 On 7 October 1989, forty or fifty people, mostly from Berlin and the southern parts of the country, assembled at the vicarage of Schwante, a town near Berlin, and founded the Social Democratic Party in the GDR.The party chose the abbreviation SDP to avoid associations with the SPD that had merged into the SED, and also to brand itself as independent of the West German SPD.Stephan Hilsberg, a programmer, was elected as the first party spokesman, while Ibrahim Böhme became manager.