In the mirror of its chancellorships, Germany appears as a haven of stability. The Federal Republic has only had eight chancellors since it was founded in 1949. Each chancellor has shaped the Federal Republic in his own unique way.
1949:Emerging from uncertainty
Many chancellors were more controversial during their reigns than it appears in hindsight. Konrad Adenauer, for example, the first chancellor of the Federal Republic, won the Bundestag vote in 1949 with a majority of just one vote – his own.
At that time, the Germans had elected a free parliament for the first time since Hitler came to power, albeit only in the western part of the country. The political balance of power was unclear:in addition to the CDU/CSU, SPD and FDP, there were seven other parties in the Bundestag.
1957:On the way to chancellor democracy
However, Adenauer's chancellorship was also influential in terms of the way he held office. He immediately declared important policy areas, as Chancellor Gerhard Schröder would later call it, to be a "top priority". As a powerful party patriarch, he tried to keep rivals from his own ranks as small as possible.
At the same time, the parties began to escalate the federal election campaign to a duel between two candidates for chancellor – even if that wasn’t really necessary, at least in terms of constitutional logic:after all, German voters vote on parties and not on the chancellor himself.
This personalization becomes clear on the CDU election poster of 1957:it only shows a portrait of Adenauer, with the caption "No experiments! Konrad Adenauer". The election gave his party an absolute majority.
Adenauer promoted the establishment of the Bundeswehr
1963:Change of power in installments
Adenauer's resignation in 1963 - a resignation that the now 87-year-old had to be urged to resign - left a void in the party and government that was difficult to fill. His two immediate successors are remembered as rather lackluster chancellors.
Ludwig Erhard, also CDU, had already passed the zenith of his popularity when he took office and was probably more of a successful economics minister than an all-round politician suitable for chancellorship. When the FDP ministers all left his cabinet in 1966, he resigned.
Ludwig Erhard, CDU, ruled from 1963 to 1966
For the remainder of the legislative period, his party colleague Kurt Georg Kiesinger assumed power – as head of a grand coalition. 17 years after the founding of the Federal Republic, the SPD was also part of the government for the first time.
However, the grand coalition encountered strong resistance from the population:the emergency laws passed in 1968 sparked protests by the so-called "extra-parliamentary opposition" (APO) - the student movement was born.
1969:New start under Brandt
With the social upheavals, the time had come for a change of power. In 1969, Willy Brandt, SPD chairman and foreign minister in the grand coalition, took part in the election campaign and particularly impressed younger voters.
"Willy" became the idol, indeed the icon, of a whole generation. He stood for credibility, for reconciliation with former wartime enemies in Eastern Europe and for the final break with the National Socialist past. This is what his sentences like "We want to dare more democracy" and "We want to be a people of good neighbors" stood for.
With his visit to Erfurt in 1970, Brandt was also the first chancellor to make an official state visit to the GDR. While West Germany had previously shied away from establishing diplomatic contacts with the GDR, people now spoke of "change through rapprochement".
In particular, his kneeling at the memorial for the dead of the Warsaw Ghetto earned him international respect. In 1971 he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his policy of detente and reconciliation.
1970:Willy Brandt on his knees in the former Warsaw Ghetto
1974:Terrorist hunt and economic crisis
In 1974, however, Brandt had to resign because his personal advisor Günter Guillaume had been exposed as a GDR spy. The visionary was followed by a pragmatist:Helmut Schmidt (SPD).
The oil crisis, inflation and economic slump fell during Helmut Schmidt's reign, which he, as a graduate economist, wanted to combat above all with closer international cooperation in economic and monetary policy.
Schmidt acted like a dutiful Prussian – without Willy Brandt's cordiality, but efficiently and with great competence. And if necessary with all the necessary state hardness.
Both when employer President Schleyer was taken hostage by the Red Army Faction (RAF) and when the Lufthansa plane "Landshut" was hijacked, he did not respond to the terrorists' demands - even if he had to risk human lives as a result.
When the political differences between the SPD and its coalition partner FDP worsened in 1982, Schmidt was overthrown by a constructive vote of no confidence. The parliamentary groups of CDU/CSU and FDP elected Helmut Kohl as the new chancellor.
Helmut Schmidt (SPD) ruled from 1974 to 1982
1982:A chancellor like an oak cabinet
With a term of 16 years, Kohl can look back on the longest chancellorship in the history of the Federal Republic.
As early as the late 1980s, one of his employees compared it to a heavy oak cupboard:you bumped into it again and again, but gave up trying to move it long ago. For a long time, instead of charisma and political reform zeal, the instinct for power, perseverance and persistence were considered to be his most outstanding qualities.
It was not until German reunification that Kohl acquired the historical stature that he has today:It is not least thanks to his decisive action and his communication skills that the former Allies agreed to German reunification almost unreservedly.
In order to take away the world's fear of a resurgent Germany, Kohl pushed ahead with the unification of Europe like no other - for him the necessary consequence of the warlike history of the continent.
Helmut Kohl - celebrated as Chancellor of Unity
1998:From Media Chancellor to Chancellor of Reform
Despite all of Kohl's historical merits, a change of mood spread before the 1998 federal election. The winner of the election, Gerhard Schröder of the SPD, then formed a government for the first time with the Greens, who had been represented in the Bundestag since 1983, and launched projects such as the nuclear phase-out, the reform of citizenship law and so-called gay marriage with them.
Under the red-green government, the Bundeswehr also took part in NATO foreign missions in Kosovo and Afghanistan for the first time, which led to controversial public discussions.
Schröder was considered a media chancellor who took great care over his public appearance. According to one of his bon mots, Germany is governed "with BILD, BamS and Glotze" – meaning the big German tabloids and television.
Nevertheless, he came under increasing pressure after his re-election in 2002:resistance to his "Agenda 2010", the restructuring of the labor market and social policy, arose in the country and also within his own party.
The old and the new:2005 election campaign
2005:From "Kohl's girl" to the eternal chancellor
After a vote of confidence in the Bundestag failed as planned, new elections finally took place in 2005, which the CDU/CSU under Angela Merkel narrowly won.
Since then, the Federal Republic has been governed by a woman and an East German for the first time.
In the 1990s, at the age of 36, she became Minister for Family Affairs under Chancellor Helmut Kohl and later Minister for the Environment. Back then, Kohl once called her "my girl".
After the federal elections in 2005, hardly anyone believed her to be chancellor. But Angela Merkel developed into an internationally respected stateswoman. The US magazine "Forbes" has voted her the most powerful woman in the world almost every year since 2006.
In Germany she was soon called "Mutti" by some people. But similar to Helmut Kohl, she had the image of simply sitting out problems.
In 2015, her popularity ratings plummeted when she decided to take in several hundred thousand refugees, most of whom came from the war-torn countries of Syria, Afghanistan and Iraq, in Germany. Especially her sentence "We can do it!" brought her both approval and much criticism. Some people felt that the Germans would be overwhelmed by the large number of refugees.
In 2019, Angela Merkel announced that she would no longer run as a candidate for chancellor in the 2021 federal election. In December 2021, she handed over the duties to her successor, Olaf Scholz (SPD). With 5860 days as Federal Chancellor, she was only ten days shorter in office than the record holder Helmut Kohl.