The German presidents, who can be elected to two consecutive five-year terms, have wide discretion about how they exercise their official duties.

[7] This distance from day-to-day politics and daily governmental issues allows the president to be a source of clarification, to influence public debate, voice criticism, offer suggestions, and make proposals.

The convention consists of all Bundestag members, as well as an equal number of electors elected by the state legislatures in proportion to their respective populations.

The resignation of Horst Köhler in 2010, which necessitated an early meeting of the Federal Convention, brought this tradition to an end.

For example, in 2010, Wulff was expected to win on the first ballot, as the parties supporting him (CDU, CSU and FDP) had a stable absolute majority in the Federal Convention.

Nevertheless, he failed to win a majority in the first and second ballots, while his main opponent Joachim Gauck had an unexpectedly strong showing.

The office of president is open to all Germans who are entitled to vote in Bundestag elections and have reached the age of 40, but no one may serve more than two consecutive five-year terms.

This means that the president does not have to take the oath at the moment of entering office in order to be able to exercise its constitutional powers.

In practice, the oath is usually administered during the first days or weeks of a president's term on a date convenient for a joint session of the Bundestag and the Bundesrat.

However, according to Article 58 of the German constitution, the decrees, and directives of the president require the countersignature of the chancellor or the corresponding federal minister in charge of the respective field of politics.

This rule ensures the coherence of government action, similar to the system of checks and balances in the United States.

If there is no majority, the President has seven days to either appoint the person who received a plurality of votes on the final ballot or dissolve the Bundestag.

However, after the "Jamaica coalition" talks failed in the wake of the 2017 election, President Steinmeier invited several Bundestag party leaders to try to bring them together to form a working government.

Unlike the head of state in Westminster system parliamentary democracies, the President does not have the reserve power to unilaterally dissolve the Bundestag.

The second has been used to call snap elections in 1972, 1983, 2005, and 2025, in all four cases with the incumbent chancellor asking his own party to vote down the confidence motion and obtaining a dissolution.

If the Bundestag refuses to approve the draft, the cabinet can ask the federal president to declare a "legislative state of emergency" (Gesetzgebungsnotstand) with regard to that specific law proposal.

This means that the six months are not a period in which the government together with the president and the Federal Council simply replaces the Bundestag as lawgiver.

The very fact that a president is expected to remain above politics usually means that when they do speak out on an issue, it is considered to be of great importance.

[21] According to article 81 of the German constitution, the president can declare a "Legislation Emergency" and allow the federal government and the Bundesrat to enact laws without the approval of the Bundestag.

Once the Bundestag or the Bundesrat impeaches the president, the Federal Constitutional Court is charged with determining if they are guilty of the offence.

Its top official, who takes precedence over all other German state secretaries, is the Head of the Office of the President (Chef des Bundespräsidialamts).

[27] The position of president of Germany was first established by the Weimar Constitution, which was drafted in the aftermath of World War I and the abdication of Emperor Wilhelm II in 1918.

Adolf Hitler ruled Germany as "Führer und Reichskanzler", combining his previous positions in the party and government.

However, he did officially become president;[28] the office was not abolished (though the constitutionally mandated presidential elections every seven years did not take place in the Nazi era) and briefly revived at the end of World War II when Hitler appointed Grand Admiral Karl Dönitz as his successor as "President of Germany".

If there was a threat to "public order and security", he could, with the co-signature of the chancellor (per article 50), suspend civil rights and legislate by decree.

The use of a proportional electoral system without thresholds allowed the rise of a multitude of political parties which made it difficult for any of them to establish stable coalitions.

[33] Brüning's term in office was the beginning of the rule by decree which marked the three presidential cabinets that preceded Adolf Hitler's chancellorship.

[34] The German Democratic Republic established the office of a head of state with the title of President of the Republic (German: Präsident der Republik) in 1949, but abandoned the office with the death of the first president, Wilhelm Pieck, in 1960 in favour of a collective head of state closely modelled on its Soviet counterpart.

Following the end of communist rule due to the Peaceful Revolution, the head of state became the parliamentary speaker with new, fair elections.

With the promulgation of the Grundgesetz in 1949, the office of President of the Federal Republic (in German: Bundespräsident) was created in West Germany.