Election of the German Federal President in 1959

Election of the German Federal President in 1959 - second ballot
Candidates				Votes in%
Heinrich Luebke			50.7
Carlo Schmid			37.2
Max Becker			9.5
Abstentions			2.1

Heinrich Luebke

Carlo Schmid (left) with Egon Bahr

On July 1, 1959, the 3rd Federal Assembly elected the previous Minister of Food, Heinrich Lübke, as the second Federal President. Federal Chancellor Konrad Adenauer initially wanted to run himself and informed the public about it in a radio address on April 8, 1959. “The position, the task and the work of the Federal President”, he explained, “is underestimated by the German public and thus also internationally. It is much bigger than you would think. ”Adenauer soon realized, however, that he was alone with this assessment and that he would not be able to prevent Ludwig Erhard as his successor in the Chancellery, whom he considered unsuitable. That is why he ultimately renounced the candidacy and justified this in a radio address on June 5, 1959, saying that "the foreign policy situation had meanwhile worsened". "With this development, I do not believe that I am responsible for leaving my current position as Federal Chancellor."

After long discussions, the CDU / CSU, which had 517 seats in the Federal Assembly, decided in favor of Lübke, who accordingly won 517 votes in the first ballot. In the second ballot he was able to prevail with 526 votes against Carlo Schmid, for whom, with 386 votes, as many were cast as the SPD had seats in the Federal Assembly. The candidate Max Becker of the FDP, which had 82 seats, was apparently also able to win a few of the 59 members of the smaller parties with 102 and 99 votes in the first and second ballots.

Berlin, July 1, 1959 - total number of votes 1038 - absolute majority 520

Ballot	candidate	Number of votes	proportion of	Political party
1st ballot	Heinrich Luebke	517	49.8%	CDU
	Carlo Schmid	385	37.1%	SPD
	Max Becker	104	10.0%	FDP
	Abstentions	25th	2.4%
	not matched	7th	0.7%
2nd ballot	Heinrich Luebke	526	50.7%	CDU
	Carlo Schmid	386	37.2%	SPD
	Max Becker	99	9.5%	FDP
	Abstentions	22nd	2.1%
	not submitted	5	0.5%
Heinrich Lübke was thus elected Federal President.

Web links

• Information about the Federal Assembly on the homepage of the Bundestag
• Stephan Detjen : The presidential crisis . In: Deutschlandfunk , May 24, 1999.
• Majid Sattar : Federal President: Between Adenauer and God. In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung , May 18, 2009.