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An indirect presidential election (officially the 2nd Federal Convention) was held in West Germany on 17 July 1954. The government parties and the opposition SPD renominated incumbent Theodor Heuss. Against his wishes, the Communist Party of Germany nominated Alfred Weber. Heuss was reelected on the first ballot with about 85% of the vote.
The President is elected by the Federal Convention consisting of all the members of the Bundestag and an equal number of delegates representing the states. These are divided proportionally by population to each state, and each state's delegation is divided among the political parties represented in its parliament so as to reflect the partisan proportions in the parliament.
| By Party | By State | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| Party | Members | State | Members |
| CDU/CSU | 431 | Bundestag | 509 |
| SPD | 347 | Baden-Württemberg | 68 |
| FDP | 112 | Bavaria | 91 |
| DP | 15 | Berlin | 22 |
| BP | 15 | Bremen | 6 |
| Z | 12 | Hamburg | 17 |
| KPD | 10 | Hesse | 44 |
| Hamburg-Block | 9 | Lower Saxony | 65 |
| SSW | 1 | North Rhine-Westphalia | 141 |
| DRP | 1 | Rhineland-Palatinate | 32 |
| Independents | 4 | Schleswig-Holstein | 23 |
| Total | 1018 | Total | 1018 |
Source: Eine Dokumentation aus Anlass der Wahl des Bundespräsidenten am 18. März 2012
| Candidate | Parties | Votes | % |
|---|---|---|---|
| Theodor Heuss | CDU/CSU, SPD, FDP, DP | 871 | 85.6 |
| Alfred Weber | KPD | 12 | 1.2 |
| Others1 | 6 | 0.6 | |
| Abstentions | 95 | 9.3 | |
| Invalid votes | 3 | 0.3 | |
| Not cast | 31 | 3.0 | |
| Total | 1,018 | 100 | |
| Source: Bundestag | |||
Note:1. In addition to the two formally nominated candidates President of the Reich Karl Dönitz, Prince Louis Ferdinand of Prussia, Marie Elisabeth Lüders, Prince Ernest Augustus of Hanover, Franz-Josef Wuermeling, and Chancellor Konrad Adenauer received one vote each.
The president of Germany, officially titled the Federal President of the Federal Republic of Germany, is the head of state of Germany.
The German Bundesrat is a legislative body that represents the sixteen Länder of Germany at the federal level. The Bundesrat meets at the former Prussian House of Lords in Berlin. Its second seat is located in the former West German capital of Bonn.
A constitutional convention is an informal and uncodified tradition that is followed by the institutions of a state. In some states, notably those Commonwealth of Nations states that follow the Westminster system and whose political systems derive from British constitutional law, most government functions are guided by constitutional convention rather than by a formal written constitution. In these states, actual distribution of power may be markedly different from those the formal constitutional documents describe. In particular, the formal constitution often confers wide discretionary powers on the head of state that, in practice, are used only on the advice of the head of government, and in some cases not at all.
Theodor Heuss was a German liberal politician who served as the first president of West Germany from 1949 to 1959. His cordial nature – something of a contrast to the stern character of chancellor Konrad Adenauer – largely contributed to the stabilization of democracy in West Germany during the Wirtschaftswunder years. Before beginning his career as a politician, Heuss had been a political journalist.
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The Parlamentarischer Rat was the West German constituent assembly in Bonn that drafted and adopted the constitution of West Germany, the Basic Law for the Federal Republic of Germany, promulgated on 23 May 1949.
Thomas Dehler was a German politician. He was the Federal Republic of Germany's first Minister of Justice (1949–1953) and chairman of Free Democratic Party (1954–1957).
Reinhold Maier was a German politician and the leader of the FDP from 1957–1960. From 1946 to 1952 he was Minister President of Württemberg-Baden and then the 1st Minister President of the new state of Baden-Württemberg until 1953.
The Landtag of North Rhine-Westphalia is the state parliament (Landtag) of the German federal state of North Rhine-Westphalia, which convenes in the state capital of Düsseldorf, in the eastern part of the district of Hafen. The parliament is the central legislative body in the political system of North Rhine-Westphalia. In addition to passing of laws, its most important tasks are the election of the Minister-President of the state and the administration of the government. The current government is a coalition of the CDU and the Greens, supporting the cabinet of Minister-President Hendrik Wüst since June 2022.
An indirect presidential election was held on 12 September 1949, following the first Bundestag election of 14 August 1949 and coalition talks/ negotiations between CDU/CSU, FDP and German Party (DP).
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An indirect presidential election was held in West Germany on 23 May 1989. The only candidate was incumbent President Richard von Weizsäcker, who had the support of all four major parties. It is so far the only time that a presidential candidate ran unopposed. It was also the last presidential election held before German reunification.
An indirect presidential election was held in West Germany on 23 May 1984. Though not term limited, incumbent Karl Carstens elected not to seek a second term. His Christian Democratic Union instead nominated Richard von Weizsäcker, the Governing Mayor of West Berlin. The Greens, who were represented at the Federal Convention for the first time, nominated author Luise Rinser. The SPD and FDP elected not to nominate candidates. Weizsäcker won the election with 80% of the vote on the first ballot.
An indirect presidential election was held in West Germany on 23 May 1979. Deeming his reelection to be unlikely, incumbent Walter Scheel elected not to seek a second term. The two candidates to replace him were the President of the Bundestag Karl Carstens, nominated by the Christian Democratic Union and Carstens' immediate predecessor Annemarie Renger, nominated by the Social Democratic Party. Carstens won the election on the first ballot.
An indirect presidential election was held in West Germany on 23 May 1974. Though not term limited, incumbent Gustav Heinemann chose not to seek a second term. The government parties nominated Vice-Chancellor Walter Scheel; the Christian Democratic Union nominated Richard von Weizsäcker. Scheel won the election by 32 votes on the first ballot. He served as president until 1979. Weizsäcker would later serve as president from 1984 to 1994.
An indirect presidential election was held in West Germany on 5 March 1969. The incumbent President, Heinrich Lübke had served two terms and was therefore ineligible for a third. The Christian Democratic Union nominated defense minister Gerhard Schröder. Schröder was a controversial choice, even within his own party, since he had been a member of the NSDAP and the SA under Hitler. Other potential candidates included Helmut Kohl and Richard von Weizsäcker, relatively unknown names at the time, who would go on to serve as Chancellor and President respectively. Justice Minister Gustav Heinemann was nominated by the Social Democratic Party and supported by the opposition Free Democratic Party. With neither candidate able to win an absolute majority, Heinemann won the election on the third ballot by only 6 votes.
An indirect presidential election was held in West Germany on 1 July 1964. President Heinrich Lübke was renominated by the Christian Democratic Union. The Free Democratic Party nominated justice minister Ewald Bucher. The Social Democratic Party was divided. The official party line was that they supported President Lübke's re-election. Some have speculated this was a first move towards the grand-coalition that brought Kurt Kiesinger to power two years later. However, the high number of abstentions seems to indicate that not all members of the SPD caucus agreed with this move, as does the fact that Ewald Bucher received at least 19 votes from outside his own party.
An indirect presidential election was held in West Germany on 1 July 1959. For the first time in the Federal Republic, the incumbent president, Theodor Heuss, was not eligible for reelection. In the buildup to the election, Chancellor Konrad Adenauer initially declared his candidacy, but then withdrew for political reasons. The Christian Democratic Union instead nominated Heinrich Lübke. The Social Democrats nominated Carlo Schmid who had been the party's caucus chair at the Parliamentary Council. The Free Democratic Party nominated the chair of its Bundestag caucus, Max Becker. Like the first contested presidential election ten years prior, it took two rounds to determine a winner. Heinrich Lübke fell two votes short of the absolute majority in the first round, winning the election with 526 votes in the second.
An indirect presidential election was held on 12 February 2017 to elect the 12th President of Germany. Incumbent President Joachim Gauck announced on 6 June 2016 that he would not stand for re-election, citing his advancing age.
