German Labor Movement and the SPD (1863–1933)
Ferdinand Lassalle and supporters founded the General German Workers’ Association (ADAV) in Leipzig, creating one of the first durable, mass-oriented working-class political organizations in Germany and a key institutional precursor to later Social Democracy.
August Bebel, Wilhelm Liebknecht, and allies founded the Social Democratic Workers’ Party of Germany (SDAP) at Eisenach, consolidating a Marxist-oriented wing of the German labor movement alongside (and in rivalry with) Lassallean Social Democracy.
Delegates from the ADAV and SDAP met in Gotha and agreed to unify as the Socialist Workers’ Party of Germany (SAPD), adopting the Gotha Program as a compromise platform—an important step toward a single nationwide workers’ party.
Following the 1878 assassination attempts on Kaiser Wilhelm I and escalating repression, the Reichstag passed the Anti-Socialist Law, banning socialist/social-democratic organizations, meetings, and publications (while still allowing candidates to run for office).
In the context of renewed legal activity, the party adopted the name Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD), solidifying the organizational continuity linking earlier workers’ parties to the modern SPD.
After repeated renewals, the Anti-Socialist Law was allowed to expire, enabling Social Democrats to rebuild their party and press openly and to expand organizationally alongside the growing unions and mass electoral politics.
At the Erfurt party congress, the SPD adopted the Erfurt Program, replacing the Gotha Program and providing a more systematic Marxist framework paired with a set of practical democratic and social demands.
At the outbreak of World War I, the SPD parliamentary group voted for war credits, inaugurating the Burgfrieden (political truce) and triggering deep fractures between pro-war leadership and anti-war Social Democrats.
Opponents of the SPD’s pro-war line formed the Independent Social Democratic Party of Germany (USPD) in Gotha, institutionalizing a major division within German Social Democracy and the wider labor movement during wartime.
The Kiel mutiny began as sailors resisted orders for a last naval battle and rapidly widened into mass unrest and the formation of workers’ and soldiers’ councils—an immediate catalyst for the 1918 revolution that ended the empire.
In Berlin, SPD leader Philipp Scheidemann proclaimed the German Republic amid revolutionary upheaval, marking a decisive public break with the imperial order and accelerating the transition toward a republican government.
Germany’s election to the National Assembly produced the SPD as the largest party, shaping the early Weimar coalition governments and anchoring parliamentary democracy at a moment of revolutionary and counterrevolutionary pressure.
Gustav Noske (SPD) became the Weimar Republic’s first minister of defense, playing a pivotal role in rebuilding state coercive capacity and controversially using military and paramilitary forces against revolutionary unrest in 1919.
After months of intimidation and repression, the Nazi government banned the SPD (including its meetings and publications) and canceled its mandates, effectively eliminating the main mass party of the organized labor movement from legal politics.
The Law Against the Formation of Parties declared the NSDAP the only legal political party, criminalizing attempts to maintain or found other parties and formalizing the one-party dictatorship after the SPD’s suppression.
