The founding of the General German Workers' Association (ADAV) by Ferdinand Lassalle in 1863 is considered to be the birth of the Social Democratic Party of Germany. The ADAV fought against unjust social and political conditions and demanded universal suffrage and production cooperatives. With Bismarck’s Socialist Act (‘Law against the dangerous endeavors of social democracy’), the then Socialist Workers’ Party of Germany was banned for 12 years from 1878. After the ban was lifted, at its party conference in 1891 in Erfurt, the SPD decided on a program based on Marxist theory whose aim was the development towards socialism. At the same time, the Social Democrats aimed at practical reforms.
Since the end of the1860s, supporters of the ADAV had united at a local level, including in Munich. Unlike North Bavaria, however, there was no proletariat to form a membership base in the predominantly rural and lower middle-class south. Journeymen craftsmen and self-employed master craftsmen of small companies, but also printers, lithographers, photographers, merchants and civil servants formed the basis of the Munich SPD. In 1906, factory, agricultural and unskilled laborers together with municipal and state employees accounted for just 3% of members in the Social Democratic Association of Munich. (Mehringer, Sozialdemokratie, p. 302) The chairman of the Bavarian SPD, Georg von Vollmar also sought support from the bourgeoisie and thus pursued a pragmatic, reform-oriented approach. The first electoral successes came in Munich in 1884 and 1890, when Georg von Vollmar won the Reichstag seat for the Munich III constituency for the SPD. In 1890, another Social Democrat, Georg Birk represented the Munich I constituency in the Reichstag. In 1893, Birk was the first Social Democrat municipal representative in Munich, in 1908 he became a member of the Munich City Council. (Steinborn, Grundlagen, p. 43)
After the repeal of the 1878 Socialist Act, from 1890 the SPD registered a steady upward trend in the German Reich that continued until the First world War. The truce between the bourgeois parties, which the SPD had observed during the war, led to many members turning away from the party and ultimately to the split of the Independent Social Democratic Party of Germany (USPD). In Berlin on November 9, after a demonstration by war-weary workers and soldiers, the republic was declared. The Majority Social Democrat, Friedrich Ebert, became Reich Chancellor. In the ‘Council of People’s Deputies’ as the revolutionary government led by him was called, three people each belonged to the Majority Socialist Party of Germany (MPSD) and the USPD. In the National Assembly elected on January 19, 1919, the MSPD won 165 seats. In Weimar on February 11, 1919, MSPD members together with the German Democrats and the Center Party elected Friedrich Ebert Reich President.
On November 7, 1918, the chairman of the Munich USPD, Kurt Eisner, had already taken over the reins of political action and initiated a revolutionary uprising which led to the end of the monarchy in Bavaria. The Provisonal National Council was formed in the State Parliament on November 8, 1918, on the same day Kurt Eisner was elected State Premier. The provisional Bavarian Government contained two UPSD and four MSPD members. The Social Democrats had become the governing party. The MSPD members, who were still reform-oriented, opposed radical changes. That also applied to the Munich MSPD city councilors, at whose request a working committee was formed to fend off interference in local self-government by the Munich Workers' Council (Steinborn, p. 136).
After Eisner’s murder and the assassination of Minister of the Interior Erhard Auer in February 1919, on April 7, the Bavarian Soviet Republic was proclaimed; the state government under the MSPD State Premier Johannes Hoffmann fled to Bamberg where he called for the assistance of the Reich in the dispute with the soviet government. The revolution was put down by the Reichswehr and Free Corps. In exile in Bamberg, the MSPD had shown itself to be powerless and in the following years was no longer able to play a decisive role in Bavarian state politics. In state elections in March 1920, it only won 25 seats (compared to 61 in the 1919 election) and was in opposition from there on.
Conservative forces also determined the political landscape in the German Reich; in addition to parties from the center to the right, were business leaders and representatives from the Reichswehr. After the 1920 Reichstag elections, a center-right coalition formed the government and the Social Democrats remained in opposition until 1928. However, it supported the government in all crisis situations and went along with unpopular decisions. The workers, lower middle and middle classes who suffered under the economic crises blamed the Social Democrats, and turned to radical parties. The Munich SPD had lost its base on the left during the revolution by adopting a wait-and-see approach at a time of general political radicalization. In the City Council election of 1919, the MSPD and USPD had together won 26 out of the total of 50 seats. In 1924 the (re-united) SPD still got 13 seats, the Communist Party of Germany (KPD), who for the first time had contested an election, won 5 seats. While in 1929, the SPD with 17 seats was the strongest political group in the City Council, they lacked reliable coalition partners for making policy over the long term.
In the municipal elections of 1929, for the first time, eight representatives of the Nazi Party, close confidants of Hitler, entered the Munich City Council. They provoked riots in the council chamber with their appearances, aided by their supporters in the gallery. In this difficult situation, the council members of the Bavarian People’s Party (BVP) and the SPD joined forces during budgetary discussions to prevent external interference in city politics, such as the appointment of a state commissioner.
The winners of the Reichstag elections of 1930 were the antidemocratic parties, who won 39% of the seats. In this situation, the SPD decided to tolerate the Brüning Cabinet, including emergency decrees as the lesser of two evils, and supported the election of Reich President Hindenburg to stop Hitler. The Social Democrats maintained the state's monopoly on the use of force: they were confident that with its instruments of power, it would be able to stop a Nazi putsch. That was a dangerous error: on January 30, 1933 Hindenburg transferred power to Hitler as Reich Chancellor. The persecution of the Social Democrats began immediately after. After the arrest of their colleagues, on March 23, 1933 the remaining 94 members of the SPD in the Reichstag nevertheless voted against the Enabling Act. The party executive board emigrated to Prague and tried to organize resistance action from there. On July 14, 1933, the SPD was officially banned as a party, after all activity had already been banned in June 1933.
In Bavaria, the Reich Minister of the Interior handed over governmental power to the Reich Commissioner Franz von Epp on March 9. On March 16, 1933 the Bavarian state government resigned, followed on March 20, 1933 by the Mayor of Munich, Karl Scharnagl. The Munich City Council was dissolved on April 3, 1933 and reappointed according to the result of the Reichstag election. The SPD still had ten seats. On April 26, 1933 the Nazi group in the City Council proposed making Adolf Hitler und Franz von Epp honorary citizens of Munich, which resulted in the SPD members walking out of the chamber. However, two former SPD city councilors pledged themselves to the ‘new national and socialist state’, and resigned from the SPD group (Steinborn, p. 538). On May 9, 1933 the the appointment of the new honorary citizen was due to take place, the Nazis beat up the SPD councilors and forced them out of the council chamber. A week later, the Nazi Mayor Fiehler demanded the remaining SPD councilors resign from office. Two of them complied with his demand, the others, who had insisted on an invitation in accordance with the municipal regulations, were already in ‘protective custody’ in Dachau Concentration Camp by the time of the next City Council meeting. The persecution of the Social Democrats began immediately after the seizure of power by the Nazis. On the day the Nazis seized power, March 9, 1933, the Storm Battalion (SA) stormed the Munich Trade Union Building and the editorial offices and printing works of the "Münchener Post" (newspaper). The occupiers ransacked the offices, robbed the cash registers, threatened the trade union and SPD members present, and set up an ‘unofficial concentration camp’ in the basement rooms of the Trade Union Building.
On March 10, 1933 Adolf Wagner, the State Commissioner for the Bavarian State Ministry of the Interior, issued a ban on the Social Democratic protective organizations Reichsbanner (Reich Flag) and ‘Eiserne Front’ (Iron Front) and for the Socialist Working Youth (SAJ). Members of the Reichsbanner who worked in the Munich Employment Office were arrested on March 11, 1933. This was the first time an SA troop had appeared in a police role with a hundred of the State Police and officers of the Political Police. The SA drove those arrested through the streets of Munich from the Employment Office to the prison of the police headquarters in Ettstraße. On March 16, 1933 leading members of the social democratic youth organization SAJ were arrested and on May 22, 1933 all SPD city councilors and their replacements were taken into ‘protective custody’. On the same day, most of them were taken from detention in the police headquarters to Dachau Concentration Camp.
On June 30, 1933 the Bavarian State Police (BPP) struck the final blow against social democracy. An urgent and secret memo from the BPP dated June 28, 1933 states: "On June 30, 1933 at 7 a.m., all Social Democratic members of the Reich and State Parliaments in Bavaria, all district assembly representatives and city councilors of the SPD[...], as well as all SPD functionaries who held a leading position in the party or in the Reichsbanner have been taken into ‘protective custody’." (Munich State Archives, LRA 58083) Those arrested were sent to the Dachau Concentration Camp.
After the SPD was banned throughout the Reich on June 22, 1933 the existence of the SPD came to an end, also in terms of personnel. Small groups on the periphery of the party, who were part of the social democratic milieu (workers’ sports clubs, choral societies, the "Naturfreunde" (a leisure and nature conservation association) and the "Kinderfreunde" (a socialist educational organization for children ) planned acts of resistance, some of which were carried out. By spring 1935, most of the resistance groups had been discovered by the BPP. Their members were prosecuted, given custodial sentences and after serving their sentences most of them were interned again in Dachau Concentration Camp. By the end of the 1930s, only the Munich groups of the Internationaler Sozialistischer Kampfbund (International Socialist Fighting League) and the Socialist Workers’ Party of Germany (SAPD) continued to work underground, the Revolutionary Socialists even until 1942.
