A merger of socialist parties forms what later becomes the SPD
Two parties vied for the support of industrial workers in the run-up to German unification in 1871. Whilst the General German Workers’ Union (Allgemeiner Deutscher Arbeiterverein – ADAV) had been founded in 1863 by Ferdinand Lasalle, the Social Democratic Workers’ Party (Sozialdemokratische Arbeiterpartei – SDAP) was formed six years later by the duo of August Bebel and Wilhelm Liebknecht. The two parties were differentiated by the radicalism of their positions – the moderate Lasalle did not share Bebel and Liebknecht’s Marxism – and by their policies on the national question. Whereas the ADAV believed that Germany should be unified under Prussian leadership and thereby exclude Austria, the SDAP called for the creation of a “Greater Germany”, incorporating the German-speaking areas of the Habsburg Empire.
The establishment of a “small” Germany in 1871 under Prussian leadership soon eliminated one area of disagreement between the two parties. Moreover, as the new German state was overtly hostile to socialism, Lasalle, Bebel and Liebknecht soon realized that there was more that united than divided them. Meeting at a conference held in Gotha on 22 May 1875, the two parties formally decided to merge to form the Socialist Workers’ Party of Germany (Sozialistische Arbeiterpartei Deutschlands – SAP). The new compromise programme agreed at Gotha drew stinging criticism from none other than Karl Marx, who decried it as far too reformist. The new SAP advanced to fourth place in the Reichstag election of 1877, gaining 9% of the vote, but was soon depicted as an “enemy of the Reich” by Chancellor Bismarck. Reforming in 1890 after a period of being banned, the unified workers’ party adopted a new name, which it still bears today: the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD).
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