Chancellor of Germany

The Chancellor of Germany is the head of government of Germany. The official title in German is Bundeskanzler(-in) (literally, Federal Chancellor), sometimes shortened to Kanzler(-in). The term, dating from the early Middle Ages, is derived from the Latin term cancellarius.

In German politics the Chancellor is equivalent to that of a prime minister in many other countries. German has two equivalent translations of prime minister, Premierminister and Ministerpräsident. While Premierminister usually refers to heads of governments of foreign countries (e.g., Great Britain), Ministerpräsident may also refer to the heads of government of most German states.

The current Chancellor is Angela Merkel, who is serving her third term in office. She is the first female chancellor, thus being known in German as Bundeskanzlerin. That particular word was never used officially before Merkel, but it is a grammatically regular formation of a noun denoting a female chancellor.

The modern office of Chancellor evolved from the position created for Otto von Bismarck in the North German Confederation in 1867; the Confederation evolved into a German nation-state with the 1871 Unification of Germany. The role of the Chancellor has varied greatly throughout Germany's modern history. Today, the Chancellor is widely considered to be the country's effective leader.

West Germany

West Germany is the common English name for the Federal Republic of Germany or FRG (German: Bundesrepublik Deutschland or BRD) in the period between its creation on 23 May 1949 to German reunification on 3 October 1990. This period is referred to as the Bonn Republic (German: Bonner Republik) by academic historians, an earlier term being the Bonn State (German: Bonner Staat).

During this period NATO-aligned West Germany and Warsaw Pact-aligned East Germany were divided by the Inner German border. After 1961, West Berlin was physically separated from East Berlin as well as from East Germany by the Berlin Wall. This situation ended when East Germany was dissolved and its five states joined the ten states of the Federal Republic of Germany along with the reunified city-state of Berlin. With the reunification of West and East Germany, the Federal Republic of Germany, enlarged now to sixteen states, became known simply as "Germany".

The Federal Republic of Germany was established from eleven states formed in the three Allied Zones of occupation held by the United States, the United Kingdom and France (the "Western Zones"). Its population grew from roughly 51 million in 1950 to more than 63 million in 1990. The city of Bonn was its de facto capital city (Berlin was symbolically named the de jure capital city in the West German Basic Law). The fourth Allied occupation zone (the East Zone, or Ostzone) was held by the Soviet Union. The parts of this zone lying east of the Oder-Neisse were in fact annexed by the Soviet Union and communist Poland; the remaining central part around Berlin became the communist German Democratic Republic (abbreviated GDR; in German Deutsche Demokratische Republik or DDR) with its de facto capital in East Berlin. As a result, West Germany had a territory about half the size of the interbellum democratic Weimar Republic.

Chancellor

Chancellor (Latin: cancellarius) is a title of various official positions in the governments of many nations. The original chancellors were the cancellarii of Roman courts of justice—ushers, who sat at the cancelli or lattice work screens of a basilica or law court, which separated the judge and counsel from the audience. A chancellor's office is called a chancellery or chancery. The word is now used in the titles of many various officers in all kinds of settings (government, education, religion, etc.). Nowadays the term is most often used to describe:

Head of government

Ludwig Erhard

Ludwig Wilhelm Erhard (German: [ˈluːdvɪç ˈɛʁhaʁt]; 4 February 1897 – 5 May 1977) was a German politician affiliated with the CDU and Chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany (West Germany) from 1963 until 1966. He is often famed for leading German postwar economic reforms and economic recovery ("Wirtschaftswunder," German for "economic miracle") in his role as Minister of Economics under Chancellor Konrad Adenauer from 1949 to 1963. During that period he promoted the concept of the social market economy (soziale Marktwirtschaft), on which Germany's economic policy in the 21st century continues to be based. In his tenure as chancellor, however, Erhard failed to win confidence in his handling of a budget deficit and his direction of foreign policy, and his popularity waned. He resigned his chancellorship on 1 December 1966.

Life and work

Born in Fürth, Kingdom of Bavaria, Erhard was a commercial apprentice from 1913 to 1916. After his apprenticeship he worked as retail salesman in his father's draper's shop.

West

West is a noun, adjective, or adverb indicating direction or geography. West is one of the four cardinal directions or compass points. It is the opposite of east and is perpendicular to north and south.

Etymology

The word "West" is a Germanic word passed into some Romance languages (ouest in French, oest in Catalan, ovest in Italian, oeste in Spanish and Portuguese). As is apparent in the Gothic term vasi (Visigoths), it stems from the same Indo-European root that gave the Sanskrit vas-ati (night) and vesper (evening) in Latin.

Navigation

To go west using a compass for navigation, one needs to set a bearing or azimuth of 270°.

West is the direction opposite that of the Earth's rotation on its axis, and is therefore the general direction towards which the Sun appears to constantly progress and eventually set.

Moving continuously west is following a circle of latitude.

Cultural

The phrase "the West" is often spoken in reference to the Western world, which includes Canada, Australia, New Zealand, the European Union, and the United States of America.