The SPD is not re-using its much-criticized election campaign video, which refers to earlier religious positions of a confidante of Union Chancellor candidate Armin Laschet (CDU).
"The campaign manager told me that the spot was not being used," said SPD chancellor candidate Olaf Scholz of the "Neue Osnabrücker Zeitung".
He countered allegations that the commercial misused religious beliefs for the election campaign.
The reading is incorrect, "the SPD always advocates an open and tolerant society," said Scholz.
When asked why his party warned against a Christian because of his faith, he replied: “Nobody does that.
Our country and I too are shaped by the Christian faith. "
"It was never planned that way"
An SPD spokeswoman assured that the video was only shown once at the start of the campaign.
Another use was not planned: "It was never planned that way," she told the dpa news agency on Tuesday.
In the film, which was also criticized from SPD ranks, several CDU politicians appear from a matryoshka doll. "Whoever votes for Armin Laschet and the CDU, votes ..." said one voice. There is also a doll with the likeness of the Düsseldorf State Chancellery and Laschet confidante Nathanael Liminski. Here the sentence is supplemented with "... arch-Catholic Laschet confidants, for whom sex before marriage is a taboo". This alludes to a statement made by the Catholic in 2007, which he - at that time still a student - had justified as a "personal decision" on the ARD program "Maischberger". The CDU had asked the SPD to renounce the election campaign spot.