Social Democratic Workers' Party of Germany

Much of their political appeal was based on what socialists considered to be an alarming militancy in support of German nationalism and the question of Greater Germany.

[2] Eventually, the sundry turmoil created by the German unification wars helped politicize large elements of the previously unmoved VDAV.

[1] Meeting in the city of Eisenach in Saxony, the VDAV activists founded the Social Democratic Workers' Party (SDAP) on 7–9 August 1869.

[3] The political theorist Karl Marx had a significant personal influence upon the newly formed party, being a friend and mentor to both Bebel and Liebknecht.

Marx and Friedrich Engels steered the party toward more Marxian socialism and welcomed them (as far as German law would allow) into their International Workingmen's Association (IWA).

The party's newspaper was first called Demokratisches Wochenblatt (Democratic Weekly Paper) and later Der Volksstaat (The People's State) and was edited by Liebknecht.

[7] The party did not yet have its own printers, but Liebknecht was ambitious in his efforts to promote its publications on a wide scale as educational tools for workers.

[12] The competition between moderate and radical factions reached a boiling point when SDAP and Lassalle's ADAV finally merged to form a united front.

After the ban was lifted in 1890, it renamed itself the Social Democratic Party of Germany (Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands, SPD) and surged at the polls.