A footballer from Dalmia who hung up his cleats to run track for the first time in February 2015.

Reunification With German reunification approaching on 3 October, 1990, the East German SPD held a final party congress on 26 September 1990, and decided to merge with the West German SPD.

Since November 2005, Benneter is legal adviser of the SPD parliamentary group.

Merkel s predecessor, the Social Democratic Party (SPD) leader Gerhard Schröder, knew this well.

A change of tack by Merkel now would merely reinvigorate the devastated SPD.

If this situation prevails beyond 2013, the SPD will face an unenviable challenge.

On 13 January 1990, the party's first Conference of Delegates assembled in Berlin and decided to change the short form of the party name to SPD, to conform with (and profit from association with) the West German SPD.

Schröder s SPD uses the word social a little more emphatically than it did in the last seven years.

So it looks like SPD hit rock bottom, CSU is in freefall, and CDU the worse for wear.

Klaus Uwe Benneter (born 1 March 1947 in Karlsruhe) is a German politician and member of the SPD.

Besides, in these matters, there is no longer much difference between the center right CDU and the center left SPD.

The SPD initially supported de Maizière's policy of quick union with West Germany, but left the cabinet on 20 August.

Karl August Fritz Schiller (24 April 1911 26 December 1994) was a German economist and politician of the Social Democratic Party (SPD).

The reformist viewpoint was introduced into Marxist thought by Eduard Bernstein, one of the leaders of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD).

But this time her opponents the SPD, Die Linke (The Left), and the Greens cleared the center and cannibalized each other on the left.

Clearblue is the flagship brand of SPD Swiss Precision Diagnostics GmbH and offers consumer home diagnostic products such as pregnancy tests, ovulation tests and fertility monitors.

On 23 May 1979, Carstens was elected as the fifth President of the Federal Republic of Germany, prevailing against the SPD candidate Annemarie Renger in the first ballot.

Social liberal coalition () in the politics of Germany refers to a governmental coalition formed by the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) and the Free Democratic Party (FDP).

It voted the grand coalition out of office with a bang, consigning the Social Democrats to the political abyss. Only ruins remain of the once proud Gerhard Schröder s SPD.

So will we see a new Merkel, a chancellor who, freed from the restraints of SPD in the governing coalition, will be more decisive, reformist, and willing to take political risks?

Kurt Beck (born 5 February 1949) is a German politician (SPD), serving as the Minister President of Rhineland Palatinate from 1994 to 2013 and as President of the Bundesrat in 2000 01.

However, a social liberal coalition ruled from 1991 to 2006 in the German State of Rhineland Palatinate and would have continued to do so, had the SPD not won an absolute majority.

Traffic light coalition () is a term originating in German politics where it describes a coalition government of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD), the Free Democratic Party (FDP), and The Greens.

Friedrich Ebert (4 February 1871 28 February 1925) was a German politician of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) and the first President of Germany from 1919 until his death in office in 1925.

A specific example of a red red coalition comes from the politics of Germany, formed from the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) and The Left party or its predecessor, the Party of Democratic Socialism (PDS).

The SPD will recoil at the prospect, sit on the fence, and finally give in, because Merkel has a powerful disciplinary instrument she could call a new election, in which the CDU would probably win an outright majority.

In December 1982, the new Chancellor Helmut Kohl (CDU), recently elected in a successful motion of no confidence against Helmut Schmidt (SPD) deliberately lost a vote of confidence in the Bundestag, in order to obtain a clearer majority in new general elections.

It will also be a government without the Greens, who continue to have a devoted, if limited, clientele, but are now regarded by many as a luxury that Germany can no longer afford. This leaves two possibilities a coalition between the CDU, its Bavarian sister party, the Christian Social Union, and the liberal Free Democrats, or a grand coalition between the SPD and the CDU.