Chancellor Of Germany (Federal Republic Of Germany)
The Chancellor of Germany (known in German as Bundeskanzler ("Federal Chancellor"), or Kanzler for short) is, under the German 1949 constitution, the head of government of Germany. It is historically a continuation of the office of Chancellor (German: Kanzler, later Reichskanzler) that was originally established as the office of Chancellor of the North German Confederation in 1867. The 1949 constitution increased the role of the Chancellor compared to the 1919 Weimar Constitution by making the Chancellor more independent of the influence of the Federal President and granting the Chancellor the right to set the guidelines for all policy areas. The role is generally comparable to that of Prime Minister in other parliamentary democracies.
There have been eight chancellors since 1949. The current Chancellor of Germany is Angela Merkel, who was elected in 2005. She is the first female Chancellor since the establishment of the original office in 1867, and known in German as Bundeskanzlerin, the feminine form of Bundeskanzler. Merkel is also the first Chancellor elected since the fall of the Berlin Wall to have been raised in the former East Germany.
Read more about Chancellor Of Germany (Federal Republic Of Germany): History of Position, The Chancellor's Role, Appointment Mechanism, Votes of No-confidence, Style of Address, Living Former Chancellors, Salary
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“No woman in my time will be Prime Minister or Chancellor or Foreign Secretary—not the top jobs. Anyway I wouldn’t want to be Prime Minister. You have to give yourself 100%.”
—Margaret Thatcher (b. 1925)
“By an application of the theory of relativity to the taste of readers, to-day in Germany I am called a German man of science, and in England I am represented as a Swiss Jew. If I come to be regarded as a bête noire the descriptions will be reversed, and I shall become a Swiss Jew for the Germans and a German man of science for the English!”
—Albert Einstein (1879–1955)
“People think they have taken quite an extraordinarily bold step forward when they have rid themselves of belief in hereditary monarchy and swear by the democratic republic. In reality, however, the state is nothing but a machine for the oppression of one class by another, and indeed in the democratic republic no less than in the monarchy.”
—Friedrich Engels (1820–1895)