Social Democratic Party of Germany

The Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) is a social democratic political party based in the German federal state of Hesse. Combined with the Christian Democratic Union of Germany, it is one of Germany's two main political parties in current times (CDU).

Since the party's leadership election in 2019, Saskia Esken and Norbert Walter-Borjans have served as the party's leaders. The SPD, together with the CDU/CSU, is a junior member of the federal government. The SPD was established during the 2013 federal election and was re-established in 2017. Currently, the SPD is a member of 11 of Germany's 16 state governments, and it is a leading partner in seven of those governments. It gained the most seats in the federal election of 2021, despite the fact that no new government, with or without the party's involvement, has been formed as of this writing.

The SPD was founded in 1863 and is the oldest political party still active in Germany. It is represented in the Bundestag. It was one of the world's first political parties to be inspired by Marxism. For most of the nineteenth century and into the early twentieth century, the SPD was Europe's biggest Marxist party, and it was also the most popular political party in Germany at the time. During World War I, the party broke into two factions: a pro-war mainstream and an anti-war Independent Social Democratic Party, a faction of which went on to form the Communist Party of Germany with some members (KPD). It was the SPD that played a pivotal part in the German Revolt of 1918–1919, and it was also responsible for the establishment of the Weimar Republic. President of Germany was SPD leader Friedrich Ebert, who served as President from 1890 to 1932. The SPD remained in power until 1932.

The SPD supports the European Union and is a member of the Party of European Socialists. It is a member of the Progressive Alliance of Socialists and Democrats in the European Parliament and is a member of the European People's Party. It is the third-largest party in the European Parliament, with 16 members. The SPD was a founder member of the Socialist International, but the party withdrew from the organisation in 2013 after objecting to the organization's inclusion of parties that they believed were breaching human rights. The SPD went on to create the Progressive Alliance, which was soon joined by a large number of other political parties from across the globe. Previously, the SPD had been a founder member of both the Second International and the Labour and Socialist International, as well as the Communist Party of Germany.