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All 402 seats in theBundestag[a] 202 seats needed for a majority | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| Registered | 31,207,620 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Turnout | 78.5% | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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 The left side shows constituency winners of the election by their party colours. The right side shows party list winners of the election for the additional members by their party colours. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| This article is part of a series on the |
| Politics of Germany |
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Head of state |
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Federal elections were held inWest Germany on 14 August 1949 to elect the members of the firstBundestag,[1] with a further eight seats elected inWest Berlin between 1949 and January 1952 and another eleven between February 1952 and 1953.[1] They were the first free federal elections inWest Germany since1933 and the first after the division of the country.
The CDU/CSU formed a centre-right coalition government with the FDP and the DP.[2]
AfterWorld War II, theGerman Instrument of Surrender and the country's division into fourAllied occupation zones, the elections were held in the Federal Republic of Germany, established underoccupation statute in the three Western zones with the proclamation of itsBasic Law by theParlamentarischer Rat assembly of theWest German states on 23 May 1949. Most West German parties at the time of the 1949 Bundestag election were committed to democracy, but they disagreed on what kind of democracy West Germany should become.
TheChristian Democratic (CDU) leader, 73-year-oldKonrad Adenauer, former mayor ofCologne and party chairman in the British Zone since March 1946, believed in moderate, non-denominational and Christian democracy,[3][4]social market economy and integration with the West. In 1948 he had become president of theParlamentarischer Rat, an office that added to his popularity as protagonist of a "state-to-be". He attacked social democracy and the British, especially, dismantling of industry.[5]
TheSocial Democratic (SPD) leader,Kurt Schumacher, wanted a united, democratic and socialist Germany. Schumacher had heavily agitated againstthe forced merger of theCommunist Party (KPD) andSPD (both in theSoviet occupation zone) into theSocialist Unity Party of Germany and he had also turned the party's course away from the working class advocacy group of theWeimar Republic towards a left-wingbig tent party with distinct patriotic features. He constantly accused Adenauer of betraying national interests,[4] culminating in his heckling at the Bundestag session of 25 September 1949: "The Chancellor of the Allies!". Schumacher criticized the Catholic Church, calling it the fifth occupying power and criticized denominational education.[5]
In the end and to the great disappointment of the Social Democrats, the CDU/CSU outnumbered them by 31.0% to 29.2% of the votes cast. Enough participating West Germans favoured Adenauer's and hiscoalition partners' – the liberalFree Democrats' (FDP) and the conservativeGerman Party's (DP) – policies and promises over Schumacher's and the other left-wingers' policies to give the centre-right parties a slight majority of deputies.
To enter the Bundestag, a party had to surmount athreshold of 5% at least in one of the states or to win at least one electoral district; ten parties succeeded. A number of non-voting members (elected in 1949:2 CDU, 5 SPD, 1 FDP; joined in February 1952 by: 3 CDU, 4 SPD, 4 FDP) indirectly elected by theWest Berlin legislature (Stadtverordnetenversammlung) are included below in parentheses. The FrenchSaar Protectorate did not participate in this election.
41 of the members elected to the Bundestag wererefugees.[6]
 | ||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Party | Votes | % | Seats | |||||
| FPTP | PR | Total[e] | ||||||
| Social Democratic Party | 6,934,975 | 29.22 | 96 | 35 | 131 | |||
| Christian Democratic Union | 5,978,636 | 25.19 | 91 | 24 | 115 | |||
| Free Democratic Party | 2,829,920 | 11.92 | 12 | 40 | 52 | |||
| Christian Social Union | 1,380,448 | 5.82 | 24 | 0 | 24 | |||
| Communist Party of Germany | 1,361,706 | 5.74 | 0 | 15 | 15 | |||
| Bavaria Party | 986,478 | 4.16 | 11 | 6 | 17 | |||
| German Party | 939,934 | 3.96 | 5 | 12 | 17 | |||
| Centre Party | 727,505 | 3.07 | 0 | 10 | 10 | |||
| Economic Reconstruction Union | 681,888 | 2.87 | 0 | 12 | 12 | |||
| Deutsche Rechtspartei | 429,031 | 1.81 | 0 | 5 | 5 | |||
| Radical Social Freedom Party [de] | 216,749 | 0.91 | 0 | 0 | 0 | |||
| South Schleswig Voters' Association | 75,388 | 0.32 | 0 | 1 | 1 | |||
| European People's Movement of Germany [de] | 26,162 | 0.11 | 0 | 0 | 0 | |||
| Rheinish-Westfalian People's Party [de] | 21,931 | 0.09 | 0 | 0 | 0 | |||
| Independents | 1,141,647 | 4.81 | 3 | 0 | 3 | |||
| Total | 23,732,398 | 100.00 | 242 | 160 | 402 | |||
| Valid votes | 23,732,398 | 96.88 | ||||||
| Invalid/blank votes | 763,216 | 3.12 | ||||||
| Total votes | 24,495,614 | 100.00 | ||||||
| Registered voters/turnout | 31,207,620 | 78.49 | ||||||
| Source: Bundeswahlleiter[7] | ||||||||
| State | Total seats | Seats won | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| SPD | CDU | CSU | FDP | BP | DP | Ind. | ||
| Baden | 7 | 7 | ||||||
| Bavaria | 47 | 12 | 24 | 11 | ||||
| Bremen | 3 | 3 | ||||||
| Hamburg | 8 | 4 | 3 | 1 | ||||
| Hesse | 22 | 12 | 3 | 7 | ||||
| Lower Saxony | 34 | 24 | 4 | 1 | 5 | |||
| North Rhine-Westphalia | 66 | 25 | 40 | 1 | ||||
| Rhineland-Palatinate | 15 | 4 | 11 | |||||
| Schleswig-Holstein | 14 | 6 | 7 | 1 | ||||
| Württemberg-Baden | 20 | 5 | 11 | 2 | 2 | |||
| Württemberg-Hohenzollern | 6 | 1 | 5 | |||||
| Total | 242 | 96 | 91 | 24 | 12 | 11 | 5 | 3 |
| State | Total seats | Seats won | |||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| FDP | SPD | CDU | KPD | DP | WAV | DZP | BP | DRP | SSW | ||
| Baden | 5 | 2 | 3 | ||||||||
| Bavaria | 31 | 7 | 6 | 12 | 6 | ||||||
| Bremen | 2 | 1 | 1 | ||||||||
| Hamburg | 5 | 1 | 2 | 1 | 1 | ||||||
| Hesse | 14 | 5 | 1 | 6 | 2 | ||||||
| Lower Saxony | 24 | 4 | 8 | 7 | 5 | ||||||
| North Rhine-Westphalia | 43 | 9 | 12 | 3 | 9 | 10 | |||||
| Rhineland-Palatinate | 10 | 4 | 3 | 2 | 1 | ||||||
| Schleswig-Holstein | 9 | 2 | 2 | 1 | 3 | 1 | |||||
| Württemberg-Baden | 13 | 5 | 5 | 1 | 2 | ||||||
| Württemberg-Hohenzollern | 4 | 1 | 1 | 2 | |||||||
| Total | 160 | 40 | 35 | 24 | 15 | 12 | 12 | 10 | 6 | 5 | 1 |
Schumacher had explicitly refused agrand coalition and led his party into opposition, where it would remainuntil December 1966, assuming the chair of the SPD parliamentary group as minority leader. On 12 September 1949, he lost theGerman presidential election, defeated by FDP chairmanTheodor Heuss in the second ballot. Schumacher died on 20 August 1952 of the long-term consequences of hisconcentration camp imprisonment during theNazi years.
Adenauer had favoured the formation of a smaller centre-right coalition from the beginning. Nominated by the CDU/CSU faction, he was elected the firstChancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany on 15 September 1949 by an absolute majority of 202 of 402 votes. Adenauer had ensured that the votes of the predominantly Social Democrat West Berlin deputies did not count and later stated that he "naturally" had voted for himself.[8] On 20 September, he formed theCabinet Adenauer I of CDU/CSU, FDP, and DP ministers. Chosen as an interim Chancellor, he held the office until 1963, being re-elected three times (in 1953,in 1957 and in1961).
