Social Democratic Party of Germany in the context of "Eisenach"

Federal elections were held in Germany on 19 January 1919 to elect a national constituent assembly that would write a new constitution for Germany following the collapse of the German Empire at the end of World War I. The election, which took place amid the sometimes violent political upheaval of the German revolution, used a form of proportional representation, lowered the voting age to 20 and allowed women to vote for the first time.

With the exception of the Social Democratic Party (SPD) and the Centre Party (which ran under the name 'Christian People's Party'), the major parties which took part in the election were newly formed from elements of parties that had been active during the German Empire. The three-week-old Communist Party of Germany (KPD) chose not to participate.

The German Democratic Party (Deutsche Demokratische Partei, DDP) was a liberal political party in the Weimar Republic, considered centrist or centre-left. Along with the right-liberal German People's Party (Deutsche Volkspartei, DVP), it represented political liberalism in Germany between 1918 and 1933. It was formed in 1918 from the Progressive People's Party and the liberal wing of the National Liberal Party, both of which had been active in the German Empire.

After the formation of the first German state to be constituted along pluralist-democratic lines, the DDP took part as a member of varying coalitions in almost all Weimar Republic cabinets from 1919 to 1932. Before the Reichstag elections of 1930, it united with the Volksnationale Reichsvereinigung, which was part of the national liberal Young German Order (Jungdeutscher Orden). From that point on the party called itself the German State Party (Deutsche Staatspartei, DStP) and retained the name even after the Reich Association left the party. Because of the connection to the Reich Association, members of the left wing of the DDP broke away from the party and toward the end of the Republic founded the Radical Democratic Party, which was unsuccessful in parliament. Others joined the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD).

Strike action, also called labor strike, labour strike in British English, or simply strike, is a work stoppage caused by the mass refusal of employees to work. A strike usually takes place in response to employee grievances. Strikes became common during the Industrial Revolution, when mass labor became important in factories and mines. As striking became a more common practice, governments were often pushed to act (either by private business or by union workers). When government intervention occurred, it was rarely neutral or amicable. Early strikes were often deemed unlawful conspiracies or anti-competitive cartel action and many were subject to massive legal repression by state police, federal military power, and federal courts. Many Western nations legalized striking under certain conditions in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

Strikes are sometimes used to pressure governments to change policies. Occasionally, strikes destabilize the rule of a particular political party or ruler; in such cases, strikes are often part of a broader social movement taking the form of a campaign of civil resistance. Notable examples are the 1980 Gdańsk Shipyard and the 1981 Warning Strike led by Lech Wałęsa. These strikes were significant in the long campaign of civil resistance for political change in Poland, and were an important mobilizing effort that contributed to the fall of the Iron Curtain and the end of communist party rule in Eastern Europe. Another example is the general strike in Weimar Germany that followed the March 1920 Kapp Putsch. It was called by the Social Democratic Party (SPD) and received such broad support that it resulted in the collapse of the putsch.

The Communist Party of Germany (German: Kommunistische Partei Deutschlands, pronounced [kɔmuˈnɪstɪʃə paʁˈtaɪ ˈdɔʏtʃlants] ; KPD [ˌkaːpeːˈdeː] ) was the major far-left political party in the Weimar Republic during the interwar period, an underground resistance movement in Nazi Germany, and a minor party in Allied-occupied Germany and West Germany during the post-war period until it merged with the SPD in the Soviet occupation zone in 1946 and was banned by the West German Federal Constitutional Court in 1956.

The construction of the KPD began in the aftermath of the First World War by Rosa Luxemburg's and Karl Liebknecht's faction of the Independent Social Democratic Party of Germany (USPD) who had opposed the war and the Majority Social Democratic Party of Germany (MSPD)'s support of it.

Hanover Region (German: Region Hannover) is a district in Lower Saxony, Germany. It is bounded by (from the north and clockwise) the districts of Heidekreis, Celle, Gifhorn, Peine, Hildesheim, Hameln-Pyrmont, Schaumburg and Nienburg.

The Hanover Region district has a unique legal status among the districts of Lower Saxony. It includes the city of Hanover (the state capital) which has the same privileges as a kreisfreie Stadt, a city that is not part of a district. As a consequence, the district is much larger in population than any other district of the state. Its administrative body is the regional parliament (Regionsparlament), headed by the regional president (Regionspräsident), which since 2021 is Steffen Krach (SPD). The members of the regional parliament are elected once every five years and the regional president is elected also every five years in local elections.

The Party of European Socialists (PES) is a social democratic European political party.

The PES comprises national-level political parties from all the European economic area states (EEA) plus the United Kingdom. This includes major parties such as the Social Democratic Party of Germany, the French Socialist Party, the British Labour Party, the Italian Democratic Party, the Portuguese Socialist Party, the Romanian Social Democrat Party and the Spanish Socialist Workers' Party. Parties from a number of other European countries and from the Mediterranean region are also admitted to the PES as associate or observer parties. Most member, associate, and observer parties are members of the wider Progressive Alliance or Socialist International.

Gotha (German pronunciation: [ˈɡoːtaː] ) is the fifth-largest city in Thuringia, Germany, 20 kilometres (12 miles) west of Erfurt and 25 km (16 miles) east of Eisenach with a population of 44,000. The city is the capital of the district of Gotha and was also a residence of the Ernestine Wettins from 1640 until the end of monarchy in Germany in 1918. The House of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha originating here spawned many European rulers, including the royal houses of the United Kingdom, Belgium, Portugal (until 1910) and Bulgaria (until 1946).

In the Middle Ages, Gotha was a rich trading town on the trade route Via Regia and between 1650 and 1850, Gotha saw a cultural heyday as a centre of sciences and arts, fostered by the dukes of Saxe-Gotha. The first duke, Ernest the Pious, was famous for his wise rule. In the 18th century, the Almanach de Gotha was first published in the city. The publisher Justus Perthes and the encyclopedist Joseph Meyer made Gotha a leading centre of German publishing around 1800. In the early 19th century, Gotha was a birthplace of the German insurance business. The SPD was founded in Gotha in 1875 by merging two predecessors. In that period Gotha became an industrial centre, with companies such as the Gothaer Waggonfabrik, a producer of trams and later aeroplanes.

The Federal Republic of Germany has a plural multi-party system. Historically, the largest by members and parliament seats are the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), with its sister party, the Christian Social Union (CSU) and Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD). Germany also has a number of other parties, in recent history most importantly the Free Democratic Party (FDP), Alliance 90/The Greens, The Left, and more recently the Alternative for Germany (AfD). The federal government of Germany often consisted of a coalition of a major and a minor party, specifically CDU/CSU and FDP or SPD and FDP, and from 1998 to 2005 SPD and Greens. From 1966 to 1969, from 2005 to 2009, from 2013 to 2021 and since 2025, the federal government consisted of a coalition of the two major parties, called a grand coalition.

Coalitions in the Bundestag and state legislatures are often described by party colors. Party colors are red for the Social Democratic Party, green for Alliance 90/The Greens, yellow for the Free Democratic Party, purple (officially red, which is customarily used for the SPD) for the Left, light blue for the AfD, and black and blue for the CDU and CSU respectively.