A Prussian cabinet order of 8 September 1852 regulated the position of the minister-president toward the other ministers. In March 1890 Kaiser Wilhelm II demanded that Otto von Bismarck draft an order to repeal it. Bismarck refused. In his letter of resignation of 18 March 1890 he argued that unified policy was impossible wenn jeder einzelne Minister allerhöchste Anordnungen extrahieren kann, if each individual minister can extract orders from the monarch. He wrote that he was außerstande, Euerer Majestät Befehl auszuführen, unable to carry out Your Majesty’s command. The dispute over the order was the formal occasion of his dismissal. The two men were also divided over social policy and the Social Democrats.
politics
A Low Point in Federal Culture
In April 2021 the federal government took over part of the Covid rules from the states. Under the Bundesnotbremse, the federal emergency brake, curfews, contact limits and other measures applied automatically in any district where the seven-day incidence was above 100 on three consecutive days. The Bundestag passed the law on 21 April 2021. The next day the Bundesrat, the chamber of the states, let it pass. Its president, Reiner Haseloff, the premier of Saxony-Anhalt, said: Der heutige Tag ist für mich ein Tiefpunkt in der föderalen Kultur der Bundesrepublik Deutschland. For me, today is a low point in the federal culture of the Federal Republic of Germany. An objection by the states, he said, would only have delayed the law, not improved or prevented it. The law expired on 30 June 2021.
The Ban on Cooperation
Since the federalism reform of 2006, the Basic Law has kept the federal government out of the states’ school policy, in particular by not allowing it to finance education measures. Germans call this the Kooperationsverbot, the ban on cooperation. To let federal money flow into school digitalization, the Basic Law had to be amended. The Bundesrat approved the change unanimously on 15 March 2019. Even now, the federal government may help the states only with investments in municipal education infrastructure and with temporary spending directly tied to them. In a 2020 survey by the ifo Institute, 60 percent of respondents said the federal government should in principle make the important decisions in education policy.
Portfolio Against Guidelines
In June 2018 the interior minister, Horst Seehofer, wanted to turn back certain asylum seekers at the German border. Chancellor Angela Merkel wanted a European solution. Seehofer’s party, the CSU, argued that the minister’s responsibility for his own portfolio took precedence, and that he could act alone if necessary. Lawyers debated how far the chancellor’s Richtlinienkompetenz, her power to set the guidelines of policy, reached into a minister’s portfolio. Seehofer said: Mir gegenüber hat sie mit der Richtlinienkompetenz nicht gewedelt. She did not wave the guideline power at me.
The Central Bank Takes No Instructions
The Bundesbank Act says that the German central bank, in exercising its powers, is von Weisungen der Bundesregierung unabhängig, independent of instructions from the federal government. In 1956 Chancellor Konrad Adenauer attacked an interest rate increase by the Bundesbank’s predecessor in a speech to industrialists in Cologne. Das Fallbeil trifft die kleinen Leute. The guillotine falls on the little people. Later, according to a Bundesbank president of the time, Chancellor Helmut Schmidt said at almost every meeting with the bank: Sie werden doch nicht schon wieder die Zinsen erhöhen! Surely you are not going to raise interest rates again!
Twelve Dead and Divided Responsibility
On 19 December 2016 Anis Amri carried out an attack on the Christmas market at Breitscheidplatz in Berlin. Twelve people died. A committee of inquiry of the Bundestag examined files from the security and investigating agencies of the federal government and all 16 states. In its report of June 2021 it found failures in the exchange of information and in coordination between federal and state security agencies. It also found a Zersplitterung staatsanwaltschaftlicher Zuständigkeiten, a fragmentation of the prosecutors’ responsibilities. None of the individual misjudgments, the committee said, weighed especially heavily on its own. Much of the failure lay in the gaps between the areas of responsibility.
Subsidiarity
Subsidiarität, subsidiarity, means that what a smaller unit can do by itself should not be taken over by a larger one. A common short form is so niedrig wie möglich, so hoch wie nötig, as low as possible, as high as necessary. The classic formulation is in the papal encyclical Quadragesimo anno of 1931, which the Jesuit Oswald von Nell-Breuning and Gustav Gundlach drafted. The larger community may support the smaller one, but it darf sie aber niemals zerschlagen oder aufsaugen, may never smash or absorb it. Under Article 23 of the Basic Law, Germany takes part in building a European Union that is committed to the principle. German youth welfare law gives recognized independent providers priority over public ones.
The Ministry’s Own Rule
In August 2013 the Federal Ministry of Labor agreed new rules for its more than 1,100 employees. They may be disturbed in their free time only in begründeten Ausnahmefällen, in justified exceptional cases. Im Urlaub dürfen die Chefs ihre Untergebenen grundsätzlich nicht in Anspruch nehmen. During holidays, bosses may in principle not call on their subordinates. Employees who are not reachable in their free time are not to be disadvantaged. The year before, the minister, Ursula von der Leyen, had said: In der Freizeit sollte Funkstille herrschen. In free time there should be radio silence.
The Chancellor at the Supermarket
Throughout her years as chancellor, Angela Merkel was known for doing her own shopping. In March 2020, at the start of the Covid crisis, she was seen shopping in a supermarket in Berlin-Mitte. In February 2022, after she had left office, her wallet was stolen while she was shopping in Berlin.
With Respect, Mr. President
On 18 October 1984 the vice president of the Bundestag, Richard Stücklen, excluded the Green member Joschka Fischer from the session. Fischer said to him: Mit Verlaub, Herr Präsident, Sie sind ein Arschloch! With respect, Mr. President, you are an asshole. Stücklen excluded him for two sitting days. Even as an insult, it keeps every element of formal address: the formula of respect, the title and Sie.