Social Democratic Party of Austria

Since its foundation in 1889, the SDAPÖ has been one of the main political forces in Austria. At the start of the First World War, it was the strongest party in parliament. At the ending of that war in 1918, the party leader Karl Renner became Chancellor of the First Republic. The SDAPÖ lost power in 1920, but it retained a strong base of support in the capital Vienna. A period of rising political violence culminated in the banning of the SDAPÖ under the Austrofascist dictatorship (1934–1938).

In the aftermath of the collapse of Austria-Hungary in 1918, the SDAPÖ broadly supported the Anschluss (the union with German Republic). When Anschluss took place in 1938 at the hands of Adolf Hitler's Nazi Germany, he brought Austria into the Second World War. In 1945, the party was reconstituted as the Socialist Party of Austria (German: Sozialistische Partei Österreichs, SPÖ) and was led by Adolf Schärf. The SPÖ entered the government of the Second Republic as part of a grand coalition with the Austrian People's Party (ÖVP) until 1966 and with the Communist Party of Austria until 1949. Renner became the first President of Austria.

From 1971 to 1983, the SPÖ under Bruno Kreisky was the sole governing party. For the following three years, it ruled in coalition with the Freedom Party of Austria (FPÖ), then up to 2000 it was again part of a grand coalition with the ÖVP, with Franz Vranitzky as Chancellor until 1997. In 1991, it reverted to including Democratic in its name, becoming the Social Democratic Party of Austria (German: Sozialdemokratische Partei Österreichs). During this period, the grand coalition combined with the Proporz system, whereby important posts throughout the government were shared out between members of the two main parties, evoked rising discontent. This was a factor in the growing popularity of the FPÖ which came second to the SPÖ in the 1999 Austrian legislative election. The following year, the FPÖ and ÖVP formed a right-wing coalition, displacing the SPÖ from a share in government. While this coalition was still in power, the SPÖ's Heinz Fischer was elected president in the 2004 Austrian presidential election. Following the 2006 Austrian legislative election, another grand coalition was formed between the SPÖ and the ÖVP, lasting until 2017, when the SPÖ went back to the opposition. In the 2019 Austrian legislative election, the SPÖ lost 12 seats and shrunk to 21.2%.

Concerning the role of the SDAPÖ during Nazi rule from 1938 to 1945, the party started opening its archives and set in a commission to investigate its past conduct. Despite the fact the SDAPÖ had been outlawed and many party members imprisoned under Austrofascism, many SDAPÖ members initially welcomed the Anschluss of Austria into Germany back then and some became members of the Nazi Party. Alfred Gusenbauer issued a declaration promising and supporting a full and open investigation ("Klarheit in der Vergangenheit – Basis für die Zukunft"). In 2005, the report about the so-called "brown spots" (German: braune Flecken) was completed and published. The report talks about SDAPÖ members and leaders who became members of the Nazi Party during German rule after the Anschluss. One example given in the report is the case of Heinrich Gross, who received many honours from the party and even the government in the post-war period. This was despite the fact that he worked as a Nazi doctor in the euthanasia ward Am Spiegelgrund in Vienna, where human experiments on children were performed. Those children with presumptive mental defects were eventually killed, often by lethal injection. Gross was probably himself involved in the experimentations and killings. The Austrian judicial system protected him for a very long time from any kind of prosecution, something that was very typical in the post-war period. He enjoyed wide support from the SPÖ and party leaders for a very long time.

Reflecting the change in attitude towards the past, President Heinz Fischer in a 10 April 2006 interview with the liberal newspaper Der Standard strongly criticised Austria's view on its historical role during Nazi rule. He called the traditional view that Austria was the first victim of Nazi aggression as false. The Moscow Declaration of 1943 by émigrés which called for the independence of Austria from Nazi Germany was a problem since it stated that the war was neither started nor wanted by any Austrian ("Und das ist nicht richtig"), that Austrian Jewish victims were not mentioned in the declaration ("kein Wort für die jüdischen Opfer"), that it took decades for them to receive any kind of compensation and justice from the government and that it was regrettable and inexcusable. His statements were direct criticism of the right-wing government of the coalition ÖVP–FPÖ which rejected compensation to victims and the admission of the co-guilt Austrians carried for crimes committed by them during the Second World War.

The chart below shows a timeline of the social-democratic chairpersons and the Chancellors of Austria since 1945. The left bar shows all the chairpersons (Bundesparteivorsitzende, abbreviated as CP) of the SPÖ, and the right bar shows the corresponding make-up of the Austrian government at that time. The red (SPÖ) and black (ÖVP) colours correspond to which party led the federal government (Bundesregierung, abbreviated as Govern.). The last names of the respective chancellors are shown, with the Roman numeral standing for the cabinets.

• Josef Broukal, journalist and Member of Parliament
• Josef Cap, head of the parliamentary club (Klubobmann)
• Johanna Dohnal, the first minister for women's affairs during the government of Bruno Kreisky
• Christoph Matznetter, budget and financial matters spokesman in the National Council
• Barbara Prammer, first female National Council President of Austria

Some groups within the SPÖ such as Der Funke (The Spark) are Marxist and proponents of a radical strain of democratic socialism. SJ Austria, a youth organisation maintaining close relations with the party, is generally perceived of as being more towards the left-wing than the SPÖ itself.

• Austro-Marxism
• Proletář
• Socialist Students of Austria

• Gordon Brook-Shepherd. The Austrians. HarperCollins Publishers Ltd. London, 1995. ISBN 3-552-04876-6.
• Caspar Einem, Wolfgang Neugebauer, Andreas Schwarz. Der Wille zum aufrechten Gang. Czernin Verlag, Vienna, 2005. ISBN 3-7076-0196-X (discussion on book is available online on hagalil.com).
• Maria Mesner (Ed.). Entnazifizierung zwischen politischem Anspruch, Parteienkonkurrenz und Kaltem Krieg: Das Beispiel der SPÖ. Oldenbourg Verlag, Vienna, 2005. ISBN 3-486-57815-4.
• Bruno Kreisky, Matthew Paul Berg (Translator), Jill Lewis (Ed.).The Struggle for a Democratic Austria: Bruno Kreisky on Peace and Social Justice. Berghahn Books, New York, 2000. ISBN 1-57181-155-9.
• Barbara Kaindl-Widhalm. Demokraten wider Willen? Autoritäre Tendenzen und Antisemitismus in der 2. Republik. Verlag für Gesellschaftskritik, Vienna, 1990.
• Norbert Leser: Zwischen Reformismus und Bolschewismus. Der Austromarxismus in Theorie und Praxis, 1968.
• Wolfgang Neugebauer. Widerstand und Opposition, in: NS-Herrschaft in Österreich. öbv und hpt, Vienna, 2000. ISBN 3-209-03179-7.
• Peter Pelinka. Eine kurze Geschichte der SPÖ. Ereignisse, Persönlichkeiten, Jahreszahlen. Ueberreuter, Vienna, 2005. ISBN 3-8000-7113-4.

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Social Democratic Party of Austria.

• Official website (in German)
• The Social Democratic Party of Austria
• Austrian Social Democratic Party (in German)
• Encyclopedia of the Viennese SPÖ (in German)
• Linzer Programm (3 November 1926) (in German)
• Otto Bauer – Austromarxism (in German)