section_path: History of the office (pre-1949)
section_name: History of the office (pre-1949)
paragraph_text: History of the office (pre-1949)
  
  The office of chancellor has a long history, stemming back to the Holy Roman Empire (c. 900–1806). The title of chancellor Latin: cancellarius was given to the head of the clerics at the Imperial chapel. The chapel's college acted as the emperor's chancery issuing deeds and capitularies. Eventually, the office of imperial archchancellor was given to the archbishops of Mainz.
  
  In 1559, Emperor Ferdinand I established the agency of an imperial chancellery (Reichshofkanzlei) at the Hofburg Palace in Vienna, headed by a vice chancellor under the nominal authority of the archbishop of Mainz. Upon the 1620 Battle of White Mountain, Emperor Ferdinand II created the office of court chancellor for the Archduchy of Austria. This office was in charge of the internal and foreign affairs of the Habsburg monarchy. From 1753 onwards, the office of an Austrian state chancellor was held by Prince Kaunitz. The imperial chancellery lost its importance, and from the days of Queen Maria Theresa and Holy Roman emperor Joseph II, merely existed on paper. After the 1806 dissolution of the Holy Roman Empire by Napoleon, Prince Klemens von Metternich served as state chancellor of the Austrian Empire. Likewise Prince Karl August von Hardenberg acted as chancellor of the Kingdom of Prussia (1810–1822). At the conclusion of the Napoleonic Wars, the Congress of Vienna established the German Confederation as a replacement for the Holy Roman Empire, but this organisation did not have a government or legislature, only the Bundestag that represented the member states.
  
  The modern office of chancellor was established with the beginning of the North German Confederation in 1867, after the Prussian Army 's decisive victory in the brief Austro-Prussian War of 1866 over the rival Austrian Empire. Unlike its predecessor the German Confederation, the North German Confederation did have an office of Bundeskanzler (federal Chancellor), which was given to the Minister-President of Prussia Otto von Bismarck. In 1871 the North German Confederation transformed into the German Empire, with the federal chancellor becoming Reichskanzler (imperial chancellor). The office of Reichskanzler continued under the constitution of the Weimar Republic. In Nazi Germany the office of Reichskanzler was never formally abolished, but instead combined with the office of Reichspräsident. In 1949, after World War II, the Basic Law of the Federal Republic of Germany, aka West Germany, revived the office of Bundeskanzler. The reunification of Germany continued the Basic Law of the Federal Republic for the reunited German state, including the office of chancellor.
  
  The role of chancellor has varied during different eras. From 1867 to 1918, the chancellor was the only responsible minister at the federal level. He was appointed by the Bundespräsidium, (i.e. the King of Prussia; the Emperor of Germany from 1871). The state secretaries (Staatssekretäre) were civil servants subordinate to the chancellor and similar to ministers. Besides his executive duties, the constitution gave the chancellor only one function: presiding over the Bundesrat (Federal Council), the representative organ of the various German states. The chancellor was also nearly always Minister President of Prussia, which was the largest and dominant state in the Empire. Indirectly, this gave him the power of the Bundesrat, including to dissolve the parliament and call for elections.
  
  Although effective government was possible only in cooperation with the Reichstag, the results of the elections had at most an indirect influence on the chancellorship. Only by October 1918 on the verge of disastrous defeat in the First World War, was the Empire's 1871 constitution changed and reformed, to require that the chancellor have the confidence of parliament (as in the British Parliament and other European parliamentary democracies). Some two weeks later, Chancellor Max von Baden declared the abdication of the emperor Wilhelm II of the Hohenzollern dynasty, who then left Germany with his family for exile.
  
  Following the defeat a new post-war democratic Republican government was set up by the popularly elected Weimar National Assembly, which met in the historic town of Weimar in 1919/20. According to the Weimar constitution, the chancellor was head of a collegial democratic government. The chancellor was appointed by the new president of Germany (Reich President), as were the subordinate ministers of various portfolios (departments / agencies) on the chancellor's recommendation. The chancellor or any minister had to be dismissed if Reichstag) demanded it. As today, the chancellor had the prerogative to determine the policy direction of government. In reality this power was limited by the needs of coalition governments of the several major political parties (and numerous smaller minor ones) plus the powers of the Reich President. Cabinet decisions were taken by majority vote. Under the circumstances, much like his French counterpart, the Weimar-era chancellor was as much the chairman of the cabinet as he was its leader.
  
  On 30 January 1933, Adolf Hitler of the Nazi Party, the biggest party in parliament, was appointed chancellor by President Paul von Hindenburg. Subsequently, the 1919 Weimar Constitution was de facto set aside. After Hindenburg's death in 1934, Hitler arrogated to himself the powers of the President. The new official title became Führer und Reichskanzler (meaning "Leader and Chancellor of the Reich").
  
  The 1949 constitution gave the chancellor greater powers than during the Weimar Republic of the 1920s and early 1930s, while strongly diminishing the role of the federal president. Germany is today often referred to as a "chancellor democracy", reflecting the role of the chancellor as the country's chief executive.
  
  Since 1867, 33 people have served as heads of government of the German Empire, First German Republic (Weimar Republic), National Socialist Germany (Nazi Germany), Federal Republic of Germany (West Germany) / German Democratic Republic (East Germany) or the earlier North German Confederation of 1867–1871, then the current reunified, revived and expanded Federal Republic of Germany - nearly all of them with the title of Chancellor as the elected head of government.
  
  In the now-defunct communist East Germany, which also existed in a parallel life, first occupied in the eastern Soviet Zone (including a similar wedge of the former German capital of Berlin after World War II by the Red Army of the Soviet Union, which dominated East Germany from 7 October 1949 to 3 October 1990 (when the territory of the former GDR was reunified with the western Federal Republic of Germany), the position of chancellor did not exist. The equivalent position of head of government there was called either Minister President (Ministerpräsident) or the chairman of the Council of Ministers of the GDR (Vorsitzender des Ministerrats der DDR), which was the second powerful position under General Secretary of the Socialist Unity Party of Germany (See Leaders of East Germany).