Social Democratic Party of Austria
오스트리아 사회민주당
An Austrian social-democratic party founded at Hainfeld in 1889 as the Social Democratic Workers’ Party (SDAP). It led “Red Vienna” in the First Republic but was banned in February 1934 and remained illegal under Austrofascism and Nazi rule. Re-founded in 1945 as the Socialist Party of Austria, it took its present name in 1991, and since 1945 has provided the chancellor in 16 of 32 federal governments.
In depth
The Austrian labour movement re-emerged after 1867 under the influence of German social democracy, through workers’ educational associations and the ideas of Ferdinand Lassalle. A plan for a united social-democratic party arose at a meeting in Neudörfl in 1874 but was held up by disputes between moderates and anarchists; after Victor Adler’s efforts the Social Democratic Workers’ Party (SDAP) was founded at the Hainfeld congress in Lower Austria from 30 December 1888 to 1 January 1889.
Adler set the party on a moderate course with the struggle for the franchise as its first goal. On 1 May 1890 it held a rally of over 100,000 people in Vienna’s Prater, and its 1899 Brünn programme called for reforming the Austrian half of the monarchy into a democratic federal state. With the introduction of universal male suffrage in 1907 it multiplied its seats and became the second-largest group in the Reichsrat behind the Christian Socials. National conflicts, however, led the Czechs to split off in 1912, followed by the other non-German nationalities. The party supported the war policy in the first years of the First World War; Friedrich Adler, of a small opposing group, shot Prime Minister Count Stürgkh on 21 October 1916.
In October 1918 the Provisional National Assembly elected Karl Renner state chancellor of German-Austria, and the party, the largest in the 1919 Constituent National Assembly, formed a grand coalition with the Christian Socials in 1918–1920 that introduced the eight-hour day, the Chambers of Labour and the works-council law. After the Christian Socials won in 1920, Otto Bauer led the party into opposition, where it remained until its ban in 1934. In Vienna, governing with a two-thirds majority under mayors Jakob Reumann and Karl Seitz, it built “Red Vienna”, known for its social housing. It created the paramilitary Republican Protection League in 1923–1924 and adopted the Linz programme in 1926. After the Dollfuss government began ruling by emergency decree in March 1933, an armed clash in Linz on 12 February 1934 led to the February uprising, and the party was banned the same day.
Bauer and Julius Deutsch fled to Brno and set up a foreign bureau supporting the Revolutionary Socialists, secretly founded at home as successor to the banned SDAP. Immediately after the Anschluss in 1938 Renner published a statement welcoming it.
In mid-April 1945 social democrats and Revolutionary Socialists founded the Socialist Party of Austria (SPÖ), with Adolf Schärf as provisional chairman, elected chairman in December 1945. In 1970 Bruno Kreisky formed a minority government, and the party won absolute majorities in 1971, 1975 and 1979. It adopted its present name in 1991 and, after the 2024 election, joined the Stocker government as junior partner, with Andreas Babler as vice-chancellor.