For example, Helmut Kohl's CDU governed for years in coalition with the Free Democratic Party ( FDP ), from 1998 to 2005 Gerhard Schröder's SPD was in power with the Greens and from 2009 Angela Merkel, CDU / CSU was in power with the FDP.

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.

A grand coalition government was subsequently forged between the CDU / CSU and the SPD.

In 2002, Stoiber politically outmaneuvered CDU chairwoman, Angela Merkel, and was elected the CDU / CSU's candidate for the office of chancellor, challenging Gerhard Schröder.

The SPD had mounted a huge comeback, and the CDU / CSU was narrowly defeated ( though both the SPD and CDU / CSU had 38. 5 % of the vote, the SPD was ahead by a small 6, 000 vote margin ).

He was accused by many in the CDU / CSU of offering " half-hearted " support to Angela Merkel, with some even accusing him of being reluctant to support a female candidate from the East.

An exception to the party policy was made in the 2002 campaign, in which it adopted a position of " equidistance " to the CDU and SPD.

It is believed that this was partly due to tactical voting by CDU and Christian Social Union of Bavaria ( CSU ) alliance supporters who hoped for stronger market-oriented economic reforms than the CDU / CSU alliance called for.

At other times, for example after the 2002 federal election, a coalition between the FDP and CDU / CSU was impossible primarily because of the weak results of the FDP.

This percentage was enough to offset a decline in the CDU / CSU's vote compared to 2005, to create a CDU-FDP governing coalition in the Bundestag with a 53 % majority of seats.

The CDU won in some important state elections but was hit in 2000 by a party donation scandal from the Kohl years.

The most likely outcome of coalition talks was a so-called " grand coalition " between the Christian Democrats ( CDU / CSU ) and the Social Democrats ( SPD ).

The CDU / CSU was rather stable.

The government was formed under Chancellor Konrad Adenauer and his conservative CDU / CSU coalition.

The CDU / CSU was in power during most of the period since 1949.

He was the first chancellor ( top official ) of the FRG, 1949 – 63, and until his death was the founder and leader of the Christian Democratic Union ( CDU ), a coalition of conservatives, ordoliberals, and adherents of Protestant and Catholic social teaching that dominated West Germany politics for most of its history.

The CDU quickly announced Angela Merkel as Christian Democrat candidate for chancellor, aspiring to be the first female chancellor in German history.

In April 2008, following the 2008 Hamburg state election, the Green-Alternative List ( GAL ) in Hamburg entered into a coalition with the Christian Democratic Union ( CDU ), the first such state-level coalition in Germany.

After negotiations, the Saarland Greens rejected the option of a left-wing ' red-red-green ' coalition with the SPD and The Left ( Die Linke ) in order to form a centre-right state government with the CDU and Free Democratic Party ( FDP ), a historical first time that a Jamaica coalition has formed in German politics.

In June 2010, in the first state election following the victory of the CDU / CSU and FDP in the 2009 federal election, the " black-yellow " CDU-FDP coalition in North Rhine-Westphalia under Jürgen Rüttgers lost its majority.

He was the first leader of the Christian Democratic Union ( CDU ), a coalition of Catholics and Protestants that under his leadership became and has since remained the most dominant in Germany.

Theodor Heuss was elected the first President of the Republic, and Adenauer was elected Chancellor ( head of government ) on 16 September 1949 with the support of his own CDU, the Christian Social Union and the liberal Free Democratic Party.

Riding a wave of popularity from the return of the last POWs from Soviet labor camps, as well as an extensive pension reform, Adenauer led the CDU / CSU to the first — and as of 2011, only — outright majority in a free German election.

By the time the first national elections were held in the Federal Republic in 1949, Kiesinger had joined the Christian Democratic Union ( CDU ) and won a seat in the Bundestag, the West German parliament.

In West Germany, 1966 saw the emergence of the first Grand Coalition between the two main parties, the SPD and CDU, under chancellor Kurt Georg Kiesinger.

The CDU experienced considerable success gaining support from the time of its creation in Berlin on 26 June 1945 until its first convention on 21 October 1950, at which Chancellor Adenauer was named the first Chairman of the party.

The CDU was the dominant party for the first two decades following the establishment of West Germany in 1949.

The SPD quickly gained popularity and succeeded in forming a social-liberal coalition with the FDP following the 1969 federal election, forcing the CDU out of power for the first time in their history.

On 18 March 1990, the PDS lost significant influence in the first free elections in GDR history ; the Alliance for Germany coalition, led by the Christian Democratic Union ( CDU ), won the election.

When Konrad Adenauer became the first Chancellor of the newly-founded Federal Republic of Germany in 1949, he wanted a representative of the Protestants in the CDU in his government.

As the candidate of the two Christian Democratic sister parties, the CDU and the CSU, and the liberal FDP, Köhler was elected to his first five-year term by the Federal Assembly on 23 May 2004 and was subsequently inaugurated on 1 July 2004.

The crude oil distillation unit ( CDU ) is the first processing unit in virtually all petroleum refineries.

Antje Vollmer, long-time member of the faction, is elected as first Green Vice President of the Bundestag with the help of the CDU faction.

Finally, on 18 March, the first free elections were held in East Germany, and a government led by Lothar de Maizière ( CDU ) was formed under a policy of expeditious unification with West Germany.

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 ).

After the party merged with the West German CDU following the German reunification, he was elected Thuringias first post-reunification minister-president on October 14, 1990.

On 3 December 1946 the members of the provincial parliament elected Hübener the first minister-president of Saxony-Anhalt with the votes of CDU and LDPD.

While industrial leaders and both the conservative and economically liberal parliamentary parties such as the CDU, the CSU, and the FDP strongly supported Agenda 2010 as it implemented their long-time demands, there was a strong upheaval in Schröder's own social democratic party.

The Christian Democratic ( CDU ) leader, 73-year-old Konrad Adenauer, former mayor of Cologne and party chairman in the British Zone since March 1946, believed in moderate, non-denominational and humanist Christian democracy ( see, for example, Dennis L. Bark and David R. Gress, A History of West Germany, volume 1: 1945-1963: From Shadow to Substance, London, UK: Basil Blackwell, 1989 ; Erling Bjöl, Grimberg's History of the Nations, volume 23: The Rich West, " The Giant Dwarf: West Germany ," Helsinki: WSOY, 1985 ), social market economy and integration with the West.

Norbert Blüm ( born July 21, 1935 ) is a German federal legislator from North Rhine-Westphalia, Chairman of the CDU there ( 1987 – 1999 ), and former minister for labor and social affairs ( for 16 years in the government of Helmut Kohl ).

Jürgen Rüttgers ( born June 26, 1951 in Cologne ) is a German politician ( CDU ) and former Minister-President of North Rhine-Westphalia, widely known for his views on immigration and the much-discussed phrase " Kinder statt Inder " (" children instead of Indians ") which was a media interpretation of " Statt Inder an die Computer müssen unsere Kinder an die Computer " (" instead of Indians in front of computers, our children must be in front of computers "), during an election campaign ( which he finally lost ) at a time when there was a parallel nationwide discussion about whether or whether not immigration rules should be liberalised on behalf of attracting more highly qualified foreign academics to the German labor market.