Ignaz Auer (19 April 1846 – 10 April 1907) was a Bavarian

Social Democratic Social democracy is a political, social, and economic philosophy within socialism that supports political and economic democracy. As a policy regime, it is described by academics as advocating economic and social interventions to promote soci ...

politician who served as a member of the

German Reichstag The Reichstag (, ; officially: – ; en, Parliament) is a historic government building in Berlin which houses the Bundestag, the lower house of Germany's parliament. It was constructed to house the Imperial Diet (german: Reichstag) of the ...

for the Glauchau-Meerane Reichstag constituency intermittently between 1884 and 1906. He was born in Dommelstadl in 1846, the son of a butcher, and joined the Social Democratic Workers' Party in 1866. In 1872, he moved to

Berlin Berlin ( , ) is the capital and largest city of Germany by both area and population. Its 3.7 million inhabitants make it the European Union's most populous city, according to population within city limits. One of Germany's sixteen constitue ...

as a saddler, where he met and became friends with

Eduard Bernstein Eduard Bernstein (; 6 January 1850 – 18 December 1932) was a German social democratic Marxist theorist and politician. A member of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD), Bernstein had held close association to Karl Marx and Friedric ...

, later an influential Marxist theoretician. He was an active participant in the unity congress of 1875 at

Gotha Gotha () is the fifth-largest city in Thuringia, Germany, west of Erfurt and east of Eisenach with a population of 44,000. The city is the capital of the district of Gotha and was also a residence of the Ernestine Wettins from 1640 until the ...

, which founded the

Social Democratic Party of Germany The Social Democratic Party of Germany (german: Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands, ; SPD, ) is a centre-left social democratic political party in Germany. It is one of the major parties of contemporary Germany. Saskia Esken has been the ...

, (SPD) and later became Party Secretary of the SPD. Though on the right of the party, Auer was a pragmatist and viewed attempts to formulate social democratic

reformism Reformism is a political doctrine advocating the reform of an existing system or institution instead of its abolition and replacement. Within the socialist movement, reformism is the view that gradual changes through existing institutions can eve ...

theoretically as harmful to its real political practice. He remarked to Bernstein during the controversy over the latter's theory of revisionism, "What you call for, my dear Ede, is something which one neither admits openly nor puts to a formal vote; one simply gets on with it." Auer died in Berlin on 10 April 1907.

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* * * * * 1846 births 1907 deaths Social Democratic Party of Germany politicians Members of the 6th Reichstag of the German Empire Members of the 8th Reichstag of the German Empire Members of the 9th Reichstag of the German Empire Members of the 10th Reichstag of the German Empire Members of the 11th Reichstag of the German Empire Members of the 12th Reichstag of the German Empire German trade unionists People from Passau (district) People from the Kingdom of Bavaria {{Germany-SPD-politician-stub