Exactly 4,527 plenary sessions, 8,977 laws passed, 173,043 printed documents – the history of the German Bundestag could also be told using figures like these, which the Bundestag administration has just meticulously compiled. And then there are: 2,524 roll-call votes, 31,610 hours of total session time, 177,813 speeches given. Exactly 75 years ago this Saturday, the Bundestag met for its first session.
Parliamentary new beginning after the collapse
This September 7, 1949 marked a new parliamentary beginning after the collapse of Hitler’s Germany, which the Allies had fought for militarily. The country lay in ruins, both materially and morally. It was divided into West and East. Tens of thousands of former Wehrmacht soldiers were still in Soviet captivity a good four years after the capitulation.
The first session of the Bundestag, elected on August 14, 1949, was provisional, like the rest of Germany: the members of parliament met in Bonn in the former gymnasium of the Pedagogical Academy, which had previously been converted into a plenary hall. “What do the German people hope to achieve from the work of the Bundestag?” asked the oldest member of parliament, Paul Löbe, at the opening of the session, and immediately gave the answer himself: “That we establish a stable government, a healthy economy, a new social order in a secure private life, and lead our fatherland towards new prosperity and new prosperity.”
Bundesrat faster than the Bundestag
When the Bundestag met on September 7th at 4:05 p.m., the Bundesrat had already completed its first session. The Chamber of States began its work at 11:12 a.m. – also in the temporary Pedagogical Academy, but not in the former gymnasium, but in the former auditorium. And while Beethoven was played to open the session in the Bundestag, Bach was played in the Bundesrat. The Bundestag as the legislature, the Bundesrat as an instrument for protecting the interests of the states and to some extent also as a corrective – this is how the fathers and mothers of the Basic Law defined the federal order of the new state.
Great debates on key issues of the future
75 years of the Bundestag – that means a lot of parliamentary detail work, but also major debates on key issues and issues that affect the direction of the republic. In February 1952, for example, the parliament witnessed a 20-hour debate on the rearmament of Germany. The parliamentary battle over the Eastern treaties in February 1972 lasted as long as 22 hours. Heated debates were held in 1968 on the adoption of the emergency laws, in 1974 on the reform of paragraph 218 on abortion, in 1981 on the NATO double-track decision and in 1990 on the Unification Treaty.
But the Bundestag also experienced its finest moments during quiet debates on important socio-political issues, such as the struggle over preimplantation diagnostics in 2011 or over euthanasia in 2015 and 2023. And deliberations did not always have to drag on into the depths of the night to go down in parliamentary history as important. When the Bundestag met on February 27, 2022, a Sunday, for a special session because of Russia’s attack on Ukraine three days earlier and Chancellor Olaf Scholz (SPD) coined the term “turning point,” the debate lasted three and a half hours.
Moving from Bonn to Berlin
In fact, a momentous meeting on June 20, 1991 lasted well into the night. The Bundestag discussed the future seat of parliament and government for almost twelve hours. At 9:47 p.m., Bundestag President Rita Süssmuth (CDU) announced the narrow vote in favor of the move to Berlin. This also became a logistical challenge: 50,000 cubic meters of furniture rolled from the old to the new capital in 24 trains. On September 1, 1999, the Bundestag and the federal government officially began work in Berlin.
In and out of Parliament
In its 75 years, the Bundestag has seen several parties come and go. The Greens entered in 1983, the PDS (now the Left) in 1990, the FDP was thrown out in 2013 and returned in 2017. In the 2017 election, the AfD also made it into the Bundestag for the first time. The Bundestag experienced a first in December 2023: the Left parliamentary group dissolved after Sahra Wagenknecht and nine other MPs left the party. Today, the Left and the BSW sit in parliament as groups with severely restricted rights.
Passion, harshness and verbal outbursts
From the very beginning, the Bundestag was a parliament in which the right political path was fought for with passion and sometimes with harshness – including verbal outbursts. At the opening of the first session, President Löbe appealed to the members of parliament to find balance and balance again after a “bitter election campaign”: “We do not need destructive polemics, but constructive action.” We must come together to such an extent “that something beneficial for our people emerges from it.”
When Bärbel Bas (SPD) was elected President of the Bundestag in the first session of the current electoral term on October 26, 2021, she called for “respect” and an “appropriate tone” in her first speech. “We have a role model function. Each and every one of us stands for “politics” and thus has a duty to represent the German Bundestag with dignity.”
However, even in the early days of the Bundestag, the tone was not always appropriate. The former SPD parliamentary group leader Herbert Wehner was a master of polemics, calling opponents “pigs”, “suckers” or “scumbags” and receiving reprimands for doing so. Since 1949, 783 reprimands have been issued.
But until the AfD came into power, it was unimaginable that the plenary session would rant about “burkas, girls in headscarves, knifemen on pay cheques and other good-for-nothings”, as AfD parliamentary group leader Alice Weidel did in May 2018. She was also given a reprimand for this. The other parliamentary groups agree that the AfD is responsible for significantly intensifying the debates.
Too few women and more and more MPs
The fact that the proportion of women is still low at around 35 percent and far from parity is one of the weaknesses of the Bundestag. The fact that the parliament has become increasingly larger in recent elections is another. In the 2021 election, it swelled to 736 members – the largest freely elected parliament in the world. But a remedy is in sight: Due to the electoral reform of the traffic light parties, the next Bundestag, which will be elected next year, will only have 630 seats.
Bundestag and Bundesrat celebrate
75 years – that’s something to celebrate. This Friday and Saturday, the Bundestag will be holding its “Day of Insights and Outlooks”, as it calls its annual open day, to mark its anniversary. Next Tuesday, before the start of the budget debate, there will be a commemorative event in the plenary hall to mark the founding of parliament 75 years ago.
And the Federal Council wants to return to its old place of work in Bonn for a ceremony on Saturday. Federal President Frank-Walter Steinmeier will be taking part, as his office is also celebrating its 75th anniversary in the next few days. On September 12, 1949, the Federal Assembly elected Theodor Heuss as the first Federal President.
© dpa-infocom, dpa:240905-930-223615/1
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