The current officeholder is Olaf Scholz of the Social Democratic Party, who was elected in December 2021, succeeding Angela Merkel.

The modern office of chancellor was established with the beginning of the North German Confederation in 1867, after the Prussian Army's decisive military victory in the brief Austro-Prussian War of 1866 over the rival Austrian Empire.

With the enlargement of this short-lived federal state to the newly unified and established German Empire ("Second Reich") in 1871, the title was renamed to Reichskanzler (meaning "Imperial Chancellor").

Due to his administrative tasks, the head of the clerics at the chapel of an Kaiserpfalz during the Carolingian Empire (AD 800–887), beginning with first the king of the Franks, Charlemagne, was also called chancellor (from Latin: cancellarius).

In 1559, Emperor Ferdinand I established the agency of an imperial chancellery (Reichshofkanzlei) at the Vienna's Hofburg Palace, headed by a vice chancellor under the nominal authority of the Mainz archbishop.

Upon the 1620 Battle of White Mountain, Emperor Ferdinand II created the office of an Archduchy of Austria court chancellor in charge of the internal and foreign affairs of the ruling dynasty of the Habsburg monarchy.

The imperial chancellery lost its importance, and from the days of Queen Maria Theresa and Holy Roman Emperor Joseph II, merely existed on paper.

Besides his executive duties, the constitution gave the chancellor only one function: presiding over the German Empire's upper legislative chamber of the Bundesrat (Federal Council), the representative organ of the various German states (which together with the Reichstag was the Reich's lower legislative chamber and major lawmaking body).

Some two weeks later, Chancellor Max von Baden declared the abdication of the emperor / kaiser Wilhelm II of the Hohenzollern dynasty, who then left Germany with his family for exile in the neighboring Kingdom of the Netherlands.

Although he lacked the constitutional authority, the last imperial chancellor handed over his office to Friedrich Ebert, (leader of the anti-war Social Democratic Party who the next day became co-chairman of the temporary revolutionary Council of the People's Deputies, to attempt to govern Germany in the crisis aftermath of the war reversals and seek an armistice / peace with the attacking / invading Allies of World War I, which was attained in the Armistice of 11 November 1918 on the Western Front in occupied northern France and Belgium.

The 1949 constitution gave the chancellor much greater powers than during the Weimar Republic of the 1920s and early 1930s, while strongly diminishing the role of the federal president.

The equivalent position of head of government there was called either Minister President (Ministerpräsident) or the Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the GDR (Vorsitzender des Ministerrats der DDR), which was the second powerful position under General Secretary of the Socialist Unity Party of Germany (See Leaders of East Germany).

The head of the loose federal government of the brief North German Confederation, which was created on 1 July 1867, had the title Bundeskanzler.

The only person to hold the office for those three years was Otto von Bismarck, the serving minister president of the Kingdom of Prussia.

Chancellor Bismarck served under the king of Prussia of the Hohenzollern royal dynasty, then William I, holder of the Bundespräsidium, appointed him on 14 July 1867.

The title of chancellor additionally symbolized a strong monarchist, bureaucratic, and ultimately antiparliamentary component, as in the Prussian tradition of, for instance, Hardenberg.

In both of these aspects, the executive of the earlier confederation, and then empire, as it was formed in 1867 and 1871, was deliberately different from the previous Imperial Ministry of the German revolutionary years of 1848–1849, which had been led by a prime minister elected by the National Assembly.

The constitution of the German Empire was reformed / altered on 29 October 1918, when the parliament Reichstag and Bundesrat was given the right to dismiss the chancellor.

Ebert continued to serve as head of government during the three months between the abdication of Kaiser Wilhelm II and the end of the German Empire in November 1918, the beginning of the November 11, 1918 Armistice, and the first gathering behind the Western Front battle lines and trenches of the new National Assembly of the German Republic (Weimar Republic) several months later in the town of Weimar, in February 1919, but Ebert did not then use the title of chancellor.

During that time, Ebert also served as chairman of the "Council of the People's Deputies", until a month and half later on 29 December 1918 together with the allied Independent Social Democrat party leader Hugo Haase, who unfortunately died later that next year in November 1919.

On 30 April 1945, when Hitler committed suicide, he was briefly succeeded as Chancellor by Joseph Goebbels and as President of Germany by Grand Admiral Karl Dönitz.

When Goebbels also committed suicide, Dönitz appointed Count Schwerin von Krosigk as head of government with the title "Leading Minister".

Whichever major party (CDU/CSU or SPD) does not hold the chancellorship usually calls its leading candidate for the federal election "chancellor-candidate" (Kanzlerkandidat).

The first chancellor, Konrad Adenauer, set many precedents that continue today and established the chancellorship as the clear focus of power in Germany.

Under the provisions of the Basic Law giving him the power to set guidelines for all fields of policy, Adenauer arrogated nearly all major decisions to himself.

The president formally appoints and dismisses cabinet ministers, on the recommendation of the chancellor; no parliamentary approval is needed.

According to the Basic Law, the chancellor may set the number of cabinet ministers and dictate their specific duties.

Article 65 of the Basic Law sets forth three principles that define how the executive branch functions: Political party:

The current vice chancellor of Germany is Robert Habeck, who also serves as Minister for Economic Affairs and Climate Protection in the Scholz cabinet.

Under Adenauer, the government had also acquired a villa in Dahlem in 1962, a suburban district of southwestern Berlin, as a pied-a-terre of the chancellors in West-Berlin.