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This article is part of the series Politics of Germany |
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The President of Germany (German: Bundespräsident) is the head of state of Germany. The office today is largely ceremonial, and to prevent the problems that occurred with the Weimar Republic, the Basic Law carefully limits the President's power.
In international relations, the president's duties include signing treaties, representing Germany abroad, and receiving foreign dignitaries. In the domestic sphere, the president has largely ceremonial functions. Although this official signs legislation into law, grants pardons, and appoints federal judges, federal civil servants, and military officers, each of these requires the countersignature of the chancellor or the relevant cabinet minister. The president formally proposes to the Bundestag a chancellor candidate and formally appoints the chancellor's cabinet members, but the president follows the choice of the Bundestag in the first case and of the chancellor in the second. If the government loses a simple motion of confidence in the Bundestag, the president dissolves the Bundestag, but here, too, the Basic Law (Grundgesetz) limits the president's ability to act independently. In the event of a national crisis, the emergency law reforms of 1968 designate the president as a mediator who can declare a "legislative state of emergency", which is not quite as sweeping in its effects as a true state of emergency; it only allows a minority government to continue in office for a limited amount of time, but does not suspend basic human rights.
There is disagreement about whether the president, in fact, has greater powers than the above description would suggest. Some argue that nothing in the Basic Law suggests that a president must follow government directives. For instance, the president could refuse to sign legislation, thus vetoing it, or refuse to approve certain cabinet appointments. As of now, no president has ever taken such action, and thus the constitutionality of these points had never been tested. In the few cases that a bill was not signed all presidents claimed that the bill in question was clearly unconstitutional. However, in some cases, the president signed a law whilst asking that the political parties should refer the case to the Federal Constitutional Court which should check whether the law agrees with the German constitution. The most recent case of this was the highly debated "passing" of a new immigration law in the Bundesrat in 2003, which was declared null and void by the Court as a consequence; not because of its content, but because the manner of its "passing" was found to have been no passing at all.
The president is selected by secret ballot at a Federal Assembly ( Bundesversammlung) that includes all Bundestag members and an equal number of delegates chosen by the Land legislatures. This assemblage, which totals more than 1,000 people, is convened every five years -- in all years with year numbers ending in "4" or "9" -- on May 23rd, the date of the foundation of the Bundesrepublik in 1949. It may select a president for a second, but not a third, five-year term. The authors of the Basic Law preferred this indirect form of presidential election because they believed it would produce a head of state who was widely acceptable and insulated from popular pressure, while at the same time not giving the President the popular legitimacy which could be used to attack other institutions. Candidates for the presidency must be at least forty years old.
The Basic Law did not create an office of vice president. If the president is outside the country or if the position is vacant, the current president of the Bundesrat fills in as the temporary head of state (this position is rotated among the state governors on a yearly basis). If the president dies in office, a successor is elected within thirty days. This has never happened as of yet. As with many other provisions of the Basic Law, this provision was drafted in response to a weakness in the Weimar Constitution in which the Chancellor would act as President in his absence. This allowed Adolf HitlerAdolf Hitler ( April 20, 1889 April 30, 1945) was the Fuhrer (leader) of the National Socialist German Workers' Party and of Nazi Germany from 1933 to 1945. In that capacity he was Chancellor of Germany, head of government, and head of state, ruling as a to combine the two offices and make himself dictatorThe term dictator in the modern sense, is a vaguely-defined, connotatively negative word used to describe a totalitarian or authoritarian, or merely autocratic ruler of a country, and the leader of a dictatorship. The term is frequently associated with br.
Usually chosen as candidate by the party(s) that command a majority of votes in the Bundesversammlung, the president nonetheless is expected to be nonpartisan after assuming office. All presidents as of now have let their party membership rest dormant during their term of office. Although the formal powers of the president are limited, the president's role can be quite significant depending on his or her own activities. The very fact that the president usually doesn't interfere with day-to-day politics means that if he does choose to make a statement, it is perceived as a something to take note of. There have been a number of occasions when certain presidential speeches have dominated the German political debate for a year or more.
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