August Bebel is sentenced in June 1877…

August Bebel is sentenced in June 1877 to nine months of imprisonment (later reduced to six) for insult to Bismarck.

Bebel had been among the group of Socialists following the death of Ferdinand Lassalle that had refused to follow new party leader Jean Baptista von Schweitzer at the Eisenach Conference of 1867, an action which had given rise to the name "Eisenachers" for this Marxist faction.

Together with Wilehelm Liebknecht, he had founded the Sächsische Volkspartei ("Saxon People's Party").

Bebel has also been President of the Union of German Workers' Associations from 1867 and a member of the First International.

He had been elected to the North German Reichstag as a member from Saxony in that same year.

In 1869, he had helped found the Social Democratic Workers' Party of Germany (SDAP), which had merged with another organization in 1875 to form the Socialist Workers' Party of Germany (SAPD).