Gotha) his summer home. Ernest II made Freytag Hofrat (privy councillor) in 1854, when the Prussian government had issued a warrant for his arrest. In 1875, the German socialist party (SPD) was founded in Gotha through the merger of two organizations: the Social Democratic Workers' Party, led by August Bebel and Wilhelm Liebknecht, and the General German Workers' Association, founded by Ferdinand Lassalle. A compromise known as the Gotha Program was forged, although it was strongly criticized by Karl Marx for its reformist bias in his Critique of the Gotha Program. From 1876 to 1908, the novelist Kurd Lasswitz, sometimes referred to as "the father of German science fiction" worked as a teacher at Gotha's Ernestinum, the oldest Gymnasium in Thuringia. Industrialization started in Gotha around 1850, as the city was connected to the Thuringian Railway in 1847. The city became a centre of engineering with companies like the Gothaer Waggonfabrik, a tram and airplane manufacturer, founded in 1883. During the 19th century, Gotha also became a centre of banking and the insurance business in Germany. Ernst-Wilhelm Arnoldi founded the first fire insurance in 1820, followed by the first life insurance in 1827. The mutual insurance remains one of the largest insurance companies in Germany (it moved to Cologne after World War II). Gotha's tram network was established in 1894. The first crematory in Germany was built in Gotha in 1878. The Independent Social Democratic Party of Germany (USPD), a left-wing breakaway of the SPD was founded in Gotha in 1917 in opposition to the SPD's war policies during World War I. During the German Revolution, the Duke abdicated in 1918. A far-left government was elected in Gotha in 1919 and worked against both the Weimar National Assembly and the Kapp-Lüttwitz Putsch in 1920 bringing the city to the edge of a civil war. After a referendum, the state of Gotha joined the newly created Freistaat Thuringia in 1920. Under Nazi rule, Gotha became a centre of the arms industry with nearly 7,000 forced labourers working in the city's factories, where more than 200 died. The Gotha barracks in the southern periphery were enlarged and during the Kristallnacht in 1938 the synagogue was destroyed. Allied air raids in 1944/5 damaged some buildings in the city, in particular the state theatre (demolished by East German authorities in 1958) and the main station (which remains only "half-a-building" until today) and the main