Senate of Berlin
Encyclopedia
The Senate of Berlin is the executive body governing the city of Berlin
Berlin
Berlin is the capital city of Germany and is one of the 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.45 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city proper and the seventh most populous urban area in the European Union...

, which at the same time is a state
States of Germany
Germany is made up of sixteen which are partly sovereign constituent states of the Federal Republic of Germany. Land literally translates as "country", and constitutionally speaking, they are constituent countries...

 of Germany
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...

. According to the Constitution of Berlin the Senate consists of the Governing Mayor of Berlin
Governing Mayor of Berlin
The Governing Mayor of Berlin is the head of government in the city-state of Berlin, one of the States of Germany. It is the equivalent of the Ministers-President of the other German states except the two other city-states of Hamburg and Bremen, where the heads of government are called "First...

 and up to eight Senators appointed by the Governing Mayor, two of whom are appointed (Deputy) Mayors. The Senate meets weekly at the Rotes Rathaus
Rotes Rathaus
The Red City Hall is the town hall of Berlin, located in the Mitte district on Rathausstraße near Alexanderplatz. It is the home to the governing mayor and the government of the Federal state of Berlin...

(Red Town Hall).

History

Until 1933 Berlin (expanded to Greater Berlin in 1920) was governed by a Magistrat (compulsorily dissolved by Nazi act on 15 March 1933), which was the executive committee of the Stadtverordnetenversammlung (city council; last convened on 27 June 1933) and was represented in each of the boroughs of Berlin by a local office (usually housed in the town hall of a formerly independent suburb). The council was headed by a Lord Mayor, or Oberbürgermeister. Lord Mayor Heinrich Sahm
Heinrich Sahm
Heinrich Friedrich Wilhelm Martin Sahm , no party affiliation, was a German lawyer, mayor and statesman from the Free City of Danzig....

, elected in 1931, remained in office, and joined the NSDAP in November 1933, but resigned in 1935. His power totally depended on Julius Lippert
Julius Lippert (politician)
Julius Lippert was a German politician in the Nazi party.Born in Basel, Switzerland, he became an extreme anti-Semite in his youth after reading the anti-Semitic philosophers Joseph Arthur Comte de Gobineau and Houston Stewart Chamberlain...

, on 25 March 1933 appointed as Prussian State Commissioner for Berlin. So Berlin was de facto under the ultimate governance of the Nazi regime.

After the defeat of Nazi Germany
Nazi Germany
Nazi Germany , also known as the Third Reich , but officially called German Reich from 1933 to 1943 and Greater German Reich from 26 June 1943 onward, is the name commonly used to refer to the state of Germany from 1933 to 1945, when it was a totalitarian dictatorship ruled by...

, Berlin was to be under the ultimate governance of the Four Powers, the Allied victors. However, in the election of 20 October 1946, the city elected an SPD
Social Democratic Party of Germany
The Social Democratic Party of Germany is a social-democratic political party in Germany...

-majority Stadtverordnetenversammlung and an SPD mayor (Otto Ostrowski
Otto Ostrowski
Otto Ostrowski was a German politician of the Social Democratic Party of Germany and Mayor of Berlin in 1946–1947....

, resigned 1947). The second elected SPD mayor, the devoted anti-communist Ernst Reuter
Ernst Reuter
Ernst Rudolf Johannes Reuter was the German mayor of West Berlin from 1948 to 1953, during the time of the Cold War.- Early years :...

, was vetoed by the Soviet commander, so Louise Schroeder
Louise Schroeder
Louise Dorothea Schroeder was a German politician of the Social Democratic Party of Germany party. She was the first female member of the Weimar National Assembly during the Weimar Republic...

 (SPD) officiated as only acting lord mayor. The Western allies permitted the Berlin SPD to hold a referendum on whether to merge with the Communist party to form a unified single party of the left, the Socialist Unity Party
Socialist Unity Party of Germany
The Socialist Unity Party of Germany was the governing party of the German Democratic Republic from its formation on 7 October 1949 until the elections of March 1990. The SED was a communist political party with a Marxist-Leninist ideology...

, as realised under pressure in the Soviet occupation zone of Germany, and the members voted against the merger. This was unacceptable to the Soviets, who engineered the establishment of an alternative city council in the sector under their direct control. Following the Berlin Blockade
Berlin Blockade
The Berlin Blockade was one of the first major international crises of the Cold War and the first resulting in casualties. During the multinational occupation of post-World War II Germany, the Soviet Union blocked the Western Allies' railway and road access to the sectors of Berlin under Allied...

, the Soviet sector (which became known as East Berlin
East Berlin
East Berlin was the name given to the eastern part of Berlin between 1949 and 1990. It consisted of the Soviet sector of Berlin that was established in 1945. The American, British and French sectors became West Berlin, a part strongly associated with West Germany but a free city...

 (and the capital of the German Democratic Republic
German Democratic Republic
The German Democratic Republic , informally called East Germany by West Germany and other countries, was a socialist state established in 1949 in the Soviet zone of occupied Germany, including East Berlin of the Allied-occupied capital city...

 as of 1949) and the three western sectors (British, French, and U.S.) were functionally separated following the Communist putsch in Berlin's city government in September 1948 (a situation formalised in the Four Power Agreement on Berlin
Four Power Agreement on Berlin
The Four Power Agreement on Berlin also known as the Berlin Agreement or the Quadripartite Agreement on Berlin was agreed on 3 September 1971 by the four wartime allied powers, represented by their Ambassadors...

 of 1971).

Under the new constitution of West Berlin
West Berlin
West Berlin was a political exclave that existed between 1949 and 1990. It comprised the western regions of Berlin, which were bordered by East Berlin and parts of East Germany. West Berlin consisted of the American, British, and French occupation sectors, which had been established in 1945...

 which came into force on 1 September 1950, Berlin was defined as a state of the Federal Republic of Germany; however, due to the Allied veto, its representatives in the federal parliament
Bundestag
The Bundestag is a federal legislative body in Germany. In practice Germany is governed by a bicameral legislature, of which the Bundestag serves as the lower house and the Bundesrat the upper house. The Bundestag is established by the German Basic Law of 1949, as the successor to the earlier...

 (and later in the European parliament
European Parliament
The European Parliament is the directly elected parliamentary institution of the European Union . Together with the Council of the European Union and the Commission, it exercises the legislative function of the EU and it has been described as one of the most powerful legislatures in the world...

) were not directly elected by the citizenry, but appointed by the Berlin parliament (Abgeordnetenhaus)
Abgeordnetenhaus von Berlin
The Abgeordnetenhaus of Berlin is the state parliament for the German state of Berlin, according to the state's constitution. The parliament is based at the building on Niederkirchnerstraße in Mitte which until 1934 was the seat of the lower house of the Preußischer Landtag...

 and had no voting power, but a merely advisory vote in those parliaments. On the model of the two Hanseatic city-state
City-state
A city-state is an independent or autonomous entity whose territory consists of a city which is not administered as a part of another local government.-Historical city-states:...

s within the Federal Republic, Hamburg
Hamburg
-History:The first historic name for the city was, according to Claudius Ptolemy's reports, Treva.But the city takes its modern name, Hamburg, from the first permanent building on the site, a castle whose construction was ordered by the Emperor Charlemagne in AD 808...

 and Bremen
Bremen (state)
The Free Hanseatic City of Bremen is the smallest of Germany's 16 states. A more informal name, but used in some official contexts, is Land Bremen .-Geography:...

, the Berlin Senate, chosen by the parties represented in the Berlin parliament, was established to perform the functions of a state government, with each of its members heading a department, equivalent to a state ministry, and a Regierender Bürgermeister (Governing or Executive Mayor
Governing Mayor of Berlin
The Governing Mayor of Berlin is the head of government in the city-state of Berlin, one of the States of Germany. It is the equivalent of the Ministers-President of the other German states except the two other city-states of Hamburg and Bremen, where the heads of government are called "First...

) at its head and one Bürgermeister as his/her deputy. In the 1950 constitution the maximum number of senators was 16, then each elected by the parliament, but the first Senate had 13.

Thus, following the Hanseatic tradition, the lord mayor was only primus inter pares
Primus inter pares
Primus inter pares is Latin phrase describing the most senior person of a group sharing the same rank or office.When not used in reference to a specific title, it may indicate that the person so described is formally equal, but looked upon as an authority of special importance by their peers...

 since he and all senators had an elective mandate, so the lord mayor could not dismiss any senator, but only the parliament could. Anyway until 1990 the elected candidates gained any legal power as lord mayor and the senators only after their confirmation by the western Allied commanders of West Berlin. Since the building then used as town hall of Berlin, Neues Stadthaus, and the old Rotes Rathaus
Rotes Rathaus
The Red City Hall is the town hall of Berlin, located in the Mitte district on Rathausstraße near Alexanderplatz. It is the home to the governing mayor and the government of the Federal state of Berlin...

 (Red Town Hall) destroyed and only reconstructed until 1956, were both in East Berlin, the Senate met at the former town hall of Schöneberg
Schöneberg
Schöneberg is a locality of Berlin, Germany. Until Berlin's 2001 administrative reform it was a separate borough including the locality of Friedenau. Together with the former borough of Tempelhof it is now part of the new borough of Tempelhof-Schöneberg....

, Rathaus Schöneberg
Rathaus Schöneberg
Rathaus Schöneberg is the city hall for the Borough of Tempelhof-Schöneberg in Berlin.-History:It was constructed between 1911–1914 for Schöneberg, at that time an independent city not yet incorporated into Berlin, which took place in 1920....

.

During the transition to a reunified Germany
German reunification
German reunification was the process in 1990 in which the German Democratic Republic joined the Federal Republic of Germany , and when Berlin reunited into a single city, as provided by its then Grundgesetz constitution Article 23. The start of this process is commonly referred by Germans as die...

in 1990, a new Magistrat was elected in East Berlin and the Senate appointed in West Berlin, and they ruled jointly as a Landesregierung aus Senat und Magistrat (state government of Senate and Magistrat, known popularly as the MagiSenat), which initially met in alternate weeks at the Schöneberg town hall and the Red Town Hall. The Oberbürgermeister (East) and the Regierender Bürgermeister (West) similarly headed the government jointly.

With the completion of reunification on 3 October 1990, the MagiSenat became a unified Berlin Senate, not depending on Allied confirmation anymore, and which was reduced to a maximum of 8 members and senators are now appointed by the Governing Mayor (1995 amendment of the constitution); also, there are now two Deputy Mayors instead of one. The senate meets in the room in the Red Town Hall which was originally created for the Magistrat in the 1950s.

External links

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