In the course of the late 1960s the Jusos, the youth organization of the Social Democrats, the left wing of the SPD increased in influence and numbers.

A meeting in the Dorint-Hotel in Lahnstein in December 1974 is considered to be the official founding of the Seeheim Circle; however, already in 1973 a group of around 40 Social Democrats met at the invitation of Hans-Jochen Vogel to discuss a way to come out of the theoretical and ideological predicament posed by the left wing of the party.

Between 1974 and 1982, Chancellor Helmut Schmidt included several Seeheimers in his Cabinet, who had supported him during the debates in the party about the industrial use of nuclear energy and the NATO Double-Track Decision.

After the end of the Helmut Schmidt Era, the Kanalarbeiter, who had represented the interests of traditional, non-intellectual union workers, definitively merged with the Seeheim Circle, which in contrast was considered to be "intellectual."

[citation needed] After reunification with East Germany in 1990, the Seeheimers added two prominent Social Democrats from the former GDR to their ranks, Stephan Hilsberg and Markus Meckel.

Other leading members of the Seeheimer are Doris Barnett, Fritz-Rudolf Körper, Edgar Franke, Sport Committee Chairwoman Dagmar Freitag, Carsten Schneider, who belong to a group known as the Sprecherkreis.