160 years of the SPD: Weak in the East, but with a government guarantee

The SPD was once founded in East Germany. Today, she is sometimes struggling with single-digit polls – when it comes to governing, you can’t get past her. Has she come to terms with that?

It’s old, the flag of the General German Workers’ Association in Droyßig, 153 years old. Older than the actual “traditional flag” of the SPD. “Dedicated by the wives and virgins of the local members” is written in golden yellow letters on the poppy red fabric. A few holes have been added to the edge. Because the families of the Droyßig stonemasons were poor, the writing is only painted on, not embroidered.

The SPD is celebrating its 160th anniversary nationwide these days. On May 23, 1863, the ADAV, the forerunner of the party, was founded here in the region, in Leipzig. Bismarck was not yet chancellor, an empire still wishful thinking, but the working class rebelled. Also in Droyßig, a small community in today’s Saxony-Anhalt.

Chancellor years and struggle for survival

The flag, which will be shown this Monday evening in the auditorium of the local high school, has been missing for years. Now, in addition to 50 tradition-conscious comrades and a few comrades, she has also attracted Rolf Mützenich. The SPD faction leader in the Bundestag seems genuinely moved when he says: “I didn’t want to miss that.”

The district chairman and member of the state parliament Rüdiger Erben invited. It is reminiscent of times when the flag had to be hidden. And to an SPD politician from the area who was arrested by the National Socialists in 1933 and whose traces are lost eleven years later in the Sachsenhausen concentration camp.

hardship. labor struggle. Resistance against the Nazi yoke. That is part of the SPD identity. Erben conjures up a triad: Brandt’s policy of détente. Schröder’s No to the Iraq War. Scholz’ turning point. SPD chancellor years, so the message, are difficult years.

However, times are more difficult for some SPD state associations than others. In Saxony-Anhalt, the party was last at eight percent in a survey. That’s as bad as the historically worst state election result here two years ago. In Saxony and Thuringia, where elections are due in 2024, it is only a few percentage points more. The SPD can hardly get out of the valley.

The words of the Saxon Green parliamentary group leader Franziska Schubert do not seem very nice. Schubert recently told the “Sächsische Zeitung” about his coalition partner: The SPD is fighting “in parts of Saxony for political survival”. That brings with it a “certain elbow mentality”. Even dealing with the Kretschmer CDU is easier.

government guarantee in the East

Now the comrades in Bavaria and Baden-Württemberg, for example, are hardly better off in surveys. But the situation in the East is fundamentally different. Because the SPD is the only party that governs in all five East German states and Berlin. The cross-party demarcation from the AfD and the tensions between the East CDU and the Alliance Greens give the party a kind of government guarantee. The SPD can work with the CDU and the Left, FDP and the Greens alike.

However, the SPD only provides heads of government in Brandenburg and Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania. Nevertheless, in these months it seems as if the party has come to terms with its role. “The constant longing for opposition has vanished,” says Erben in his speech. Just two years ago, critics tipped that the five percent hurdle would eventually stop the SPD unless the content was realigned.

The fact that they are also reconciled with Berlin is not only due to the fact that “Chancellor Years” are just around the corner, but also to Rolf Mützenich. Mützenich’s position on the Ukraine war brought him a lot of criticism. Not only, but especially in the East, she has also encouraged those comrades who are strangers to arms aid and war or who do not want to condemn Putin’s Russia. Sometimes both.

In addition to the common history of the SPD and the East regional group of the Bundestag faction, Mützenich praised the chancellor. He not only relies on aid for Ukraine, but also on talks with countries like China. The holey flag next to him, says Mützenich, is an order “to keep an eye out for the chances of peace.” approval in the hall.

To be needed

What doesn’t find a place in the speeches: the awakening of 1989. Unlike the CDU, FDP and today’s Left Party, the Eastern SPD did not emerge from a recorder party or even the SED. Similar to Bündnis 90, it found its own history, with personalities such as Wolfgang Thierse, Manfred Stolpe or Regine Hildebrandt, who died young and is often missing today. You could be proud of that too.

In Saxony-Anhalt, Rüdiger Fikentscher was there from the start. Fikentscher, red scarf, white hair, is received in Droyßig like a guest of honour. During his time as state and parliamentary group leader, the SPD led the state government for another eight years, twice allowing itself to be tolerated by the then PDS: its own way, the “Magdeburg model”. Subsequent left government responsibility would have been unthinkable without this.

But in 1989, at the end of the GDR and the new beginning of the SPD, the ENT doctor Fikentscher was still lecturing at a university. “No one could fool us,” he says of the cooperation with the West SPD. All comrades would have had a job, there were no party careers back then.

Fikentscher has a self-confidence that his party is looking for in the East. The SPD countered the anger and dissatisfaction of many AfD voters with Carsten Schneider, the federal government’s pugnacious East German representative. He demands more participation for, but also self-empowerment from the East Germans. Brandenburg’s SPD prime minister, Dietmar Woidke, even says it’s “time for a new East German self-confidence.”

You’re beating the same drum as the East CDU and the controversial Leipzig bestselling author Dirk Oschmann, but in case of doubt less loud. It remains to be seen whether that will be enough to contain the AfD. Just like the broad impact of a future center “German Unity and European Transformation”, which the federal government wants to locate in Halle in Saxony-Anhalt. The SPD sells the meeting and research center, which costs hundreds of millions of euros, as “their” project.

The local elections show that the party is “needed” in the East, as some comrades assure themselves. In Brandenburg – in the Oder-Spree district or in Cottbus – it was SPD candidates who kept a strong AfD out of office.

They have “shown up for the flag,” as Mützenich said in his speech about other candidates. He knows about the difficulty, adds the faction leader later. He doesn’t know the details of the circumstances, but: “I think it’s exhausting, especially here in the East, not only to profess to be a social democrat, but also to work.” Therefore, his visit to Droyßig can also be seen as support.