The Social Democratic Party of Germany 1848-2005

Die »Kleine Geschichte der SPD« auf Englisch reicht in der vorliegenden Ausgabe bis in die unmittelbare Gegenwart und endet mit der Bundestagswahl 2005 und der Bildung der Großen Koalition.

With The Social Democratic Party of Germany 1848 – 2005 Potthoff and Miller bring the history and self-conception of the Social Democratic Party to a wider public. A chronological table and a documents section containing important programmes and statistical sources supplement this overview.

In the first part of the book Heinrich Potthoff describes the path taken by the social democratic labour movement from the revolutionary year of 1848/49. The second part, written by Susanne Miller, takes in the period from 1945 to the end of the social-liberal coalition in 1982. This part, already revised for the latest German edition (2002) by Heinrich Potthoff, also includes developments in the former GDR. In the third part, a comprehensive look at the years from 1982 to 2002, Heinrich Potthoff describes the development of the SPD from the long years of opposition in Bonn, through the party’s attempts to find its way in a unified Germany, to its ascent to government under Gerhard Schröder. In an afterword written specially for the English edition Potthoff summarises the experiences of the red-green coalition and describes developments up until the formation of a new government under Angela Merkel and Vice-Chancellor Müntefering at the end of 2005.