The capital decision (German : Hauptstadtbeschluss) was the decision made by the German Bundestag on 20 June 1991, as a result of German reunification, to move its headquarters from Bonn to Berlin. The term is misleading, since Berlin had already become the federal capital of the Federal Republic of Germany in 1990 as one of the stipulations of the Unification Treaty. [1]
With the reunification of Germany, the newly reunified Berlin became Germany's capital once again, a status it had held from 1871 to 1945. However, the seat of government remained in Bonn, which had been the "provisional" capital of West Germany from 1949 to 1990. There was some sentiment in favour of keeping the seat of government in Bonn, which would have created a situation analogous to that of the Netherlands, where Amsterdam is the capital but The Hague is the seat of government. Not only were there concerns about Berlin's past connection to Nazi Germany, but Bonn was closer to Brussels, headquarters of the European Communities. Bonn was also located in Germany's wealthiest and most densely-populated region, while the former East German states surrounding Berlin were economically depressed and relatively sparsely populated.
The proposal "Completion of the Unity of Germany", with the content of establishing the future seat of government in Berlin, had been formulated and introduced by prominent members of parliament across party lines. These included members of the SPD (Willy Brandt, Hans-Jochen Vogel, Wolfgang Thierse), the FDP (Burkhard Hirsch, Hermann Otto Solms, Rainer Ortleb), the CDU/CSU (Günther Krause, Wolfgang Schäuble, Oscar Schneider) and Alliance 90 (Wolfgang Ullmann).
After more than ten hours of discussion, the Bundestag voted 338 to 320 to pass the bill "Vollendung der Einheit Deutschlands" (English: completion of the unification of Germany). Due to an initial error, the initial count stood at 337 to 320, but the number of yes votes was later determined to be 338. The vote broke largely along regional lines, with legislators from the south and west favouring Bonn and legislators from the north and east voting for Berlin. [2] [3] Of the 328 directly elected deputies, 169 voted for Bonn and 153 for Berlin. Of the deputies elected via the regional lists, 185 were for Berlin and 151 for Bonn. The vote also broke along generational lines; older legislators with memories of Berlin's past glory favoured Berlin, while younger legislators favoured Bonn. Ultimately, the votes of the eastern German legislators tipped the balance in favour of Berlin. [4]
Party | for Berlin | for Bonn | ||
---|---|---|---|---|
Votes | Percent | Votes | Percent | |
CDU | 146 | 54.1 | 124 | 45.9 |
CSU | 8 | 16.7 | 40 | 83.3 |
SPD | 110 | 46.6 | 126 | 53.4 |
FDP | 53 | 67.1 | 26 | 32.9 |
Bü90 | 4 | 66.7 | 2 | 33.3 |
PDS | 17 | 94.5 | 1 | 5.5 |
Independent | 0 | 0 | 1 | 100 |
Sum | 338 | 51.5 | 320 | 48.5 |
As a result of this decision, many subsequent motions were passed at different levels of government to ease the transition of the German capital to Berlin. To guarantee "fair division of labour" between the cities, it was decided to move the following government offices to Berlin, whilst retaining a secondary, smaller office in Bonn:
The following federal ministries were to remain in Bonn, each with a second office in Berlin:
The Berlin-Bonn Act was passed in 1994. Originally, the federal ministries' move to Berlin was planned for 1995, however this deadline was not adhered to. Instead a Cabinet decision was made that the move should be completed by 2000, on a budget of no more than 20 billion DM (10.2 billion EUR).
During this period other fundamental decisions were made, including:
Berlin officially adopted its full role as the home of the parliament and government of the Federal Republic of Germany in July 1999.
Bonn is a federal city in the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia, located on the banks of the Rhine. It has a population of over 300,000. About 24 km (15 mi) south-southeast of Cologne, Bonn is in the southernmost part of the Rhine-Ruhr region, Germany's largest metropolitan area and the second biggest metropolitan region by GDP in the European Union, with over 11 million inhabitants. It is a university city, was the birthplace of Ludwig van Beethoven and was the capital of West Germany from 1949 to 1990. Bonn was the seat of government of reunited Germany from 1990 to 1999.
The Bundestag is the German federal parliament. It is the only federal representative body that is directly elected by the German people, comparable to the House of Commons of the United Kingdom. The Bundestag was established by Title III of the Basic Law for the Federal Republic of Germany in 1949 as one of the legislative bodies of Germany and thus it is the historical successor to the earlier Reichstag.
German Unity Day is the National Day of Germany, celebrated on 3 October as a public holiday. It commemorates German reunification in 1990 when the German Democratic Republic joined the Federal Republic of Germany, so that for the first time since 1945 there existed a single German state. German Unity Day on 3 October has been the German National Holiday since 1990, when the reunification was formally completed.
West Germany is the colloquial English term used to describe the Federal Republic of Germany from its formation on 23 May 1949 until the reunification of Germany through the accession of East Germany on 3 October 1990. During the Cold War, the western portion of Germany and the associated territory of West Berlin were parts of the Western Bloc. West Germany was formed as a political entity during the Allied occupation of Germany after World War II, established from 12 states formed in the three Allied zones of occupation held by the United States, the United Kingdom, and France. The FRG's provisional capital was the city of Bonn, and the Cold War–era country is retrospectively designated as the Bonn Republic.
The capital of Germany is the city state of Berlin. It is the seat of the President of Germany, whose official residence is Schloss Bellevue. The Bundesrat is the representation of the Federal States (Bundesländer) of Germany and has its seat at the former Prussian Herrenhaus. Though most of the ministries are seated in Berlin, some of them, as well as some minor departments, are seated in Bonn, the former capital of West Germany. Although Berlin is officially the capital of the Federal Republic of Germany, 8,000 out of the 18,000 total officials employed at the federal bureaucracy still work in Bonn, about 600 km (370 mi) away from Berlin.
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.
Richard Karl Freiherr von Weizsäcker was a German politician (CDU), who served as President of Germany from 1984 to 1994. Born into the aristocratic Weizsäcker family, who were part of the German nobility, he took his first public offices in the Protestant Church in Germany.
Alliance 90 was a political alliance of three non-communist political groups in East Germany. It was formed in February 1990 by the New Forum, Democracy Now and the Initiative for Peace and Human Rights. It received 2.9% of the vote in the 1990 Volkskammer elections. For the first all-German federal election it formed a joint list with the East German Green Party. It was this coalition that merged with the West German Green Party in 1993 to form Alliance 90/The Greens.
Federal elections were held in West Germany on 6 March 1983 to elect the members of the 10th Bundestag. The CDU/CSU alliance led by Helmut Kohl remained the largest faction in parliament, with Kohl remaining Chancellor.
The Federal Ministry of Defence, abbreviated BMVg, is a top-level federal agency, headed by the Federal Minister of Defence as a member of the Cabinet of Germany. The ministry is headquartered at the Hardthöhe district in Bonn and has a second office in the Bendlerblock building in Berlin, which is occasionally used colloquially to denote the entire Ministry.
The Federal Minister of Intra-German Relations was a federal cabinet minister of the Federal Republic of Germany. The office was created under the title of Federal Minister of All-German Affairs in 1949, being also in charge of the German lands east of the Oder–Neisse line which had been put under Polish or Soviet administration. In 1951, the first Minister of All-German Affairs Jakob Kaiser openly raised claim to even greater territories including Austria, parts of Switzerland, the Saar area and Alsace-Lorraine.
Annemarie Renger was a German politician for the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD).
General elections were held in East Germany on 18 March 1990, and were the first and only free elections held in the state before German reunification. The Alliance for Germany, led by the new East German branch of the right-wing Christian Democratic Union (CDU), won 192 seats and emerged as the largest bloc in the 400-seat Volkskammer, having run on a platform of speedy reunification with West Germany. The East German branch of the Social Democratic Party (SPD), which had been dissolved in 1946 and refounded only six months before the elections, finished second with 88 seats despite being widely expected to win. The former Socialist Unity Party of Germany, restyled as the Party of Democratic Socialism (PDS), finished third with 66 seats the first free election in which it participated.
White Crosses is a memorial for those who died during the Cold War at the Berlin Wall. It is located at the shore of the river Spree in Berlin next to the Reichstag building, which houses the German parliament. Established by the private group Berliner Bürger-Verein on the 10th anniversary of the Berlin Wall in 1971 it was first located east of the Reichstag on a fence directly in front of the wall. After the German reunification in 1990 it kept its location until construction of the new government buildings next to the Reichstag was started at the end of that century – Berlin was chosen to be the new capital of Germany.
The history of Germany from 1990 to the present spans the period following the German reunification, when West Germany and East Germany were reunited after being divided during the Cold War. Germany after 1990 is referred to by historians as the Berlin Republic. This time period is also determined by the ongoing process of the "inner reunification" of the formerly divided country.
The Berlin/Bonn Act regulated the move of the Bundestag and parts of the government of Germany from Bonn to Berlin. It also regulated the move of certain Federal agencies and other German federal facilities to Bonn. The act was a consequence of the Hauptstadtbeschluss of 20 June 1991, which made Berlin the seat of government. Berlin had already been the capital of the united Germany since the Unification Treaty of 3 October 1990. The Berlin/Bonn Act was enacted on 26 April 1994. The act's full official title is Act for the implementation of the enactment of the German Bundestag of 20 June 1991 for the completion of the German unity.
Rolf Schwanitz is a German politician. From 1998 till 2005, he served under Federal Chancellor Schröder as a Minister of State in the Federal Chancellery. He was then, from 2005 till 2009, Parliamentary State Secretary in the Health ministry under Federal Chancellor Merkel.
Langer Eugen is an office tower in the Gronau district of Bonn, Germany. It was built between 1966 and 1969. Since 2006 it has housed several United Nations organizations. Until the German Bundestag (parliament) moved to Berlin in 1999, the building was the primary location for the offices of the members of the Bundestag. After renovations, eleven UN organizations moved into the building and it began serving as the center of the UN Campus, Bonn. Langer Eugen is protected as a landmark or listed building under the North Rhine-Westphalia Monument Protection Law. It is currently the second-tallest building in Bonn and the 43rd tallest building in Germany. When it was built it was briefly the second-tallest building in Germany, behind the Bayer-Hochhaus.
Dietmar Keller was an East German politician (SED/PDS) who served as Minister for Culture in the Modrow government. After reunification he sat as a member of the German parliament ("Bundestag") between 1990 and 1994.
Irmgard Schwaetzer is a German politician of the Free Democratic Party (FDP) and a Protestant church official. From 2013 to 2021, she chaired the Synod of the Protestant Church in Germany (EKD). She is the central founding figure, as well as honorary chairwoman, of the Liberal Women.