BERLIN: Germany’s Social Democrats will pick through the wreckage of their worst election result since Second World War what promises to be a turbulent party congress in Dresden yesterday.

Knocked out of government after 11 years in power, the SPD will formally elect a new leader and party executive today. The party congress runs to Sunday. The current leadership stepped down in the wake of the September drubbing in the polls.

The SPD were relegated to the opposition benches after winning just 23 percent of the vote in September, a fall of 11 points from the 2005 election. That was some 18 points below the 41 percent they won when taking the chancellery in 1998.

“We’ve got a lot to talk about but we want to throw the discussion forward and not get bogged down in a backward-looking discussion,” said Hannelore Kraft, candidate for one of the four deputy chair seats and SPD leader in North Rhine-Westphalia.

“At 23 percent everyone knows this is the moment of truth for us—and it would be wrong to claim we’ve done everything right,” Kraft told Deutschlandfunk radio. The SPD has been largely controlled by its conservative wing over the last decade. But the left wing found its voice again after the September defeat. Heated discussions are expected in Dresden on many issues and time limits on debates have been scrapped.

Sigmar Gabriel, 50, is running without opposition for the party’s chair. Franz Muentefering, 69, is vacating the post he once called “the best job in the world after the Pope”. As an indication of the SPD’s turmoil, its chair has changed hands seven times in the last 10 years. SPD left-winger Andrea Nahles, 39, is also running unopposed for general secretary. The two have had an icy relationship. The level of support in the vote of 480 delegates will be a closely watched indication of the party’s state of mind.

Ex-Vice Chancellor Frank-Walter Steinmeier, 53, who was the SPD’s chancellor candidate and Foreign Minister for the last four years in Chancellor Angela Merkel’s grand coalition, has already been elected as the SPD’s parliamentary group leader.

The SPD, which while in government approved gradually raising the pension age to 67 over the next two decades, is expected to have a lively debate over that—and may reverse its position.