Social Democratic Party Of Germany Research Articles

Sergei Chakhotin against the Swastika: Mass Psychology and Scientific Organization in the Iron Front's Three Arrows Campaign

Abstract This article details the influence of Russian psychologist Sergei Chakhotin on the propaganda of the Iron Front, an antifascist organization that resisted the rise of the Nazis in the dying days of the Weimar Republic. Notably the creator of the Three Arrows symbol, Chakhotin espoused theories and methods that used Ivan Pavlov's notion of the conditioned reflex and Fredrick Taylor's theory of scientific management to transform socialist propaganda to better combat the rise of fascism. By scrutinizing Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) periodicals and Iron Front propaganda, I argue that Chakhotin's ideas played a crucial role in catalyzing changes in the form and content of street campaigning throughout 1932. Chakhotin provided a scientific lens through which his allies in the SPD could view and understand the mass appeal of the Nazis, as well as the necessary changes in party tactics that were required in the age of mass media, popular spectacle, and emotional struggle.

How do intra-party dynamics impact the party elite’s immigration policy manoeuvres? The case of German Social Democrats

AbstractThis article examines the Social Democratic Party of Germany’s (SPD) approach to immigration and the role of party activists in shaping its policies. The article delves into the party’s response to the 2015 refugee crisis and its aftermath, utilising the discourse taken by the party’s leading figures and interviews with party elites, exploring their perceptions of activists and their constraints on immigration policies. The findings reveal that the influence of party activists is beyond their official power within the organisational structure, and their nestedness within the party affects the party elite’s policy- and decision-making on immigration. Given the potential backlash from activists, the study underscores the party elites’ cautious approach to policy shifts and emphasises the significance of leadership skills, the party’s image and electoral motivations in navigating intra-party dynamics and policy-making. Ultimately, the research highlights the delicate balance SPD elites seek in addressing immigration issues within its party structure.

The costs and benefits of governing in a multi-level system

ABSTRACT In recent years the ‘cost of governing’ has significantly increased for some mainstream political parties. In a context of financial uncertainty, multiple crises and growing constraints exerted by global forces, being a ‘natural’ party of government is no longer regarded as an electoral advantage. This is particularly true for parties that have moved from a position of clear dominance within ruling coalitions to a more subordinate role. In this article, focusing on the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) and using an original dataset, we aim to provide a more nuanced assessment of the effects of incumbency by examining regional electoral performance since 1990. It appears that sub-national incumbency can be beneficial in regional elections, especially when a party faces significant costs of governing at the national level. However, this advantage is only applicable if the party holds a leading position in the regional executive. On the contrary, being a junior coalition partner at both national and regional levels may further exacerbate electoral decline for the party.

Birleşme Sonrası Almanya’da İdealist Avrupa Yanlılığı ile İç İdeolojik Öncelikler Arasında Alman Sosyal Demokrat Partisi

The main thrust of this article is to examine the evolution of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands – SPD)’s Europhile position since German reunification from a broader ideological perspective. To this end, this study rests on the field research that entails 16 semi-structured interviews with high-profile SPD political elites and archival research on key official party documents. Based on this analysis, the main argument of this study is that the SPD encountered a growing tension between idealistic and domestic views of European integration since 1990. Under the impact of the post-reunification domestic problems and Chancellor Schröder’s assertive European policy line, the German Social Democrats’ ideology-driven doubts about European integration increased at the expense of their idealistic pro-Europeanism. Over time, this tension led to the greater prominence of ideological pragmatism in the SPD’s official European Union (EU) narrative, rendering Europe a politically and ideologically salient issue for the party.

Marxism and Homosexual Liberation

Abstract The decriminalisation of homosexuality was a measure originally adopted by the bourgeois revolutions, which was abandoned by the bourgeois parties as the rise of the labour movement led the bourgeoisie to seek a compromise with landlords, clergy and monarchy in different countries. The demand to decriminalise homosexuality was therefore taken over by the Marxist workers’ parties, such as the Social-Democratic Party of Germany before the First World War and the Bolshevik Party in Russia after the Revolution of October 1917. This article outlines the cooperation between the Scientific-Humanitarian Committee led by Magnus Hirschfeld and Social Democracy to decriminalise homosexuality by removing Paragraph 175 of the German Penal Code before the First World War. It also describes the decriminalisation of homosexuality in Russia under Lenin, with the adoption of the first Soviet Penal Code in June 1922, and Magnus Hirschfeld’s relations with prominent figures of the early Soviet government such as N.A. Semashko, the first People’s Commissar of Public Health, and Anatoly Lunacharsky, the first People’s Commissar for Education. Those ties ceased with the Nazis’ rise to power in January 1933, which resulted in the destruction of the institutions created by Hirschfeld, such as the Institute for Sexual Science and the World League for Sexual Reform, while in the Soviet Union itself Stalin recriminalised homosexuality in March 1934, shortly before Hirschfeld’s death, linking homosexuality and fascism.

The Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) and Immigration Policies: An Intra-Party Perspective

ABSTRACT This article investigates the immigration policies and positions of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) from the perspective of intra-party dynamics. As far-right parties and anti-immigration discourses gained ground in Europe, social democratic and left-wing parties responded with different political strategies on immigration. This paper investigates the case of the German SPD and looks for possible policy changes (or the lack of them) in a timeframe where immigration was a highly salient, politicised issue. The paper focuses on the period between 2005 and 2017, utilising party congresses and manifestos to establish, analyse and compare the positions of intra-party actors, namely, the activists and the party elite and the official party line. A conceptual framework developed from the literature establishes the actors' and party's frames and positions, providing insights into their approach to immigration. The article then analyses the SPD's positions within the timeframe and tests May's Law on SPD intra-party actors and their discourses on immigration. The results highlight that May's Law holds for the SPD's intra-party actors on the issue of immigration. Findings also suggest that activists influence the official party positions although this is limited, as the official policies are closer to the party elite's positions.

Ideological and political evolution of the Independent Social Democratic Party of Germany in 1920-1922

In this article, the subject of research is the internal ideological and political evolution of the Independent Social Democratic Party of Germany in the last years of its existence (1920-1922) to change the orientation of the party. The main emphasis is not on the organizational incapacity of the party, as was customary in historiography, but on the process of ideological shifts. This approach made it possible to identify the ideological crisis in the USPD in the conditions of the instability of the political system of the Weimar Republic, which turned out to be one of the most significant factors in the disappearance of the party. For historians who look to the experience of the Weimar Republic, the labor movement has always faced a choice between communism and social democracy, while the independents have, at best, the fate of an ill-fated utopian attempt at a "third way" in the post-war labor movement in Germany. The attention of scholars involved in the history of the USPD was mainly focused on the initial period of the party's existence from 1917 to 1920, namely on the reasons for the party's separation from the SPD in 1917 and the split in 1920, when most of the independents went to the KPD. The period from 1920 to 1922 was given a place where the “survival” of the USPD to the merger with the SPD was considered in an overview form, and there are no separate works devoted to this period of time at all.

Bavaria and the Adoption of the Basic Law for the Federal Republic of Germany

The article analyzes the reasons for the rejection of the Basic Law of the Federal Republic of Germany by Bavaria in May 1949. The main contradictions were associated with the aspiration of its leadership to establish the supremacy of the lands in relations with the federal center, which was considered by the leading parties of post-war Germany as excessive and unacceptable for federal structure. An important role was also played by the specifics of relations with the Bizone authorities and the increased influence of the Bavarian government in interzonal politics, which reached its apogee in the middle of 1948. In this regard, the politicians of the ruling party of Bavaria — the Christian Social Union — tried not only to consolidate political and financial guarantees to the lands in the prospective federal structure but also to establish possibilities for broad influence of the land government on federal policy. However, a small number of representatives of Bavaria in the interzonal bodies forced them to constantly maneuver between significant concessions to other fractions and an open protest against their decisions. After exhausting all of the possibilities of a compromise with the Christian Democratic Union and the Social Democratic Party of Germany, the Christian Social Union deputy group and the Landtag rejected the Basic Law, but at the same time declared the obligatory observance of it and the aspiration to further participate in German affairs (the position ‘Our “nay” to Bonn, our “yea” to Germany’). Such a decision not only removed political responsibility from the Bavarian side, but also actualized the Bavarian question in the future West German state.

Изменения в политическом ландшафте Германии после начала боевых действий на Украине: вызовы для России

The article deals with the changes in public opinion and balance of political forces in Germany after the outbreak of the conflict in Ukraine. The analyses of sociological polls revealed that German population has been experiencing the break of old patterns and the division on the most important foreign policy issues. Also, the article presents a graph of government rating created by the author. It shows that while the support for ruling coalition declines, opposition’s ranking improves. However, the graph of parties’ ranking demonstrates that the support for governing Social Democratic Party of Germany and the Free Democratic Party, as well as the opposition Left Party dropping, the rating of Christian Democratic Union / Christian Social Union, ‘Alternative for Germany’ and governing Alliance 90 / The Greens improves. Comparison of survey data with party materials revealed the reasons for the strengthening and weakening of various political forces. In the end, the author draws conclusions regarding the impact of changes in the party-political balance on Russian-German relations. The main challenge for our countries is that most German parties are united in condemning Moscow's policies. The more open to dialogue AfD and part of the Left Party have no chance of entering the federal and state governments, and interaction with the right-wing populist ‘Alternative for Germany’ could discredit Russia.

Германская социал-демократия в неопределенной реальности

The article analyzes new aspects of the evolution of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) against the backdrop of the situation in Europe and in the world, confirming the forecasts made in the author’s previous publications. The party remains an important political force in Europe and globally, influences the development of European social-democratic thought, actively participates in reforming the European Union. The German Social Democrats uphold the principles of liberal democracies, entering into disputes with Budapest and Warsaw in view of their heightened sense of national exclusiveness. The updated conceptual guidelines of the party testify to further tightening of the SPD’s course in the Russian direction. The party does not give an answer to the fundamental questions: how the outlines of a new world order in Europe can be built without the participation of Russia, especially against it; to what extent the turn of the SPD’s top meets the interests of ordinary party members and citizens of the country. The approach of the German Social Democrats may exacerbate the already tense situation. The SPD has forgotten Willy Brandt’s warnings about the inadmissibility of exporting the FRG’s and other Western countries’ model, of imposing certain rules. The military-political choice made by O. Scholz and L. Klingbeil, their definition of February 24, 2022 as drawing a line under the moral and historical responsibility of Berlin for the atrocities of the Nazis, depreciating the important role of Moscow in the defeat of fascism and the reunification of Germany, have become the milestone ideological imperatives of modern Germany. These and other factors will go down in the history of Moscow–Berlin relations as a major mistake of the German Social Democracy. Moscow should not negotiate with those leaders of the SPD who will certainly bring the content of conversations to the attention of Washington, Brussels, Kyiv, Warsaw, Vilnius, Riga. The German ruling class without the sovereignty of its country does not inspire confidence. The trend of expanding hostilities in Ukraine with the use of new types of weapons, a possible direct intervention of NATO countries in the conflict continues. Moscow should clearly analyze the reasons for the rise and fall of the RF–FRG relations, Russia’s miscalculations, and sketch out various scenarios. Despite everything, in Germany, especially in the new federal states, in a part of the SPD, German business and civil society, hopes for normalizing relations with Russia have not been lost completely. Their cautious statements about the common roots of the Russian Federation and the Federal Republic of Germany belonging to the European civilization cannot but inspire restrained optimism in terms of preserving the experience of dialogue between the two countries.

The Change of Motives to Become and to be a Party Member. An Empirical Analysis of the German Party Membership Studies 1998, 2009 and 2017

In this paper, the thesis is put forward that selective outcome incentives for party membership gain relevance over time. Two possible mechanisms are identified as the cause of this increase in importance: a supply-side mechanism based on processes of societal change that took place through generational succession and a demand-side mechanism focusing on shifts in the self-image and organizational structure of political parties. The supply-side mechanism should lead to changes in the motives of potential members, whereas the demand-side mechanism alters the incentives potential and current members are exposed to.The empirical analyses are based on the German Party Membership Studies of 1998, 2009 and 2017. These three studies are nationwide representative surveys of the members of the following six parties: Christian Democratic Union (CDU), Christian Social Union (CSU), Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD), Free Democratic Party (FDP), Alliance90/The Greens (Bündnis90/Die Grünen), and The Left (Die Linke). Within the German Party Membership Studies, both the motives for joining the party and the current membership motives are surveyed.Empirically, it is shown that there is indeed an increase in the importance of selective outcome membership motives over the period under study. The mechanisms behind this increase in importance are investigated using multivariate Age-Period-Cohort (APC) models based on the cumulated data of the German Party Membership Studies. These analyses are based on a total of nearly 30,000 cases. The results of the APC analyses are largely consistent with the supply-side explanation of the increased importance of selective outcome motives for party entry and membership. The demand-side explanation is only partially confirmed.

The ruling communist party, known as the Socialist Unity Party of Germany (SED), formed in April 1946 from the merger between the Communist Party of Germany (KPD) and the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD).[35] The two former parties were notorious rivals when they were active before the Nazis consolidated all power and criminalized them, and official East German and Soviet histories portrayed this merger as a voluntary pooling of efforts by the socialist parties and symbolic of the new …

The ruling communist party, known as the Socialist Unity Party of Germany (SED), formed in April 1946 from the merger between the Communist Party of Germany (KPD) and the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD).[35] The two former parties were notorious rivals when they were active before the Nazis consolidated all power and criminalized them, and official East German and Soviet histories portrayed this merger as a voluntary pooling of efforts by the socialist parties and symbolic of the new …

Создатель Товарищества пролетарского искусства в Берлине Фридрих Вильгельм Брасс: первый опыт биографии

The purpose of this article is to study the life and activity of Friedrich Wilhelm Brass, founder of Genossenschaft for Proletarian Art in Berlin (1920). Friedrich Wilhelm Brass (1873–1931) throughout his life sought to combine the commercial interests of a contemporary art dealer with the ideas of the social reorganization of the world. One of the first to call himself a communist in Germany, he created in 1920 in Berlin the Genossenschaft for Proletarian Art, the collection of which became the first contemporary western art brought to Soviet Russia. On the basis of this collection kept in the Hermitage and the Russian Academy of Arts, archival materials and work in museum collections in Germany, the history of the emergence of the Genossenschaft in Berlin in 1920, the composition of the participants and the biography of its creator are reconstructed. The relevance and novelty of the article is due to the lack of scientific research on this issue discovered by the author in his works. The life path of F.W. Brass is consistently considered. Trained as a craftsman in Krefeld, Brass made several attempts to establish an art trade there, primarily aimed at the workers’ milieu. A member of the Social Democratic Party of Germany, he tried to interest the party in the prospect of such educational and agitational work. These initiatives proved to be financially untenable. Brass later worked at the German Workshops Hellerau, where the manufacturer Karl Schmidt implemented a project for the mass production of furniture designed by leading European designers and oriented to the widest and most democratic market. During the First World War, Brass was mobilized and spent several years in captivity in Russia, where he met the revolution and returned to Germany in 1919 as a convinced supporter of the communist reorganization of the world. After the November Revolution, several artistic organizations arose in Berlin, whose activities were directed towards the proletariat (the Workers’ Council for Art, the Association of Socialist Artists, the Union for Proletarian Culture, the Proletarian Theatre of Erwin Piscator, etc.). Among them was the Genossenschaft for Proletarian Art of the communist Brass, who collected the works of left-wing artists, mainly expressionists of the first and second generation. Like most of these artistic initiatives, the Brass Genossenschaft could not survive the economic crisis. The unique collection of the Genossenschaft was acquired during a trip to Germany by Comintern Chairman G. Zinoviev in October 1920 and brought to Soviet Russia. Later, during the years of the Weimar Republic, Brass no longer undertook such ambitious projects, continuing to trade in the works of left-wing artists. He worked in Hagen and Düsseldorf, where he died in 1931. The author comes to the conclusion that the figure of Brass represents a new type of entrepreneur for the art market of the 20th century, focused primarily on the promotion of the latest art among the workers, agitation for a new life in the language of art.

The Process of Transformation of the Policy of the Independent Social Democratic Party of Germany in 1921-1922.

The subject of the study is the internal processes in the USPD (Independent Social Democratic Party of Germany), as well as external factors from the spring of 1921 to the summer of 1922, which led to a change in the party's strategy and, ultimately, to its unification with the SPD (Social Democratic Party of Germany). Special attention is paid to discussions on the party's strategy in the conditions of crisis for the Weimar Republic, namely, left-radical and right-radical threats, the difficult foreign policy situation and instability of the party-political system. The research methodology is based on the tools of historical and political sciences. In particular, it is important to use a psychological approach in party science, which implies the study of the NSDPG based on the subjective vision of political and socio-economic processes by individuals, a group of individuals or the whole collective, which allows us to analyze the motivation of the actions of independents. The study demonstrates that in the conditions of the extremely unstable situation in the Weimar Republic and competition with other left-wing parties, the NSDPG's action program became unviable, as a result of which the party became closer to the SPD on many key issues. The novelty of the study lies in the fact that, unlike the Social Democrats and Communists in Germany, the history of the NSDPG has been studied to a much lesser extent. Of course, there is a fairly extensive historiography, however, the authors paid close attention to the reasons for the separation of the party in 1917 and the issues of its split due to the issue of joining the Third International in 1920, while the process of rapprochement between the NSDPG and the SPD was considered superficially.

The role of political parties in multi-level environmental governance in the European Union and Germany

The subject of the study is the involvement of political parties in multi-level environmental governance in the European Union, using Germany and its federal states as an example. This article describes the theoretical and practical foundations of multi-level governance. The place of European parties and their national member parties from Germany in the institutional system and decision-making process of environmental policy has been defined. For practical illustration, the climate policy guidelines of Germany’s main national parties (the Christian Democratic Union of Germany and the Christian Social Union in Bavaria, the Social Democratic Party of Germany, the Alternative for Germany, the Free Democratic Party of Germany, the Left and the Alliance 90 / The Greens) and their European affiliations (the European People’s Party, the Party of the European Socialists, the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe, the European Green Party and the Party of European Left) were compared with an emphasis on the new targets for reducing greenhouse gas emissions. The unique opportunity for parties to participate in environmental policymaking at all key levels, which is not limited to parliamentary institutions has been highlighted. Appointments to environmental positions at different levels often correlate with membership of the most environmentally oriented parties, although the level of environmental involvement may differ between national parties and their European affiliations. Among other things, this has to do with participation in governing coalitions and dependence on a senior partner in them, as shown by the examples of the Bundestag and the Landtag of Baden-Württemberg. The final decision depends heavily on the unity of the coalition at federal and state level, whereas in the European Parliament there is a great differentiation of opinions, which allows even the most influential European People’s Party to be blocked from voting.

"Flucht aus Frankreich, 1940" [Fuga da França] de Marianne Loring. Memórias: entre a fuga coletiva e o percurso individual

In 1940, the leaders of the Social Democratic Party of Germany which had taken refuge in Paris after years of exile in Prague, are forced to leave again, on an escape whose route crosses France, Spain and Portugal. The group included the young Marianne Loring, daughter of a prominent party member, who describes this escape in her memoirs, which were printed 50 years later. In my article, I will focus not only on the author's memoirs of the escape of the group, but also on her personal experiences, which evoke an education novel.

Gender political correctness in German (on the material of political leaders public performances)

The issue of gender equality is currently being studied on the basis of different languages and from various positions, most intensively from the point of view of language policy. In this case, we are talking about the choice of language tools in oral or written speech that allow to unambiguously reflect gender and the social role of the named person. The word-building capabilities of the German language, in particular suffixation and substantiation, represent a significant potential for creating gender-correct lexical units. The main objective of the study was to identify lexical means of expressing political correctness in the speech of representatives of various political parties of Germany (Christian Democratic Union, Christian Social Union, Social Democratic Party of Germany, Free Democratic Party, Green Party, Left Party, Alternative for Germany) in close interconnection with extralinguistic factors. In the research process, the continuous sampling method, semantic, contextual, and statistical analysis were used, which made it possible to identify units with a gender marking. Based on semantic attributes, the identified lexemes were classified into four groups: feminitives, gender-neutral, gender-asymmetric, and gender-symmetric units. The analysis shows the changes in the German language towards gender equality. The main tendency of this process is feminization, the signs of which are found primarily in the language of female politicians, which also reflects the national-cultural specificity of the modern German language.

Building Bridges between Catholicism and Socialism: Ernst-Wolfgang Böckenförde and the Social Democratic Party of Germany

AbstractThis article examines the ideological and political transformations that allowed dialogue between Catholics and socialists to bear fruit in the Federal Republic of Germany in the immediate post-war era. It focuses on the role played by Ernst-Wolfgang Böckenförde, the prominent Catholic intellectual, constitutional theorist, historian and future Constitutional Court justice.

A forgotten economic work by Rosa Luxemburg

The recent and very useful edition of Rosa Luxemburg’s economic works compiled by Peter Hudis ( The Complete Works of Rosa Luxemburg) left out one essay: her review of the first volume of Karl Marx’s Theories of Surplus Value, edited by Karl Kautsky in 1905. While book reviews are nowadays a minor genre usually limited to a short length, that was not the case when Luxemburg wrote her essay: her review – published in Vorwärts, the daily of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD), just before the outbreak of the Russian Revolution of 1905 – was extensive and dealt with a variety of theoretical and political issues. We offer the first critical edition in English of this work, setting it against the background of Rosa Luxemburg’s previous works and of the revisionist controversy within the SPD and the Second International, as well as contextualizing it within the framework of contemporary polemics with bourgeois economics, particularly with the German historical school and with marginalism. We also offer a comparison between the methodological issues raised by Luxemburg in her review and those raised by Rudolf Hilferding in his review of the third and last volume of Marx’s Theories of Surplus Value, published in 1911. We close with a brief assessment of the place of Luxemburg’s essay in the later development of her economic thought, concluding with The Accumulation of Capital, published in 1913.

ЄВРОПЕЙСЬКА ІНТЕГРАЦІЯ В ПЕРЕДВИБОРЧИХ ПРОГРАМАХ ПОЛІТИЧНИХ ПАРТІЙ ФРН 2017 Р.

The article covers the specific depiction of Eastern Europe in the programs of the main political forces in parliamentary elections in Germany 2017. Positions of political forces of the Federal Republic of Germany are characterized by the degree of impact to the course of political life. The election programs of the six parties (CDU / CSU, SPD, FDP, “Alliance 90 / The Greens”, “Left”, “Alternative for Germany”) that managed to overcome the barrier were analysed. Almost all political parties that succeeded in breaking the barrier in the parliamentary elections on September 24, 2017, presented their own vision of the European direction of FRG’s foreign policy in their election programs. All parties, except the right-wing populists, spoke in favor of Germany’s active participation in the processes of European integration. Such issues as a strategy for the further development of the EU, overcoming the negative effects of the UK’s withdrawal from the EU, and the prospects of community enlargement at the expense of Turkey and the Western Balkans were the focus of political forces. The Christian and Democratic Union / Christian and Social Union, led by Federal Chancellor A. Merkel, emphasized the need to strengthen the European Union as a subject of world politics against the background of geopolitical shifts after 2014 and the withdrawal of the UK from the EU. The Social Democratic Party of Germany, the Free Democratic Party and the “Alliance 90 / The Greens” spoke in favor of reforming the EU institutions. Instead, the far-right “Alternative for Germany” called for a radical revision of FRG’s foreign policy strategy. All political forces have noted the deterioration of the situation with democracy and human rights in Turkey, which makes it impossible for this country to enter the EU in the near future. As for membership prospects for the Western Balkans, the parties’ positions differ. The conclusions state that the formation of another “grand coalition” led by A. Merkel testified to the stability of the foreign policy and the desire to maintain the leading role of FRG in the processes of deepening and expanding European integration.