Revolutionary respectability: The SPD and political affairs in the German empire

Between 1890 and 1903, attacking representatives of the German state and economy for their vulgar cruelty or their homosexuality moved the Social-Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) into the realm of defenders of traditional bourgeois respectability. Afterward, the party began to progressively abandon this strategy in favor of more issue-based lines of confrontation. Less than one year before the outbreak of World War I, the SPD was finally respectable and respected enough to bring together a coalition of parliamentarians from various parties (foreshadowing the Weimar Coalition of 1919) that openly challenged the head of government of the German Empire.