A commander-in-chief or supreme commander is the person who exercises supreme command and control over an armed force or a military branch. As a technical term, it refers to military competencies that reside in a country's executive leadership, a head of state, head of government, or other designated government official.
The Bundeswehr is the armed forces of the Federal Republic of Germany. The Bundeswehr is divided into a military part and a civil part, the military part consisting of the German Army, the German Navy, the German Air Force, the Joint Support Service, the Joint Medical Service, and the Cyber and Information Domain Service.
Oberstleutnant is a senior field officer rank in several German-speaking and Scandinavian countries, equivalent to lieutenant colonel. It is currently used by both the ground and air forces of Austria, Germany, Switzerland, Denmark, and Norway. The Swedish rank överstelöjtnant is a direct translation, as is the Finnish rank everstiluutnantti.
Generalfeldmarschall was a rank in the armies of several German states and the Holy Roman Empire (Reichsgeneralfeldmarschall); in the Habsburg monarchy, the Austrian Empire and Austria-Hungary, the rank Feldmarschall was used. The rank was the equivalent to Großadmiral in the Kaiserliche Marine and Kriegsmarine, a five-star rank, comparable to OF-10 in today's NATO naval forces.
An eingetragener Verein, abbreviated e.V., is a legal status for a registered voluntary association in Germany. While any group may be called a Verein, registration as eingetragener Verein confers many legal benefits, because it confers the status of a juridical person rather than just a group of individuals. The legal status must be mentioned in the name as well. Like certain other corporate bodies, an eingetragener Verein can apply for the status of a charitable organization.
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 as a metonym to denote the entire Ministry.
Ursula Gertrud von der Leyen is a German politician, serving as the 13th president of the European Commission since 2019. She served in the German federal government between 2005 and 2019, holding positions in Angela Merkel's cabinet, most recently as federal minister of defence. She is a member of the centre-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and its affiliated European political party, the European People's Party (EPP). On 7 March 2024, the EPP elected her as its Spitzenkandidat to lead the campaign for the 2024 European parliament elections. She was re-elected to head the Commission in July 2024.
The Military Counterintelligence Service is one of the three federal intelligence agencies in Germany, and is responsible for military counterintelligence within Bundeswehr. The MAD is subordinate to the Federal Ministry of Defense.
The Inspector General of the Bundeswehr, is the highest-ranking military position held by a commissioned officer on active duty in the Bundeswehr, the present-day armed forces of Germany.
Volker Wieker is the former Chief of Staff of the Bundeswehr, the German armed forces, and a general of the German Army. Trained as an artillery officer, Wieker served in every major foreign Bundeswehr deployment since 1996, including Bosnia, Kosovo and Afghanistan.
The state of defence is the constitutional state of emergency in Germany if the country is "under attack by armed force or imminently threatened with such an attack". Established by a constitutional amendment in 1968 during the Cold War, this state of emergency gives the Federal Government extraordinary powers in wartime. It is laid down in Title Xa of the German Constitution. As of present, Germany has never been in the state of defence.
The Inspector of the Army is the title held by the commander and highest ranking officer of the German Army of the modern-day German Armed Forces or Bundeswehr. The Inspector is the most senior officer to serve in the German Army and is a military adviser to the Government of Germany as well as the Ministry of Defence.
The Federal Office of Bundeswehr Equipment, Information Technology and In-Service Support is a German government agency for equipping the German armed forces (Bundeswehr) with modern weapon systems considering cost efficiency aspects. In doing so, it is responsible for developing, assessing and procuring weapon systems.It was founded in 2012 by merging the Bundesamt für Wehrtechnik und Beschaffung (BWB) and Bundesamt für Informationsmanagement und Informationstechnik (IT-AmtBw) with the goal of producing synergies. The Bundeswehr Technical and Airworthiness Center for Aircraft is a branch of the agency.
The German Flood Service Medal 2013 is a military and civil award of Germany. Established 2 July 2013 by joint decree of the Federal Minister of the Interior Hans-Peter Friedrich and Federal Minister of Defence Thomas de Maizière, the medal is awarded for approved service during the 2013 European floods. It was approved by the President of Germany on 23 October 2013.
The Prostitution Act is a federal law in Germany that regulates the legal status of prostitution as a service in order to improve the legal and social situation of prostitutes. The law was promulgated on 20 December 2001 and has been enforced since 1 January 2002. At the same time the Strafgesetzbuch §180a and §181a (pimping) were amended to allow for employment of prostitutes, as long as they were not exploited.
Christine Lambrecht is a German senior politician of the Social Democratic Party (SPD) who served as the German Federal Minister of Defence in the government of Chancellor Olaf Scholz, from 2021 to 2023. In Chancellor Angela Merkel's administration, Lambrecht previously served as Minister of Justice and Consumer Protection (2019–2021), Minister for Family Affairs (2021) and as one of two Parliamentary State Secretaries at the Federal Ministry of Finance. She previously held various roles within the SPD Parliamentary Group, including as a Deputy Leader and from December 2013 to September 2017 as first parliamentary secretary of the SPD parliamentary group.
The Haenel MK 556 is a gas-operated selective-fire 5.56×45mm NATO assault rifle designed by German company C.G. Haenel. The MK556 was finalised in September 2020, and it is a fully automatic version of an earlier Haenel design, the CR 223, which was already in limited use by law enforcement agencies since 2017. On 14 September 2020, the Haenel MK 556 was selected by the German Armed Forces (Bundeswehr) as a replacement for the G36, making it the first service rifle used by the Bundeswehr produced by a company other than Heckler & Koch, who had submitted their own designs.
Nancy Faeser is a German lawyer and politician of the Social Democratic Party (SPD), serving as Federal Minister of the Interior and Community in Chancellor Olaf Scholz's cabinet since 2021. She served as a member of the State Parliament of Hesse from the 2003 elections until 2021. In 2019, she became the party's leader in Hesse, as well as the leader of the Opposition in the Landtag of Hesse.
Boris Pistorius is a German lawyer and politician of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) who has been serving as the Federal Minister of Defence in the cabinet of Chancellor Olaf Scholz since 19 January 2023.
The Scholz cabinet is the current cabinet of Germany, led by Federal Chancellor Olaf Scholz. The cabinet is composed of Scholz's Social Democratic Party, Alliance 90/The Greens and the Free Democratic Party, an arrangement known as a "traffic light coalition" in Germany after the parties' traditional colours, respectively red, green and yellow, matching the colours of a traffic light (Ampel). This traffic light coalition-government is the first of its kind at the federal level in the history of the German federal republic.
