German Social Democrats celebrate 150 years

One could take a more playful look at the SPD's history - from its founding by the labor movement on May 23, 1863, to 100 years later - when Willy Brandt became the first SPD candidate to take office as chancellor. There have been two other SPD chancellors since then.

In the early days, the party gathered at clandestine meetings by candlelight. The SPD, which included August Bebel and Wilhelm Liebknecht, aimed to provide a voice for the labor movement. Ferdinand Lassalle and others called the General German Workers' Association (ADAV) into being in Leipzig in 1863; by the following year, there were over 4,600 members, with many more to follow.

Industrialization brought with it wages and food, but industrial work was tough and unhealthy. Workers' associations grew dramatically, even though the Anti-Socialist Laws of 1878 tried to prevent them. Social-democratic organizations were prohibited. Still, the SPD managed to become a mass movement by 1890.

From 1906, famous Social Democrats such as Rosa Luxemburg and August Bebel could be found at the German Social Democratic Party School in Berlin, which Bebel founded. He drew inspiration from his father Wilhelm Bebel and his famous epithet, "Knowledge is power - power is knowledge." By 1912, the SPD had become the party with the greatest number of members and voters in Germany.

SPD politician Philipp Scheidemann proclaimed the country a republic on November 9, 1918 at the Reichstag in Berlin. One year later, SPD chairman Friedrich Ebert became Chancellor of the German Reich. Women gained suffrage - a right the SPD had been fighting for since 1891. The Social Democrats remained Germany's strongest political party until 1932.

On March 23, 1933, SPD representative Otto Wels rebelled against Hitler's grip on parliament, proclaiming, "People can take away our liberty and our lives, but not our integrity." Social Democratic parliamentarians rallied against the Nazi party, the NSDAP. But just a few months later the labor unions were broken up and the SPD banned in Germany.

SPD politicians were forced to remove political graffiti under the supervision of Hitler's stormtroopers, and many Social Democrats were imprisoned, tortured, and murdered. In 1933, Otto Wels created the SPD exile organization "Sopade" in Prague. It later operated in Paris, and from 1940 to 1945, in London. Members of the German labor movement also regrouped in Scandinavia and the United States.

Kurt Schumacher, SPD chairman in the western Allies' occupied zones spoke in the middle of Frankfurt's rubble in 1946. Schumacher would have a huge influence the post-war SPD. In the Soviet zone, the SPD and the Communist Party were forced to merge into the Socialist Unity Party (SED). West Germany's first election would see the SPD lose by a narrow margin to the Christian Democrats (CDU).

The SPD dropped much of its socialist ideology with the ratification of the Godesberg Program in 1959, opening itself to a much wider voter demographic. The SPD committed itself to a social market economy and national defense, two crucial preconditions for its later participation in the grand coalition with the CDU in 1966, with Willy Brandt as vice-chancellor.

Willy Brandt, the SPD's first post-war chancellor, left a lasting image for Germany when he knelt before the memorial to the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising of 1943. His Ostpolitik, aimed at achieving reconciliation with the Soviet bloc nations, garnered him a Nobel Peace Prize in 1971. His government aimed to advance democracy while also initiating reforms in legal, family, and gender equality issues.

The "1968ers" - those that belonged to the 1960s' student and international protest movement - breathed new life into the SPD. In 1974, Heidemarie Wieczorek-Zeul would become the first woman elected to chair the Jusos - the SPD's youth organization.

Helmut Schmidt, chancellor from 1974 to 1982, is shown here with the widow of businessman Hanns Martin Schleyer, who was murdered by the left-wing extremist group the RAF in 1977. The RAF's terrorist activities would become a litmus test for Schmidt's crisis management. His chancellorship was also marked by massive internal party strife.

With the break-up of their coalition with the Free Democratic Party, the Social Democrats found themselves in opposition once again in 1982. In 1994, Rudolf Scharping (left) lost as the SPD's candidate in the 1994 elections. He lost the party's chairmanship to Oskar Lafontaine (center) shortly thereafter. The SPD's Gerhard Schröder (right) eventually became chancellor from 1998 to 2005.

In coalition with the Green party, the SPD managed to replace Helmut Kohl's CDU government in 1998. Chancellor Gerhard Schröder's "Agenda 2010" reforms of the labor market reaped massive criticism from the unions and prompted mass SPD defections to the newly founded Left party (eventually named Die Linke).

Peer Steinbrück is battling Angela Merkel for the chancellorship this September. Given the euro debt crisis, the former finance minister's economic competence should make him a sure fit for the job. But the talented speaker alienates many with his unguarded statements - even within his own party. Just months before the election, he lags a long way behind Chancellor Merkel in the polls.