Chancellor Adenauer's Christian Democratic Party slipped only a little in the voting but it was enough to lose the absolute Bundestag majority it has enjoyed since 1957.

On 6 May 1997, following the 1997 general election which brought a Labour government to power for the first time since 1979, it was announced by the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Gordon Brown, that the Bank of England would be granted operational independence over monetary policy.

In 1999, Chancellor Gerhard Schröder's government defined a new basis for German foreign policy by taking a full part in the decisions surrounding the NATO war against Yugoslavia and by sending German troops into combat for the first time since World War II.

However since the Lord Chancellor today is no longer a judge, it is not certain who would preside over an impeachment trial today.

Erika Slezak has played Victoria Lord on One Life to Live since 1971 and Jeanne Cooper has played Katherine Chancellor on The Young and the Restless since late 1973.

* December 2 – The German federal election, the first election held since German reunification is won by Helmut Kohl, who becomes Chancellor of Germany.

* August 28 – Axel Oxenstierna, Lord High Chancellor of Sweden since 1612 ( b. 1583 )

He is now fully retired ; since 2010 he has been the oldest surviving German Chancellor in history.

11 Downing Street has been the official residence of the Second Lord of the Treasury since 1828, and thus the residence of the Chancellor of the Exchequer.

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.

The CDU was the first proponent of the social market economy, although the party has adopted more liberal economics policies since Helmut Kohl's term in office as the Chancellor of Germany ( 1982 – 1998 ).

The following month, the first all-German free elections since 1932 were held, resulting in an increased majority for the coalition government of Chancellor Helmut Kohl.

The Minister of Foreign Relations, since June 2010, is Chancellor ( es: Canciller ) Héctor Timerman.

Perhaps as a result, Tony Blair chose to keep him in his job throughout his ten years as Prime Minister ; making Brown an unusually dominant figure and the longest serving Chancellor since the Reform Act of 1832.

Marie Roslyn Bashir AC, CVO ( born 1 December 1930 ) is the present Governor of New South Wales since 2001 and also the Chancellor of the University of Sydney since 2007.

Guido Westerwelle (; born 27 December 1961 ) is a German liberal politician, who, since 28 October 2009, has served as the Foreign Minister in the second cabinet of Chancellor Angela Merkel, and who was Vice Chancellor of Germany from 2009 to 2011.

The official term since 1949 is Stellvertreter des Bundeskanzlers ( Deputy to the Chancellor ), however this term is seldom used outside very formal contexts.

The Government's focus then switched from abolition to reform and, in particular, reform of the much-criticised " secret soundings " of Judges and other establishment legal figures upon which the old system was based, which was said to be inappropriate and unfair given the size of the modern profession, a possible source of improper Government patronage ( since the final recommendations were made by the Lord Chancellor, who is a member of the Government ), and discriminatory against part-time workers ( especially women ) and ethnic minorities.

Chancellor Otto Fürst von Bismarck since 1874

Again, the backlog became a problem, particularly since the Lord Chancellor was distracted with the appellate cases through the Court of Appeal in Chancery and the House of Lords, leaving a maximum of three Chancery judges who were available to hear cases.

This has happened three times: 1972 under Chancellor Willy Brandt, 1983 under Chancellor Helmut Kohl and 2005 under Chancellor Gerhard Schröder.

This was the situation in Germany in 2005 when Angela Merkel became Chancellor: in early elections, the CDU / CSU did not garner enough votes to form a majority coalition with the FDP ; similarly the SPD and Greens did not have enough votes to continue on with their formerly ruling coalition.

* 2005 – Angela Merkel becomes the first female Chancellor of Germany.

Until 2005, the Lord Chancellor fused the Legislature, Executive and Judiciary, as he was the ex officio Speaker of the House of Lords, a Government Minister who sat in Cabinet and was head of the Lord Chancellor's Department which administered the courts, the justice system and appointed judges, and was the head of the Judiciary in England and Wales and sat as a judge on the Judicial Committee of the House of Lords, the highest domestic court in the entire United Kingdom, and the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council, the senior tribunal court for parts of the Commonwealth.

* Angela Merkel becomes the first female Chancellor of Germany in 2005.

However, this step was condoned by the German Federal Constitutional Court as a legal instrument and was again applied ( by SPD Chancellor Gerhard Schröder and his Green allies ) in 2005.

* In Germany, a red-green coalition of the Social Democratic Party and The Greens led by Chancellor Gerhard Schröder governed the country from 1998 to 2005.

The current Chancellor of Germany is Angela Merkel, who was elected in 2005.

Helmut Kohl presided over 17 ministers at the start of his fourth term in 1994 ; the 2002 cabinet, the second of Chancellor Gerhard Schröder, had 13 ministers and the Angela Merkel cabinet as of 22 November 2005 has 15.

The most recent occurrence was on 1 July 2005, when Chancellor Gerhard Schröder asked for a vote of confidence, which was defeated.

In 2005, Chancellor Gerhard Schröder engineered a defeat in a motion of no confidence after a power shift in the Bundesrat.

Under the Constitutional Reform Act 2005 the Lord Chancellor is no longer a judge.

He served as Foreign Minister and Vice Chancellor of Germany in the cabinet of Gerhard Schröder from 1998 to 2005.

In 2005, French President Jacques Chirac, German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder and Polish President Aleksander Kwaśniewski inaugurated the renovated Place Stanislas.

* Betty Lockwood, Baroness Lockwood ( born 1924 ), politician and activist for women's rights ; was the first chair of the Equal Opportunities Commission from 1975 to 1983, and served as Chancellor of the University of Bradford from 1997 to 2005.

In July 2005, he suspended the Bundestag at Chancellor Gerhard Schröder's request, after the latter had lost a motion of confidence in the Bundestag.

Most recently, on 1 July 2005, President Horst Köhler dissolved the Bundestag at the request of Chancellor Gerhard Schröder.

After leaving that post, he returned to the UK and became the Chancellor of the University of Oxford in 2003, and he was made a Life Peer in 2005.

In September 2005 he was elected a Distinguished Honorary Fellow of Massey College in the University of Toronto ( the only person so elected except for the Chancellor of the University of Cambridge and the University of Edinburgh, the Duke of Edinburgh ) as well as receiving an honorary Doctorate of Sacred Letters from the University of Trinity College, Toronto and an honorary Doctorate of Letters from the University of Ulster.

Senior judges ( Justices of the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom, Lords Justices of Appeal and the Heads of the Divisions of the High Court ) are officially appointed by the Sovereign on the advice of the Lord Chancellor, but since 2005 the Lord Chancellor has been advised by an independent Judicial Appointments Commission and can only choose whether to accept or reject its recommendations.

The judicial functions of the Lord Chancellor ( as opposed to his role in the administration of the court system ) were removed by the Constitutional Reform Act 2005.