The Bundestag (Federal Diet; pronounced [ˈbʊndəstaːk]) is a 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 was established by the German Basic Law of 1949, as the successor to the earlier Reichstag. Norbert Lammert is the current President of the Bundestag.

With the dissolution of the German Confederation in 1866 and the founding of the German Empire (Deutsches Reich) in 1871, the Reichstag was established as the German parliament in Berlin. Two decades later, the current parliament building was erected. The Reichstag delegates were elected by direct and equal male suffrage (and not the three-class electoral system prevailing in Prussia until 1918). The Reichstag did not participate in the appointment of the Chancellor until the parliamentary reforms of October 1918. After the Revolution of November 1918 and the establishment of the Weimar Constitution, women were given the right to vote for (and serve in) the Reichstag, and the parliament could use the no-confidence vote to force the chancellor or any cabinet member to resign. In March 1933, one month after the Reichstag fire, the then president, Paul von Hindenburg, a retired war hero, gave Hitler ultimate power through Enabling Act of 1933, he remained at the post of Federal Government Chancellor (though he called himself the Führer). After this the Reichstag met only rarely to unanimously rubber-stamp the decisions of the government. It last convened on 26 April 1942.

Wolfgang Schäuble [ˈvɔlfɡaŋ ˈʃɔʏblə] (born 18 September 1942) is a German politician of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), currently serving as the Federal Minister of Finance in the Second Cabinet Merkel.

From 1984 to 1991 he was a member of Helmut Kohl's cabinet, first as Federal Minister for Special Affairs of Germany and Chief of the Chancellery and then as Federal Minister of the Interior. Between 1991 and 2000, he was chairman of the CDU/CSU group in the parliament, and from 1998 to 2000 also CDU party chairman. He served again as Federal Minister of the Interior in the First Cabinet Merkel from 2005 to 2009.

Schäuble was born in Freiburg im Breisgau as the son of a tax finance advisor. After completing his Abitur in 1961, Schäuble studied law and economics in Freiburg im Breisgau and Hamburg, which he completed in 1966 and 1970 by passing the First and Second State Examinations respectively, becoming a fully qualified lawyer.

In 1971 Schäuble obtained his doctorate in law, with a dissertation called "The public accountant's professional legal situation within accountancy firms".

Dr. Gregor Gysi (German pronunciation: [ˈɡiːzi]; born 16 January 1948) is a German attorney and key politician of the socialist left-wing political party The Left (Die Linke). He played an important role in the end of communist rule in East Germany in 1989^{[citation needed]}, and was a main figure in the post-reunification Party of Democratic Socialism (PDS). He is well known for his rhetoric talent and is considered one of the best German public speakers.

Gysi was born in East Berlin, Soviet Zone of Germany. His father, Klaus Gysi, was a high-ranking official in East Germany, and had been Minister of Culture from 1966 to 1973. His mother, Irene, was the sister of political activist Gottfried Lessing, who was married to the British writer Doris Lessing during his exile in Southern Rhodesia. The surname "Gysi" is of Swiss-German origin. Both of his parents were of part Jewish ancestry; his paternal grandmother was Jewish, as was one of his maternal great-grandfathers. One of his maternal great-grandmothers was Russian.

Angela Dorothea Merkel, German: [aŋˈɡeːla doʁoˈteːa ˈmɛʁkl̩] ( listen); née Kasner (born 17 July 1954) is the Chancellor of Germany and Chairwoman of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU). Merkel is the first female Chancellor of Germany.

A physical chemist by professional background, Merkel entered politics in the wake of the Revolutions of 1989 and briefly served as the deputy spokesperson for Lothar de Maizière's democratically elected East German government prior to the German reunification. Following reunification in 1990, she was elected to the Bundestag, where she has represented the state of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern since. She served as Federal Minister for Women and Youth 1991–1994 and as Federal Minister for the Environment, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety 1994–1998 in Helmut Kohl's fourth and fifth cabinets. She was Secretary General of the CDU 1998–2000, and was elected chairperson in 2000. From 2002 to 2005, she was also chair of the CDU/CSU parliamentary coalition.

After her election as Chancellor following the 2005 federal election, she led a grand coalition consisting of her own CDU party, its Bavarian sister party, the Christian Social Union (CSU), and the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD), until 2009. In the 2009 federal election, the CDU obtained the largest share of the votes, and formed a coalition government with the CSU and the liberal Free Democratic Party (FDP).

Norbert Lammert (born 16 November 1948 in Bochum) is a German politician of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU). He has been the President of the Bundestag, the German parliament, since 2005.

Lammert attended gymnasium in Bochum where he studied classics. He obtained his abitur in 1967. He carried out military service in the Bundeswehr from 1967 to 1969. Following his military service he went on to the University of Bochum, which included a period abroad at the University of Oxford, where he studied political science and modern history. He went on to obtain his Ph.D. (Dr. rer. soc.) from the University of Bochum.

Having joined the CDU in 1966, he was deputy chairman of the Bochum branch of the CDU. After leading the North Rhine-Westphalia branch of the Junge Union (the youth organization of the CDU), he was elected to the Bundestag in 1980. During his tenure in the Bundestag he served on several committees.

Following the 2005 federal elections, Lammert was elected by the Bundestag on 18 October 2005 to replace Wolfgang Thierse of the Social Democratic Party (SPD) as its President. Lammert received 564 of 607 votes cast, including most of the SPD's votes. He was reelected to this post by the 17th Bundestag after the 2009 federal election.