Ferdinand Lassalle was a German socialist activist and politician who founded the first German workers' party, the General German Workers' Association (ADAV), in 1863. He is best remembered as the initiator of the country's social-democratic movement, which after his death led to the formation of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) in 1875.
Eduard Bernstein was a German Marxist theorist and politician. A prominent member of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD), Bernstein has been both condemned and praised as a "revisionist" who challenged major aspects of Karl Marx's thought. A key influence on the European social democratic movement, Bernstein argued for legal legislation over revolutionary action, and a gradual democratization and socialization of capitalist society.
Ferdinand August Bebel was a German socialist politician, writer, and orator. He is best remembered as one of the founders of the Social Democratic Workers' Party of Germany (SDAP) in 1869, which in 1875 merged with the General German Workers' Association into the Socialist Workers' Party of Germany (SAPD). During the repression under the terms of the Anti-Socialist Laws, Bebel became the leading figure of the social democratic movement in Germany and from 1892 until his death served as chairman of the Social Democratic Party of Germany.
Wilhelm Martin Philipp Christian Ludwig Liebknecht was a German socialist and one of the principal founders of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD). His political career was a pioneering project combining Marxist revolutionary theory with practical legal political activity. Under his leadership, the SPD grew from a tiny sect to become Germany's largest political party. He was the father of Karl Liebknecht and Theodor Liebknecht.
Jean Baptista von Schweitzer was a German politician and dramatic poet and playwright.
Clara Zetkin was a German Marxist theorist, communist activist, and advocate for women's rights.
Franz Erdmann Mehring was a German communist historian, literary and art critic, philosopher, and revolutionary socialist politician who was a senior member of the Spartacus League during the German Revolution of 1918–1919.
The Social Democratic Workers' Party of Germanya was a Marxist socialist political party in the North German Confederation during unification.
The Anti-Socialist Laws or Socialist Laws were a series of acts of the parliament of the German Empire, the first of which was passed on 19 October 1878 by the Reichstag lasting until 31 March 1881 and extended four times.
Leo Fränkel 25 February 1844, Altofen-Neustift, Austro-Hungarian Empire – 29 March 1896, Paris) was a socialist revolutionary, labour leader of Jewish descent. In France where he participated in the Paris Commune of 1871 as a member of the International and after his return to Paris in 1889, he was known as Léo Frankel.
Wilhelm Hasenclever was a German politician. He was originally a tanner by trade but later became a journalist and author. However, he is most known for his political work in the predecessors of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD).
The Saxon People's Party was a left-liberal and radical democratic party with socialist leanings in Germany, founded by Wilhelm Liebknecht and August Bebel on 19 August 1866 in Chemnitz, and integrated into the newly-founded Social Democratic Workers' Party (SDAP) on 8 August 1869. It was an alliance between liberal, anti-Prussian bourgeois and socialist workers' organizations in Saxony. It is considered one of the precursors to the Social Democratic Party of Germany.
Lassallism or Lassalleanism is the strategy of the pursuit of socialism through the use of the state. This school of thought developed from German jurist and socialist activist Ferdinand Lassalle.
The Critique of the Gotha Programme is a document based on a letter by Karl Marx written in early May 1875 to the Social Democratic Workers' Party of Germany (SDAP), with whom Marx and Friedrich Engels were in close association.
Friedrich Wilhelm Fritzsche, commonly known by his middle name, was a German trade unionist and socialist politician who was elected a member of the Reichstag. He was a founder and President of the General German Cigar Workers' Union (ADZV) in 1865. The subject of police persecution for his political views, in 1881 Fritzsche emigrated to the United States of America, where he edited the newspaper the Philadelphia Tageblatt for a time before retiring from politics.
Julius Motteler was a pioneering German Socialist and businessman.
Friedrich Wilhelm Emil Försterling was a German Social Democratic politician. He was President of the General German Workers' Association (ADAV) and a member of the Reichstag of the North German Confederation.
Wilhelm Hasselmann was a German socialist politician, activist and editor of various social democratic newspapers.
Jacob Audorf was a German poet, businessman, journalist-commentator and Labour movement pioneer. Much of his poetry was not remotely political, but it was for his political and polemical writing that he became known. The most frequently repeated of his poems was the so-called "German Workers' Marseillaise", a set of three verses of uplifting German-language encouragement for the building of a better future according to the socialist precepts of the time. The words were to be sung, in place of the French language original text, using Rouget de Lisle's already well known revolutionary melody for the Marseillaise.
Max Kayser was a German Social Democratic political journalist-commentator and politician. Between 1878 and 1887 he served as an unusually youthful member of the German "Reichstag" . Nevertheless, between 1881 and 1884 - years during which, in parts of Germany, Bismarck's "Anti-Socialist Laws" were applied with particular enthusiasm - he was faced with a succession of court cases and excluded from a number of cities and towns, on account of his political record.
