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The Parlamentarischer Rat (German for "Parliamentary Council") 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.
The Council was implemented by the minister-presidents of the eleven states of Germany within the three Western Allied occupation zones and inaugurated on 1 September 1948. [1] It included 70 state delegates selected by the Landtag parliaments specifically for this purpose (including five non-voting representatives of West Berlin), [2] many of them state ministers, government officials or legal academics. The deputies could rely on a draft document prepared by the constitutional Herrenchiemsee convention held in August.
The Council was officially opened by North Rhine-Westphalia minister-president Karl Arnold as host. [1] The second speaker was Hessian minister-president Christian Stock as current head of the Ministerial Conference of the Federal States. [3] The site of the opening ceremony was at the great hall of the Museum Koenig in Bonn, a preliminary decision in view of the "provisional" capital of a West German state, which the minister-presidents at a convention in Düsseldorf on 11 October 1948 decided to locate in Bonn (instead of Frankfurt). The assembly elected the Christian Democratic politician Konrad Adenauer, former mayor of Cologne, its president. The regular sessions of the Parliamentary Council were held at the nearby Pedagogical Academy building.
The delegates of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) already formed a united faction with their Christian Social (CSU) colleagues from Bavaria, as did the liberal Free Democratic Party (FDP) together with the Hessian Liberal-Democratic Party and the Democratic People's Party (DVP) from Württemberg-Baden and Württemberg-Hohenzollern. The 65 voting members included 27 Christian Democrats, 27 Social Democrats (SPD) led by Carlo Schmid, and five Liberals under Theodor Heuss. In addition, the Communist Party, the German Party and the Centre Party each sent two delegates. Four of the 65 delegates were women: Elisabeth Selbert (SPD), Friederike Nadig (SPD), Helene Weber (CDU) and Helene Wessel (Centre). [4] The SPD deputy Paul Löbe had served as President of the Reichstag parliament from 1925 until 1932, when he was succeeded by Hermann Göring.
The primary purpose of the Council was to prepare a new constitution for Germany, thereby drawing lessons from the failure of the Weimar Republic and the rise of Nazism, in order to re-establish a federal state based upon a stable democracy, welfare and the Rechtsstaat maxim. The draft declared human dignity inviolable, and to respect and protect it the duty of all state authority. These basic principles were explicitly declared irreversible by the so-called eternity clause. To distinguish it, for instance, from the newly established People's Republics behind the Iron Curtain, the draft laid stress on a parliamentary system and references related to notions separation of powers, all bound to the constitution. It included a charter of fundamental rights and the right of access to courts.
The Chancellor as head of government was authorized to draw up the guidelines of policies, while the powers of the President of Germany as head of state were limited. In consequence of the destructive motions in the former Reichstag, the draft implemented the constructive vote of no confidence, whereafter the Chancellor may only be removed from office by the Bundestag parliament if a prospective successor has the support of a majority. The concept of Streitbare Demokratie also included the implementation of the Federal Constitutional Court as an separate judicial body, in accordance with the theories of Hans Kelsen. Its preamble stated the obligation to achieve German unity and the draft also provided for the accession of "other parts of Germany", as it was applied to the joining of the former Saar Protectorate in 1957 and German reunification in 1990. The Western Allies insisted on the special status of Berlin, which is why the Bundestag MPs from West Berlin were not entitled to vote.
The Council adopted the new constitution on 8 May 1949, with 53 votes for and 12 votes against, [2] the Communist, German Party and Centre delegates voted against, as did six out of the eight CSU representatives. It also drafted the Election Law ("Wahlgesetz") for the first Bundestag election of 1949 (which was later on replaced by the "Bundeswahlgesetz"). The draft was approved by the three Western Supreme Commanders on May 12, as did the state assemblies—except for the Bavarian Landtag for an assumed insufficient realization of the federalism principle, knowing that the consent of two thirds of the state parliaments were enough for the enactment. The Basic Law was then formally signed and promulgated on May 23. The Parliamentary Council disassembled once it had finished its purpose, i.e. after the ratification and the enactment of the first Election Law in preparation of the 1949 federal election, which among others the Basic Law had left it as a remaining task.
The Bundestag is the German federal parliament and the lower of two federal chambers, opposed to the upper chamber, the Bundesrat. 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 or the United States House of Representatives. 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.
The president of Germany, officially titled the Federal President of the Federal Republic of Germany, is the head of state of Germany.
The Basic Law for the Federal Republic of Germany is the constitution of the Federal Republic 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.
Karl Carstens was a German politician. He served as the president of West Germany from 1979 to 1984.
The Federal Convention, also known as the Federal Assembly, is, together with the Joint Committee, one of two non-standing constitutional bodies in the federal institutional system of the Federal Republic of Germany. It is convened solely for the purpose of electing the President of Germany, either every five years or within 30 days of the premature termination of a presidential term. The Federal Convention consists of all members of the German federal parliament (Bundestag) and the same number of delegates from the 16 federated states. Those delegates are elected by the state parliaments for this purpose only.
Otto Ernst Heinrich Hermann Suhr was a German politician as a member of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD). He served as the Governing Mayor of Berlin from 1955 until his death.
Federal elections were held in West Germany on 14 August 1949 to elect the members of the first Bundestag, with a further eight seats elected in West Berlin between 1949 and January 1952 and another eleven between February 1952 and 1953. They were the first free federal elections in West Germany since 1933 and the first after the division of the country.
Paul Gustav Emil Löbe was a German politician of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD), a member and president of the Reichstag of the Weimar Republic, and member of the Bundestag of West Germany. He died in Bonn in 1967.
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).
Carlo Schmid was a German academic and politician of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD).
The president of the Bundestag presides over the sessions of the Bundestag, the federal parliament of Germany, with functions similar to that of a speaker in other countries. In the German order of precedence, the office is ranked second after the president and before the chancellor.
Michael F. Feldkamp is a German historian and journalist.
Annemarie Renger was a German politician for the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD).
The chancellor of Germany, officially the federal chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany, is the head of the federal government of Germany, and the commander-in-chief of the German Armed Forces during wartime. 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.
Helene Weber was a German politician and was known as a women's rights activist. In the Weimar Republic she rose to prominence in the Catholic Centre Party. In 1945 she was among the founders of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU). In 1948 she was a co-founder of the CDU Women's Task Force, a precursor of the party's Women's Union, which she chaired from 1951 to 1958. Weber is one of four women who, alongside 61 men, drafted Germany's constitution, the Basic Law, in 1948-49. After initial hesitation, she closed ranks with the women delegates of the Social Democratic Party to successfully fight for the inclusion of the sentence "Men and women shall have equal rights" in Article 3 of the Basic Law. She is often cited for her anti-war statement: "The entirely male-run state is the ruin of nations".
The Constitutional Convention at Herrenchiemsee was a meeting of constitutional experts nominated by the minister-presidents of the Western States of Germany, held in August 1948 at former Herrenchiemsee Abbey in Bavaria. It was part of the process of drafting and adopting the current German constitution, the Basic Law (Grundgesetz). The draft document prepared by the Herrenchiemsee convention served as a starting point for the deliberations of the Parlamentarischer Rat in Bonn during 1948 and 1949.
The German Party was a national-conservative and monarchist political party in West Germany active during the post-war years. The party's ideology appealed to sentiments of German nationalism and nostalgia for the German Empire.
Friederike Nadig was a German politician of the Social Democratic Party (SPD). One of the four women members of the Parlamentarischer Rat who drafted the Basic Law for the Federal Republic of Germany in 1948/49, she was one of the Mothers of the Basic Law.
A referendum was held on 9 December 1951 in the states of South Baden, Württemberg-Baden, and Württemberg-Hohenzollern. Voters were asked whether they favoured a merger of the three states into a single state or the re-establishment of the old states of Baden and Württemberg. 69.7% of voters favoured unification with a turnout of 59.2%.
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