Chancellor of Germany
The chancellor of Germany, officially the federal chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany, is the head of the federal government of Germany. The chancellor is the chief executive of the Federal Cabinet and heads the executive branch. The chancellor is elected by the Bundestag on the proposal of the federal president and without debate. During a state of defence declared by the Bundestag the chancellor also assumes the position of commander-in-chief of the Bundeswehr.
Ten people have served as chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany, the first being Konrad Adenauer from 1949 to 1963. The current officeholder is Friedrich Merz of the Christian Democratic Union, sworn in on 6 May 2025.
History of the office (pre-1949)
The office of chancellor has a long history, stemming back to the Holy Roman Empire. The title of chancellor was given to the head of the clerics at the Imperial chapel. The chapel's college acted as the emperor's chancery issuing deeds and capitularies. Eventually, the office of imperial archchancellor was given to the archbishops of Mainz.In 1559, Emperor Ferdinand I established the agency of an imperial chancellery at the Hofburg Palace in Vienna, headed by a vice chancellor under the nominal authority of the archbishop of Mainz. Upon the 1620 Battle of White Mountain, Emperor Ferdinand II created the office of court chancellor for the Archduchy of Austria. This office was in charge of the internal and foreign affairs of the Habsburg monarchy. From May 1753 to August 1792, the office of an Austrian state chancellor was held by Prince Kaunitz. The imperial chancellery lost its importance, and from the days of Queen Maria Theresa and Holy Roman emperor Joseph II, merely existed on paper.
After the 1806 dissolution of the Holy Roman Empire by Napoleon, Prince Klemens von Metternich served as state chancellor of the Austrian Empire. Likewise Prince Karl August von Hardenberg acted as chancellor of the Kingdom of Prussia. At the conclusion of the Napoleonic Wars, the Congress of Vienna established the German Confederation as a replacement for the Holy Roman Empire, but this organisation did not have a government or legislature, only the Bundestag that represented the member states.
The modern office of chancellor was established with the beginning of the North German Confederation in 1867, after the Prussian Army's decisive victory in the brief Austro-Prussian War of 1866 over the rival Austrian Empire. Unlike its predecessor the German Confederation, the North German Confederation did have an office of Bundeskanzler, which was given to the Minister-President of Prussia Otto von Bismarck. In 1871 the North German Confederation transformed into the German Empire, with the federal chancellor becoming Reichskanzler. The office of Reichskanzler continued during the Weimar Republic.
In Nazi Germany the office of Reichskanzler was never formally abolished, but instead combined with the office of Reichspräsident.
On August 1, the day before Reichspräsident Paul von Hindenburg's death, the Hitler cabinet passed a law merging the offices of Reich Chancellor and Reich President in the person of Hitler. This law came into force upon Hindenburg's death.
In May 1949, four years after the End of World War II in Europe, the Basic Law of the Federal Republic of Germany, aka West Germany, revived the office of Bundeskanzler.
The reunification of Germany continued the Basic Law of the Federal Republic for the reunited German state, including the office of chancellor.
The role of chancellor has varied during different eras. From 1867 to 1918, the chancellor was the only responsible minister at the federal level. He was appointed by the Bundespräsidium,. The state secretaries were civil servants subordinate to the chancellor and similar to ministers. Besides his executive duties, the constitution gave the chancellor only one function: presiding over the Bundesrat, the representative organ of the various German states. The chancellor was also nearly always Minister President of Prussia, which was the largest and dominant state in the Empire. Indirectly, this gave him the power of the Bundesrat, including to dissolve the parliament and call for elections.
Although effective government was possible only in cooperation with the Reichstag, the results of the elections had at most an indirect influence on the chancellorship. By October 1918 on the verge of disastrous defeat in the First World War, was the Empire's 1871 constitution changed and reformed, to require that the chancellor have the confidence of parliament.
On 9 November 1918, Chancellor Max von Baden declared the abdication of the emperor Wilhelm II without having been authorized to do so by Wilhelm.
Wilhelm had left Berlin on 29 October to travel to Spa, Belgium where the Oberste Heeresleitung resided.
On 10 November, one day after the republic in Germany had been proclamated, Wilhelm fled to the Netherlands
and asked for asylum.
At the end of November 1918, his wife emperess Auguste Victoria left Berlin and travelled to the Netherlands.
Following the defeat a new post-war democratic Republican government was set up by the popularly elected Weimar National Assembly, which met in Weimar, as were the subordinate ministers of various portfolios on the chancellor's recommendation. The chancellor or any minister had to be dismissed if Reichstag demanded it. As today, the chancellor had the prerogative to determine the policy direction of his government. In reality this power was limited by the needs of coalition governments of the several major political parties plus the powers of the Reich President. Cabinet decisions were taken by majority vote. Under the circumstances, much like his French counterpart, the Weimar-era chancellor was as much the chairman of the cabinet as he was its leader.
On 30 January 1933, Adolf Hitler of the Nazi Party, the biggest party in parliament, was appointed chancellor by President Paul von Hindenburg. Subsequently, the 1919 Weimar Constitution was de facto set aside. After Hindenburg's death on 2 August 1934, Hitler arrogated to himself the powers of the president. He chose the official title Führer und Reichskanzler.
The 1949 constitution gave the chancellor greater powers than during the Weimar Republic of the 1920s and early 1930s, while strongly diminishing the role of the president of Germany. Germany has often been referred to as a "chancellor democracy", reflecting the role of the chancellor as Germany's chief executive.
Since 1867, over 30 people have served as chancellor of the North German Confederation, the German Empire, the Weimar Republic, Nazi Germany, West Germany and the current Federal Republic of Germany.
In communist East Germany, the position of chancellor did not exist. The equivalent position of head of government was called either Minister President or Chairman of the Council of Ministers, which was the second most powerful position after General Secretary of the Socialist Unity Party of Germany.
North German Confederation (1867–1870) and German Empire
The North German Confederation was created on 1 July 1867. According to the constitution of this federal state, the king of Prussia served as Bundespräsidium and appointed a Bundeskanzler. This chancellor was the only member of the executive, the only responsible minister. Legislation was the task of two organs:- the Bundesrat, the federal council, as the representative organ of the German states that had joined the federal state;
- the Reichstag, the federal parliament, representing the voters.
After the south German states had joined the federal state in 1870/71, during the war against France, the North German Confederation transformed into the Deutsches Reich or German Empire. At this occasion, the term Bundeskanzler was recoined as Reichskanzler, and the king of Prussia was given the title of emperor additionally. The political system remained largely the same.
Otto von Bismarck was Prime Minister of Prussia, the largest state in the Confederation. He retained this office and used it to set up the new federal state; he was not interested in a fully developed federal executive with cabinet ministers acting independently. But Bismarck also had another reason to remain Prime Minister of Prussia.
According to the constitution, the chancellor was only a federal minister and presided over the Bundesrat. As chancellor, his powers were limited because he could not introduce bills, speak in parliament or dismiss parliament. As chairman of the Bundesrat, he had no voting rights.
It therefore made sense for Bismarck to hold both offices, at federal and state level:
- In Prussia, he was appointed Prussian foreign minister and Prussian minister president at the same time.
- As the most powerful politician in Prussia, he had a decisive influence on Prussian votes in the Bundesrat.
- Prussia had 17 votes in the Bundesrat. Although this was not the majority, it was the largest vote of any single state. The Prussian vote usually became the basis for a majority in the Bundesrat, as Prussia only needed a few of the other states to join its position.
In 1878, a new law ' installed the office of Staatssekretär. The chancellor was given the opportunity to formally install state secretaries to represent him and sign for him '. The chancellor, though, could overrule any of them any time. The office of State Secretary did not formally evolve into a cabinet minister. In practice, however, state secretaries acted in a similar way to ministers in other countries.
The constitution of the German Empire was reformed on 29 October 1918, when the parliament was given the right to dismiss the chancellor. The reform was obviously too little too late to prevent the outbreak of revolution on 3 November 1918.