Germany, Federal Republic of

I

Transport

Germany has a highly developed transport system that in 1995 included about 404,337 km (251,255 mi) of roads, with about 11,143 km (6,924 mi) of limited-access motorways (Autobahnen). In 1995, 46.8 million motor vehicles, including 39.9 million passenger cars were in use; there were 545 passenger vehicles for every 1,000 people in 2003. There is no speed limit on the autobahns, but traffic congestion often keeps speeds down. Germany has an excellent railway system, the Deutsche Bahn, which is presently run by the government, with legislation in 1993 enabling eventual privatization. The Deutsche Bahn is an amalgamation, in 1994, of the Deutsche Bundesbahn and the East German Reichsbahn. The railway connects all parts of the country, and is used extensively for both freight and passenger service. Several high-speed inter-city lines are in use or in prospect, including Hamburg to Munich, Frankfurt to Dresden, and Bremen to Hanover, with links to Berlin.

Germany’s large merchant fleet sails from Hamburg, Wilhelmshaven, Bremen, Nordenham, and Emden to the North Sea, and from Lübeck, Wismar, Rostock, and Stralsund to the Baltic. Inland, ships travel the Rhine and other rivers and several canals, including the Mittelland Canal, through the middle of the country, and the Nord-Ostsee Kanal, or Kiel Canal, which links the North Sea and the Baltic. The leading inland port is Duisburg.

The largest international airport in Europe is near Frankfurt, with 12 other international airports, including 3 in Berlin. Germany’s principal airline, Deutsche Lufthansa A.G., which is 36 per cent state-owned, offers extensive domestic and international service.

J

Communications

Germany has 398 newspapers, with the most important dailies (Das Bild, Süddeutsche Zeitung, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Die Welt, Frankfurter Rundschau) counting a combined circulation of 5.7 million in 1996. Germany is a traditional centre of the European publishing trade, and 70,643 books were published there in 1994.

The German telephone network is controlled by three state-owned companies: Deutsche Telekom, Postdienst, and Postbank; partial privatization of Deutsche Telekom commenced in 1996. In 2005 there were some 668 telephones per 1,000 people; 3.71 million mobile phones were in use in 1996.

Germany has numerous public and private radio, television, and cable television networks, dominated by the national broadcasters Deutschlandfunk, RIAS Berlin, and Deutschlandsender Kultur. Colour television broadcasts use the PAL system. Around 78 million radios and 48 million televisions were in use in 2000.

V

Government

Germany is governed under a Basic Law (Grundgesetz) promulgated on May 23, 1949, for the former FRG (West Germany), and later amended several times. The Basic Law, which describes the country as a “democratic federal state based on social justice”, resembles the constitution of the Weimar Republic (1919-1933), but allows a greater range of authority to the governments of the states.

From 1968 until 1989 East Germany was governed under a constitution that defined the country as a sovereign socialist state in which all political power was exercised by the working people. In practice, power resided with the Socialist Unity Party of Germany (Sozialistische Einheitspartei Deutschlands, or SED), a Marxist-Leninist (Communist) organization. The 1968 constitution guaranteed the SED a leading role in national affairs, and its general secretary, as head of the party’s political bureau, was usually the most powerful person in the country.

With the expansion of the FRG to include the former East German republic on October 3, 1990, West Germany’s Basic Law was extended to cover the entire unified country.

A

Executive and Legislature

Under the Basic Law the head of state of Germany is the federal president, who is elected to a five-year term by a convention made up of members of the Bundestag (lower house of parliament) plus an equal number of people chosen by the state legislatures. The president designates the chancellor, the country’s chief executive official, who must then be approved by an absolute majority of the Bundestag. The president also appoints the Cabinet ministers, in accordance with the proposals of the chancellor. The chancellor is responsible to the Bundestag, which may vote the chancellor out of office by a simple majority. The Basic Law provides, however, that the Bundestag must be able simultaneously to elect a successor, so that the country is never without a chancellor.

The German parliament consists of two houses—the Bundestag, or lower house, and the Bundesrat, or federal council—both of which were expanded in 1990 to include representatives of eastern Germany. Members of the Bundestag are popularly elected to terms of up to four years by citizens aged 18 or over. One half of the members are directly elected in single-member districts, and the rest are chosen under a system of proportional representation; political parties are entitled to representation only if they receive at least 5 per cent of the vote in a given election. The Bundestag may be dissolved by the federal president. The Bundesrat is made up of delegates chosen by the state governments; the number of delegates sent by each state varies from three to five according to each state’s population.

In general, legislation is passed by a simple majority vote of the Bundestag. Laws dealing with matters of specific interest to the states, however, must also be approved by the Bundesrat. The Bundesrat may veto legislation passed by the Bundestag. A veto can be overridden, however, if the Bundestag reapproves the legislation; for some types of laws it must override by the same proportionate majority by which the measure was vetoed in the Bundesrat. A two-thirds majority vote of both houses is necessary to amend the Basic Law; certain fundamental parts of the Basic Law may not be changed.

B

Political Parties

After general elections for a unified Bundestag in 1990, the leading German political parties, in order of representation, were the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD), Free Democratic Party (FDP), Christian Social Union (CSU), Party of Democratic Socialism (PDS), and Green Party.

The CDU is a conservative party emphasizing the rights of individuals. It has no organization in Bavaria, where its close ally, the somewhat more conservative CSU, is active. Both parties were established in 1945. The SPD, founded in 1875, had a Marxist orientation until 1959. In the 1980s and 1990s it advocated a free-enterprise economy with sufficient public intervention to protect the general welfare.

The party holding the balance of power in the lower house has often been the FDP, founded in 1948, a liberal group supported mainly by the middle class. The FDP joined with the CDU and CSU to form coalition governments during 1949-1953 and 1961-1966, and from 1969 to 1982 it formed coalition governments with the SPD. It again joined with the CDU and CSU in 1982 and took part in the governments formed after the elections of 1983, 1987, 1990, and 2005. Represented in the Bundestag for the first time in 1983 was the Green Party, a group concerned with environmental, anti-nuclear and pacifist issues. The PDS is the relic of East Germany’s Communist Party.

After the Communist government of East Germany collapsed in 1989, the Socialist Unity Party, which had long dominated East Germany’s political life, reconstituted itself as the Party of Democratic Socialism and contested the elections of March 1990. The party came in third behind the Alliance for Germany, a conservative coalition backed by former West Germany’s Christian Democrats, and the Social Democratic Party, which had close ties with the Social Democrats of the former West Germany.