The FDP's parliamentary group has 93 members and is currently the third largest in the Bundestag.

Most Presidents have been members of the CDU as this party is usually the strongest in the Bundestag and also often in the states.

The Bundestag ( Federal Diet ) is elected for a four year term and consists of 598 or more members elected by a means of mixed member proportional representation, which Germans call " personalised proportional representation.

In the current parliament ( elected in 2009 ) there are 24 overhang seats, giving the Bundestag a total of 622 members.

Some opposition members of the Bundestag asked the Federal constitutional court to declare the whole proceedings unconstitutional.

It was not revealed until much later that two Bundestag members ( Julius Steiner and Leo Wagner, both of the CDU / CSU ) had been bribed by the East German Stasi to vote for Brandt.

Every four years, after national elections and the convocation of the newly elected members of the Bundestag, the chancellor is elected by a majority of the members of the Bundestag upon the proposal of the President ( Bundespräsident ).

This vote is one of the few cases where a majority of all elected members of the Bundestag must be achieved, as opposed to a mere majority of those that are currently assembled.

The convention consists of all Bundestag members as well as an equal number of delegates chosen by the legislatures of the Länder ( states ).

On taking office the president must take the following oath, stipulated by Article 56 of the Basic Law, before the assembled members of the Bundestag and Bundesrat ( however he or she is permitted to omit the religious references if so desired ):

In Germany, Member of Parliament refers to the elected members of the federal Bundestag Parliament at the Reichstag building in Berlin.

In Germany's Bundestag and the New Zealand House of Representatives, all these constituency members keep their seats.

( 1 ) The Bundestag can express its lack of confidence in the Federal Chancellor only by electing a successor with the majority of its members and by requesting the Federal President to dismiss the Federal Chancellor.

( 1 ) If a motion of a Federal Chancellor for a vote of confidence is not assented to by the majority of the members of the Bundestag, the Federal President may, upon the proposal of the Federal Chancellor, dissolve the Bundestag within twenty-one days.

The right to dissolve shall lapse as soon as the Bundestag with the majority of its members elects another Federal Chancellor.

Against all other legislation the Bundesrat has a suspensive veto ( Einspruch ), which can be overridden by passing the law again, but this time with 50 % plus one vote of all Bundestag members, not just by majority of votes cast, which is frequent in daily parliamentary business.

When the East German parliament, the Volkskammer, which was freely elected on March 18, 1990 for the first time, is disbanded in the process of the German reunification, another 7 seats are added as 7 members of the 21-member Volkskammer faction of the Green Party, elected by their peers, enter the Bundestag.

In the German Bundestag at least half of the members ( 311 out of 622 ) must be present so that it is empowered to make resolutions.

She is currently one of the vice presidents of the Bundestag and belongs to the reform-oriented members of her party, actively supporting parliamentary representative democracy.

Members serve four-year terms ; elections are held every four years, or earlier in the relatively rare case that the Bundestag is dissolved prematurely by the president.

Half of the Members of the Bundestag are elected directly from 299 constituencies ( first-past-the-post system ), the other half are elected from the parties ’ Land lists in such a way as to achieve proportional representation for the total Bundestag ( if possible ).

The first vote, allowing voters to elect their local representatives to the Bundestag, decides which candidates are sent to Parliament from the constituencies.

At least 598 Members of the Bundestag are elected in this way.

Parties that gain more than 5 % of the second votes or win at least 3 direct mandates are allocated seats in the Bundestag in proportion to the number of votes it has received ( d ' Hondt method until 1987, largest remainder method until the 2005 election, now Sainte-Laguë method ).

If a party has gained more direct mandates in a Land than it is entitled to according to the results of the second vote, it does not forfeit these mandates because all directly elected candidates are guaranteed a seat in the Bundestag.

Below are charts of the results that the Free Democratic Party has secured in each election to the federal Bundestag.

* In modern Germany, the Bundestag and Bundesrat are the two chambers of parliament

In Poland's Sejm and Germany's Bundestag ( elected through the Additional member system ), this threshold is 5 % ( or 3 constituency seats in the Bundestag, but directly won constituencies are kept, regardless ).

The office of president is open to all Germans who are entitled to vote in Bundestag elections and have reached the age of 40, but no one may serve more than two consecutive five-year terms.

That compromise cannot be amended and both chambers ( Bundesrat and Bundestag ) are required to hold a final vote on the compromise as is.

In 1990, elections are held separately in former East and West Germany ; in West Germany, the Green Party does not manage to gain enough votes to enter parliament, only scoring 4. 8 % instead of the necessary 5 %, but in East Germany, the Greens gain a 6. 1 % share of the votes and 8 seats in the Bundestag.

The Court concurred with their argument that the Bundestag ( the federal parliament ) cannot pass such a law, because the German constitution explicitly states that affairs of education are the sole responsibility of the states and declared in July 2004 the law to be invalid.

In 2001, the federal government, the Bundestag, and the Bundesrat jointly attempted to ban the NPD in a trial before the Federal Constitutional Court, the Bundesverfassungsgericht, the highest court in Germany with the exclusive power to ban parties if they are found to be " anti-constitutional ".

* In modern Germany, the Bundestag and Bundesrat are the two chambers of parliament

In Germany, presidential candidates are usually invited to present themselves to all factions in the Bundestag prior to voting.

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.

The heated debate that resulted was settled by the Bundestag ( Germany's parliament ) only on 20 June 1991.

Since 1961, only two new parties ( Bündnis 90 / Die Grünen and PDS / Die Linke ) have entered the Bundestag.

The President is elected every five years by the Federal Assembly ( Bundesversammlung ), a special body convened only for this purpose, comprising the entire Bundestag and an equal number of state delegates selected especially for this purpose in proportion to election results for the state diets.

The Bundestag is more powerful than the Bundesrat and only needs the latter's consent for proposed legislation related to revenue shared by the federal and state governments, and the imposition of responsibilities on the states.

In the first all-German elections in 1990, the PDS won only 2. 4 % of the nationwide vote, but under a one-time exception to Germany's electoral law entered the Bundestag with 17 deputies led by Gysi, one of Germany's most charismatic and articulate politicians.

The decision not to rename the Reichstag building was taken only after long debate in the Bundestag ; even then, it is described officially as ( Reichstag, seat of the Bundestag ).

The Social Democratic politician Carlo Schmid read out in the Bundestag the anti-Semitic lines from Raeder's Heroes ' Day Speech of 1939 ; noted that Raeder had not only refused to apologise for that speech, but testified at Nuremberg that he believed that Germany was threatened by " International Jewry "; and argued that Germans to have a better future meant Raeder could not be a role model or seen as a hero as Zenker and Heye wanted.

The chancellor is the only member of the federal government elected by the Bundestag.

" The president can dismiss the Chancellor, but only in the event that the Bundestag passes a Constructive Vote of No Confidence.

The only mechanism for removing the president is impeachment by the Bundestag or Bundesrat for willfully violating German law.

The Chancellor is elected for a full term of the Bundestag and can only be dismissed by parliament electing a successor in a vote of no confidence.

Neither the chancellor nor the Bundestag has the power to call elections, and the president can do so only if the government loses a confidence vote if the chancellor so requests.

In particular, he cannot rule by decree and he can only dissolve the Bundestag ( parliament ) if the Chancellor loses a motion of confidence and asks the President to do so.

It is provided that the Bundeskanzler may be removed from office by majority vote of the Bundestag ( parliament ) only if a prospective successor also has the support of a majority.

The federal government must present all its legislative initiatives first to the Bundesrat ; only thereafter can a proposal be passed to the Bundestag.

Other observers claim that the opposing majorities lead to an increase in backroom politics, where small groups of high-tier leaders make all the important decisions and the Bundestag representatives have a choice only between agreeing with them or not getting anything done at all.

While the ruling SPD suffers substantial losses during the 2002 parliamental elections and only barely manages to become the biggest faction in the Bundestag, the Green Party gains 1. 9 points compared to the 1998 elections, for a total of 8. 6 %, yielding 55 seats.

After Helmut Kohl's first run for chancellor in 1976 failed, Strauss cancelled the alliance between the CDU and CSU parties in the Bundestag, a decision which he only took back months later when the CDU threatened to extend their party to Bavaria ( where the CSU holds a political monopoly for the conservatives ).

The only picture of Jakob Maria Mierscheid, from the German Bundestag archive.