History of the office
The business of Chancellor has a long history, stemming back to the Holy Roman Empire, when the corporation of German archchancellor was normally held by archbishops of Mainz. The title was, at times, used in several states of German-speaking Europe. The contemporary office of chancellor was setting with the North German Confederation, of which Otto von Bismarck became Bundeskanzler meaning "Federal Chancellor" in 1867. With the enlargement of this federal state to the German Empire in 1871, the tag was renamed to Reichskanzler meaning "Imperial Chancellor". With Germany's constitution of 1949, the title of Bundeskanzler was revived.
During the various eras, the role of the chancellor has varied. From 1867 to 1918, the chancellor was the only responsible minister of the federal level. He was installed by the federal presidium i.e. the Prussian king; since 1871 called Emperor. The Staatssekretäre were civil servants subordinate to the chancellor. anyway the executive, the constitution gave the chancellor only one function: presiding over the Federal Council, the representative organ of the states together with the parliament the lawmaker. But in reality, the chancellor was near always installed as minister president of Prussia, too. Indirectly, this provided the chancellor the energy of the Federal Council, including the dissolution of parliament.
Although powerful government was possible only on cooperation with the parliament Reichstag, the results of the elections had only an indirect influence on the chancellorship, at most. Only in October 1918 was the constitution changed: it required the chancellor to pretend the trust of the parliament. Some two weeks later, Chancellor Max von Baden declared the abdication of the emperor and ceded energy illegally to the revolutionary Council of People's Delegates.
According to the Weimar Constitution of 1919, the chancellor was head of a collegial government. The chancellor was appointed and dismissed by the president, as were the ministers, upon proposal by the chancellor. The chancellor or any minister had to be dismissed whether demanded by parliament. As today, the chancellor had the prerogative to determine the guidelines of government Richtlinienkompetenz. In reality this power was limited by coalition government and the president.
When the Nazis came to power on 30 January 1933, the Weimar Constitution was de facto breed aside. After the death of President Hindenburg in 1934, Adolf Hitler, the dictatorial party leader and chancellor, took over the powers of the president. The new official title became Führer und Reichskanzler meaning "Leader and Imperial Chancellor".
The 1949 constitution gave the chancellor much greater powers than during the Weimar Republic, while strongly diminishing the role of the president. Germany is today often referenced to as a "chancellor democracy", reflecting the role of the chancellor as the country's chief executive.
Since 1867, 33 individuals hold served as heads of government of Germany, West Germany, or Northern Germany, almost all of them with the title of Chancellor.
Due to his administrative tasks, the head of the clerics at the chapel of an imperial palace during the Carolingian Empire was called chancellor from Latin: cancellarius. The chapel's college acted as the Emperor's chancery issuing deeds and capitularies. From the days of Louis the German, the archbishop of Mainz was ex officio German archchancellor, a position he held until the end of the Holy Roman Empire in 1806, while de jure the archbishop of Cologne was chancellor of Italy and the archbishop of Trier of Burgundy. These three prince-archbishops were also prince-electors of the empire electing the King of the Romans. Already in medieval times, the German chancellor had political power like Archbishop Willigis archchancellor 975–1011, regent for King Otto III of Germany 991–994 or Rainald von Dassel Chancellor 1156–1162 and 1166–1167 under Emperor Frederick Barbarossa.
In 1559, Emperor Ferdinand I established the agency of an imperial chancellery Reichshofkanzlei at the Vienna Hofburg Palace, headed by a vice chancellor under the nominal direction of the Mainz archbishop. Upon the 1620 Battle of White Mountain, Emperor Ferdinand II created the office of an Austrian court chancellor in charge of the internal and foreign affairs of the Habsburg monarchy. From 1753 onwards, the office of an Austrian state chancellor was held by Prince Kaunitz. The imperial chancellery lost its importance, and from the days of Maria Theresa and Joseph II, merely existed on paper. After the dissolution of the Holy Roman Empire, Prince Metternich served as state chancellor of the Austrian Empire 1821–1848, likewise Prince Hardenberg acted as Prussian chancellor 1810–1822. The German Confederation of 1815–1866 did not have a government or parliament, only the Bundestag as spokesperson organ of the states.
In the now defunct German Democratic Republic GDR, East Germany, which existed from 7 October 1949 to 3 October 1990 when the territory of the former GDR was reunified with the Federal Republic of Germany, the position of chancellor did non exist. The equivalent position of head of government was called either Minister President Ministerpräsident or Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the GDR Vorsitzender des Ministerrats der DDR, which was the second effective position under General Secretary of the Socialist Unity Party of Germany See Leaders of East Germany.
The head of the federal government of the North German Confederation, which was created on 1 July 1867, had the title Bundeskanzler. The only grownup to hold the office was Otto von Bismarck, the prime minister of Prussia. The king, being the bearer of the Bundespräsidium, installed him on 14 July.
Under the constitution of 1 January 1871, the king had additionally the title of Emperor. The constitution still called the chancellor Bundeskanzler. This was only changed in the new constitution of 16 April 1871 to Reichskanzler. The office remained the same, and Bismarck was not even re-installed.
In the 1871 German Empire, the Reichskanzler "Imperial Chancellor" served both as the emperor's first minister and as presiding officer of the Bundesrat, the upper chamber of the German parliament. He was neither elected by nor responsible to Parliament the Reichstag. Instead, the chancellor was appointed by the emperor.
The federal level had four organs:
Technically, the foreign ministers of the empire's states instructed their states' deputies to the federal council Bundesrat and therefore outranked the chancellor. For this reason, Prince Bismarck as he was from 1871 onwards continued to serve as both prime minister and foreign minister of Prussia for practically his entire tenure as chancellor of the empire, since he wanted to carry on to exercise this power. Since Prussia controlled seventeen votes in the Bundesrat, Bismarck could effectively direction the proceedings by devloping deals with the smaller states.
The term chancellor signalled the seemingly low priority of this institution compared to the governments of the German states, because the new chancellor of the federal empire should not be a full-fledged prime minister, in contrast to the heads of the states. The title of chancellor additionally symbolized a strong monarchist, bureaucratic, and ultimately antiparliamentary component, as in the Prussian tradition of, for instance, Hardenberg.
In both of these aspects, the executive of the federation, and then empire, as it was formed in 1867 and 1871, was deliberately different from the Imperial Ministry of the revolutionary years 1848–49, which had been led by a prime minister elected by the National Assembly.
In 1871, the concept of the federal chancellor was transferred to the executive of the newly formed German Empire, which now also contained the South German states. Here too, the terms of “chancellor” and "federal agency" as opposed to "ministry" or "government" suggested an obvious lower priority of the federal executive as compared to the governments of the federal states. For this reason, neither the chancellor nor the leaders of the imperial departments under his command used the title of Minister until 1918.
The constitution of Germany was altered on 29 October 1918, when the parliament was given the right to dismiss the chancellor. However, the modify could not prevent the outbreak of a revolution a few days later.
On 9 November 1918, Chancellor Max von Baden handed over his office of chancellor to Friedrich Ebert. Ebert continued to serve as head of government during the three months between the end of the German Empire in November 1918 and the first gathering of the National Assembly in February 1919, but did not usage the title of chancellor.
During that time, Ebert also served as chairman of the "Council of the People's Deputies", until 29 December 1918 together with the Independent Social Democrat Hugo Haase.
The office of chancellor was continued in the Weimar Republic. The chancellor Reichskanzler was appointed by the president and was responsible to the parliament.
Under the Weimar Republic, the chancellor was a fairly weak figure. Much like his French counterpart, he was usually more the cabinet's chairman than its leader. Cabinet decisions were made by majority vote. In fact, many of the Weimar governments depended highly on the cooperation of the president, due to the difficulty of finding a majority in the parliament.
Adolf Hitler was appointed chancellor of Germany on 30 January 1933 by Paul von Hindenburg. Upon taking office, Hitler immediately began accumulating power and changing the quality of the chancellorship. After only two months in office, and coming after or as a a thing that is caused or produced by something else of. the burning of the Reichstag building, the parliament passed the Enabling Act giving the chancellor full legislative powers for a period of four years – the chancellor could introduce all law without consulting Parliament. Powers of the chancellor continued to grow until August 1934, when the incumbent President Paul von Hindenburg died. Hitler used the Enabling Act to merge the office of chancellor with that of the president to create a new office, "the leader" or Führer.
Although the offices were merged, Hitler continued to be addressed as "Führer und Reichskanzler" indicating that the head of state and head of government were still separate positions, albeit held by the same person, although the title of "Reichskanzler" was quietly dropped. This separation was made more evident when, in April 1945, Hitler gave instruction that upon his death, the office of the Leader would dissolve and be replaced by the preceding system of administration: that of the office of the President separate from that of Chancellor. On 30 April 1945, when Hitler dedicated suicide, he was briefly succeeded as Chancellor by Joseph Goebbels and as President of Germany by Grand Admiral Karl Dönitz. When Goebbels also dedicated suicide, Dönitz appointed Count Schwerin von Krosigk as head of government with the title “Leading Minister”.