alliance of Socialists and Democrats group in the European Parliament. With 14 MEPs, it is the third largest party in the group. The SPD was a founding member of the Socialist International, but the party left in 2013 after criticising its acceptance of parties they consider to be violating human rights. The SPD subsequently founded the Progressive Alliance and was joined by numerous other parties around the world. Previously, the SPD was a founding member of both the Second International and the Labour and Socialist International.

Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).

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For as long as the oppressed class, in this case the proletariat, is not ripe for its economic emancipation, just so long will its majority regard the existing order of society as the only one possible, and form the tail, the extreme left wing, of the capitalist class. But the more the proletariat matures toward its self-emancipation, the more does it constitute itself as a separate class and elect its own…
Friedrich Engels, The origin of the family, private property, and the state
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On the other hand, the larger Governments, and particularly the Prussian Ministry, saw more and more the incompatibility of such an irregular elective body with the restored monarchical system of Germany, and if they did not at once force its dissolution, it was only because the time had not yet come, and because Prussia hoped first to use it for the furthering of its own ambitious purposes.
Friedrich Engels, Revolution and Counter-Revolution
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This German Socialism, which took its school-boy task so seriously and solemnly, and extolled its poor stock in trade in such mountebank fashion, meanwhile gradually lost its pedantic innocence. The fight of the German, and especially of the Prussian bourgeoisie, against feudal aristocracy and absolute monarchy, in other words, the liberal movement, became more earnest. By this, the long wished-for opportunity was…
Karl Marx, Manifesto of the Communist Party
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Social Democratic Party of Germany

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