Heidelberg program

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The Heidelberg program of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) was valid from 1925 to 1959. It replaced the Görlitz program from 1921. The successor was the Godesberg program of November 1959. As early as 1946, the Heidelberg program was weakened by the political principles of the SPD .

Unlike his short-lived predecessor, in which hardly any of Marxism or revolution was talk and instead, the People's Party character of the SPD to emphasize tried the Heidelberg program reaffirmed especially in his ideological position in large parts of the Erfurt Program right from the 1891st The overall problem of coalition policy also belonged to the historical context in which the Heidelberg program was adopted. After all, in the first years of the Weimar Republic the SPD had made many compromises in the coalition with bourgeois parties and thus lost much of the trust of its supporters.

In the Heidelberg program, which was adopted “against very few votes” at the party congress from September 13 to 18, 1925, the section “International Politics” is of particular historical importance. In the program, fundamental values ​​and objectives are precisely summarized, which have shaped the SPD's concepts for international politics from its beginnings to the present.

The peace policy principles of the Heidelberg program determined the attitude of the Social Democrats to international issues from the start. For their loyalty to these principles, they accepted defamation such as " patriotic journeymen " and political persecution.

The call for a “European solution” can be found for the first time in the Heidelberg program. The SPD entered the program for the realization of the United States of Europe with the formulation:

"She advocates the creation of a European economic unity, which has become imperative for economic reasons, for the formation of the United States of Europe in order to achieve the solidarity of interests of the peoples of all continents."

In order to honor the former Reich President Friedrich Ebert and to preserve his political legacy, the SPD executive committee had chosen Heidelberg , Ebert's birthplace, as the location of the party congress.

Rudolf Hilferding and Karl Kautsky were among the co-authors of the Heidelberg program . In the years before 1914, Hilferding had examined the tendency towards the unification of industrial, commercial and banking capital to form “finance capital”, which was already visible at the time, and the accompanying monopoly processes, which the term “ organized capitalism ” was later used to describe. Findings from these investigations are also reflected in the fundamental part of the Heidelberg program.

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