Politics of accommodation

This study addresses itself to the relations between the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) and the Catholic Church during the period between the refounding of the SPD in 1945, and the Godesberg Program of 1959, which marked the party's official abandonment of Marxist ideology. This fundamental shift in the SPD's policy towards the Catholic Church is seen to have emerged out of the personal contacts between certain leaders within the party and leading Social Catholics and Left Catholic publicists.