Most of the German Basic Law can be changed with two-thirds of the Bundestag and two-thirds of the Bundesrat. Some of it cannot be changed at all. Article 79(3) says that an amendment is unzulässig, not permitted, if it touches the division of the federation into states, the participation of the states in making laws, or the principles laid down in Articles 1 and 20. Article 1 protects human dignity. Article 20 defines Germany as a democratic and social federal state under the rule of law. The clause answers the experience of the Nazi era, and above all the Enabling Act of 24 March 1933.
The Provisional Constitution That Stayed
In 1948 and 1949, the heads of the West German states avoided the word Verfassung, constitution, because they wanted to stress that the new order was provisional. They called it the Grundgesetz, the Basic Law. Its preamble said it would give dem staatlichen Leben für eine Übergangszeit eine neue Ordnung, a new order to the life of the state for a transitional period. It came into force in May 1949. In 1990, Article 146 offered the option of a new constitution for all of Germany. It was not used. East Germany joined the area where the Basic Law applied, and the reform efforts after unification ended with marginal changes in 1994. The provisional order is still in force. It has been amended about sixty times.
The National Anthem by Letter
Germany’s national anthem rests on an exchange of letters. In May 1952, after an exchange of letters between Chancellor Konrad Adenauer and President Theodor Heuss, the Lied der Deutschen became the official anthem of the Federal Republic, with one rule: Bei staatlichen Veranstaltungen soll die dritte Strophe gesungen werden. (At state events, the third verse is to be sung.) After unification, President Richard von Weizsäcker wrote to Chancellor Helmut Kohl on 19 August 1991 that the third verse ist die Nationalhymne für das deutsche Volk, is the national anthem of the German people. On 23 August 1991, Kohl agreed in writing, namens der Bundesregierung, on behalf of the federal government.
From Dictionary to Rule
On 7 July 1880, Konrad Duden, the head of a Gymnasium in Hersfeld, published his complete spelling dictionary of the German language in Leipzig. In June 1901, a conference in Berlin agreed on uniform spelling rules, and in 1902 the German Bundesrat, Austria and Switzerland put them into effect. It gave written German uniform rules across the three countries. In November 1955, the education ministers of the West German states declared the Duden binding in allen orthografischen Zweifelsfällen, in all doubtful cases of spelling. A private publisher’s dictionary had become the official order of the language. It stayed that way for four decades, until the reform of 1996 broke what Germans called the Duden monopoly.
The Book of Concord
After Luther’s death, his followers fell into theological disputes. On 25 June 1580, the fiftieth anniversary of the Augsburg Confession, the Konkordienbuch, the Book of Concord, appeared in Dresden in German. It already carried many signatures. As a body of doctrine, it was to give the Lutheran church a binding basis of faith. An earlier collection by Melanchthon from 1558 had not won general acceptance. Today, some Lutheran churches in Germany still name these writings as binding, and their pastors must commit to them at their ordination.
The People Have Spoken
Winfried Kretschmann of the Greens became head of government in Baden-Württemberg in 2011, and he had opposed the Stuttgart 21 rail project. On 27 November 2011, the state’s voters decided in a referendum that it should go ahead. The next day Kretschmann said: Das Volk hat gesprochen, und das akzeptiere ich, auch wenn es nicht meinem Wunsch entspricht. (The people have spoken, and I accept that, even though it is not what I wanted.) In an open letter to the public, answering those who still demanded that the station not be built, he wrote: Die Bahn darf Stuttgart 21 bauen. (The railway may build Stuttgart 21.) In a democracy, he wrote, politics and he himself as head of government no longer had the legitimacy das Projekt Stuttgart 21 dem Grunde nach immer und immer wieder in Frage zu stellen, to question the project in principle again and again.
School Peace
German politics has a word for an agreement not to reopen a school system: Schulfrieden, school peace. In December 2008, the SPD, the Greens, the CDU and the FDP in Bremen agreed to take no initiatives for ten years that would substantially change the school structure they had just reformed. The Bremen SPD chair argued in March 2018: Es war und ist richtig, den Streit über Schulstrukturen zu beenden. (It was and is right to end the dispute over school structures.) In 2018, the leaders of the SPD, CDU, Greens and Left agreed to continue the agreement. The structure was not to be touched in den kommenden zehn Jahren bis 2028, in the coming ten years, until 2028. In North Rhine-Westphalia, the red-green government and the CDU opposition agreed on a school peace in 2011 that was meant to hold until 2023. In August 2026, the CDU group in Bremen, now in opposition, called for a new agreement after 2028: Nicht der Konsens ist gescheitert – der Senat ist bislang an seinem Vollzug gescheitert. (The consensus has not failed. So far, the city government has failed to carry it out.)
The Coalition Agreement
A German coalition agreement cannot be enforced in court. The first one in the Federal Republic, in 1961, had fewer than ten pages. The agreement of 2018 had 175 pages, and the one of 2021 had 177. On 5 May 2025, CDU, CSU and SPD signed their agreement of 144 pages in Berlin. Before that, the SPD had put it to a vote of its members, and 84.6 percent of those who voted approved. In October 2025, the coalition argued about a pension package. The SPD leader Lars Klingbeil said that Labor Minister Bärbel Bas had implemented was im Koalitionsvertrag steht, what is in the coalition agreement. He said it was the job of the CDU/CSU group leader to make sure dass seine Fraktion das verabredete Paket mitträgt, that his group supports the agreed package. The Bundestag passed it on 5 December 2025.