Reich Chancellor applies to jurisdiction German Reich
Chancellor of the German Reich
Under the Emperor (1871–1918)
In the 1871 German Empire, the Reichskanzler ("Imperial Chancellor") served both as the emperor's first minister and as presiding officer of the Bundesrat, the upper chamber of the German parliament. He was neither elected by nor responsible to Parliament (the Reichstag). Instead, the chancellor was appointed by the emperor.
The federal level had four organs:the king of Prussia in his federal constitutional role as bearer of the Bundespräsidium, since 1871 with the title of emperor
the federal council (Bundesrat), consisting of representatives of the federal states and presided over by the chancellor
the parliament, called der Reichstag
the federal executive, first led by Otto von Bismarck, the Minister President of Prussia, as chancellor.Technically, the foreign ministers of the empire's states instructed their states' deputies to the Bundesrat and therefore outranked the chancellor. For this reason, Prince Bismarck (as he was from 1871 onwards) continued to serve as both minister president and foreign minister of Prussia for virtually his entire tenure as chancellor of the empire, since he wanted to continue to exercise the power. Because Prussia controlled seventeen votes in the Bundesrat, Bismarck could effectively control the proceedings by making deals with the smaller states.
The term chancellor signalled the seemingly low priority of this institution compared to the governments of the German states, because the new chancellor of the federal empire should not be a full-fledged prime minister, in contrast to the heads of the states. 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 federation, and then empire, as it was formed in 1867 and 1871, was deliberately different from the Imperial Ministry of the revolutionary years 1848–49, which had been led by a prime minister elected by the National Assembly.
In 1871, the concept of the federal chancellor was transferred to the executive of the newly formed German Empire, which now also contained the South German states. Here too, the terms of "chancellor" and "federal agency" (as opposed to "ministry" or "government") suggested an (apparent) lower priority of the federal executive as compared to the governments of the federal states. For this reason, neither the chancellor nor the leaders of the imperial departments under his command used the title of Minister until 1918.
The constitution of Germany was altered on 29 October 1918, when the parliament was given the right to dismiss the chancellor. However, the change could not prevent the outbreak of a revolution a few days later.