During the campaign leading up the to Bavarian state parliament [Landtag] elections on December 1, 1946, SED politicians Max Fechner and Walter Ulbricht traveled to Bavaria to take part in KPD events in Munich and Augsburg. At the time, the KPD in the Western Zone was focusing on the "unity of the working class" and demanding the creation of a unified party combining the KPD and the SPD along the lines of the SED. At the SPD campaign rally pictured here, SPD party chairman Kurt Schumacher once again rejected any and all KPD unification proposals. Schumacher was an ardent anti-Communist, not least because of his experiences during the Weimar Republic. At the Western SPD's Party Conference in May 1946, he had thus insisted on separating from the Eastern SPD, which, under the leadership of Otto Grotewohl, had already merged with the KPD.