Social Democratic Party of Germany

Social Democratic Party of Germany Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands
General Secretary	Kevin Kühnert
Co-leaders	Saskia Esken Lars Klingbeil
Founded	27 May 1875
Merger of	ADAV SDAP
Newspaper	Vorwärts
Student wing	Juso-Hochschulgruppen
Youth wing	Young Socialists in the SPD
Women's wing	Association of Social Democratic Women
LGBT+ wing	SPDqueer
Political orientation	Social democracy Imperialism

The Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD), originally called the Socialist Workers' Party of Germany, is a social democratic party in Germany that was originally a Marxist party but over time slipped into revisionism and opportunism before eventually abandoning Marxism officially. It currently holds the most seats in the Bundestag as a part of the ruling coalition and is the party of the current German Chancellor, Olaf Scholz.

History

Founding

The SPD originated in a congress in Eisenach occurring in 1869 where the Social Democratic Workers' Party of Germany (SDAP) was formed from a merger of the Assembly of German Worker Associations (VDAV) and leftists in the General German Workers' Association (ADAV). The SDAP leaders, August Bebel and Wilhelm Liebknecht, sought a counter-weight to the Lassallean ADAV that supported Otto von Bismarck's policy of unifying Germany "from above" relying on Prussian militarism and instead followed the lead of Marx and Engels in struggling for the revolutionary unification of Germany "from below."

Following Bismarck's unification of Germany a congress was held at Gotha in 1875 at which the SDAP merged with VDAV to form the Socialist Workers' Party of Germany which would be renamed to the Social Democratic Party of Germany in 1890. The party program adopted at the congress, the Gotha Program, contained many concessions to the idealist Lassalleans, particularly concerning the dictatorship of the proletariat, which would lead Marx and Engels to criticise the program in their Critique of the Gotha Program.