Talk:List of presidents of Germany

message: I´m not happy with this problematic division of the list, because it suggests reunited germany is a new formed state. Formally in 1990 the six new states only joined the federal republic, which kept on existing as before (just like the united states remained the united states when new states joined the union). The subdivision in "Bonn Republic" and "Berlin Republic" is only a (very controversial!) historico-cultural narrative, which has no constitutional foundation (and the caesura would be 1999 and not 1990!). I would propose the following structure of the article:
Contents
1 Weimar Republic (1919–1933)
2 Nazi Germany (1933–1945)
3 German Democratic Republic (1949–1990)
4 Federal Republic (1949–present)
The old structure follows a false and unscientific conception of german history, that should not be supported in an encyclopedia. I hope, I find your agreement to revise the article in the proposed form.
Alektor89 (talk) 21:32, 15 August 2016 (UTC)
thread_title: Partitioned germany /Reunited germany

message: Two points about recent events involving this article:
#It's not appropriate to move an article from one title to another by doing a cut-and-paste. You lose the article history and so it's against Wikipedia policy. (Moves should also be discussed on this talkpage first in case there are objections.)
#I see no reason to exclude the information about presidents from the GDR. From 1949-1990 the East German heads of state are just as relevant as the presidents of the FRG. Leaders of the German Democratic Republic overlaps but it covers a slightly different topic because it's about all leaders of the GDR, not just heads of state.
Iota (talk) 02:02, 28 September 2009 (UTC)
thread_title: Moving this article

message: Honestly people, this list makes absolutely no sense at all. Comparing a Reichspräsident to a Bundespräsident is just as moronic as comparing a Roman Emperor to a Holy Roman Emperor. Yes, the titles may sound similar, but they're so very much not the same. In fact the fathers (and mothers) of the modern day German constitution went to great length to make sure that a Bundespräsident had virtually nothing at all to do with a Reichspräsident, much like the modern day Bundeskanzler doesn't have a lot in common with his Reichskanzler predecessors. Furthermore no - and I can't stress this point enough - absolutely, completely, totally NO German constitutional expert would ever draw a line from the offices of the Weimar Republic to those of the Federal Republic of Germany (or, for that matter, those of the GDR). Why? Because the Weimar Republic and the Federal Republic of Germany are two completely different political entities with absolutely no ties whatsoever.
So could somebody please stop creating legal and/or historical continuity where it doesn't exist? Because if not, I swear to you: I'll start an article called "America" and put absolutely everything in there, claiming continuity from the native american chieftains to the British King and the President of the United States. Sounds crazy? Well, so is this list!
--Eisenmaus (talk) 22:11, 20 February 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: Putting similarly named heads of state of the same state seems (and yes, that is the dominant view of German constitutional law - that there ist one nation state that existed since 1871), whose offices developed out of each other (which can be clearly deduced from the origins of the Basic Law of 1949), into one list seems way less moronic than shouting about it. Have fun with editing America. Str1977 (talk) 11:35, 30 June 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: Tell a German constitutional expert that there are "no ties whatsoever" to the legal system of the Weimar Republic... And I'd even think it making sense to make a list from Julius Caesar the Elder down to Blessed Charles of Austria and Hungary, and I think that Joseph Roth might emphatically agree. With a side note to the Greeks after 800. The French - though this may be a stereotype - wouldn't be all foreign to the idea of calling President Sarkozy a successor to not only St. Louis, Henry le Bon, Louis XVI or Hugo Capet, but even Charles the Great, Chlovis and Vercingetorix; and they as well wouldn't entirely be wrong. --93.133.219.196 (talk) 23:13, 7 June 2011 (UTC)
thread_title: Why does this list even exist?

message: What does it mean "acting" next to the names of Hans Luther and Walter Simons??? 95.35.228.144 (talk)  —Preceding undated comment added 08:07, 30 March 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: That they weren't presidents but merely filled in during a vacancy, the former being Chancellor, the latter being Chief Justice. Str1977 (talk) 21:45, 7 June 2010 (UTC)

text: I disagree. "Acting presidents" are no presidents. They don't belong in the list of "proper presidents". It's ok to have them in a separate list. --RJFF (talk) 19:45, 17 May 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: I'd like an opinion on this point (including acting presidents in the main list) from User:Sundostund, the list expert. BartBassist (talk) 21:54, 6 June 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: I'm glad to hear I'm supposed to be the list expert :) If you want my opinion, I personally prefer to have all officeholders (regular and acting) to be included in the main list (better to say, main lists because in this case we have 4 of them: Weimar Republic, West Germany, East Germany and reunified Federal Republic of Germany after 1990). --Sundostund (talk) 22:26, 6 June 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: Excellent. Sorry, RJFF, two votes to one. I'm doing it. I'll colour-code it accordingly, to make the acting status quite clear. BartBassist (talk) 11:46, 8 June 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: Sorry, but Wikipedia is not a democracy. We don't vote on content. Even if we would, a poll with only three participants would hardly be valid. Sundostund only argues with his/her personal opinion ("If you want my opinion, I personally prefer to..."). I argue with German constitutional law. The position of the "acting president" (he isn't even officially called thus) is too different from the one of "regular" presidents to feature them in one list. One more argument: while having them all in one list might benefit the completeness, it has an adverse effect on the lucidity. Readers will usually look for "regular" presidents and not for "acting presidents" whose time in office (legally speaking, they aren't even "in office") is only some days or weeks. The question on top of this thread illustrates that some readers might not properly understand the position of "acting presidents" and therefore confuse them with "regular" presidents if they are included in one list.--RJFF (talk) 16:44, 8 June 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: RJFF, You're right, Wikipedia is not a democracy but it is a consensus. You can't push your own point of view when other editors reached a consensus to change an article, no matter do you like those changes or not. You must respect that fact. Next, I don't argue here just with my personal opinion, but with examples of other lists on WP which are modeled to include both regular and acting officeholders in one, main list (I wouldn't even bother to list here those examples, you can find them in all sort of lists on WP). Next, as you said according to German constitutional law, the position of the acting president is different from the one of regular presidents, but no one here try to present in the same way regular and acting presidents. Confusion about that can arose only if we don't have clear, understandable words in a list to distinguish regular officeholders from acting ones. As you can see, I remodeled the list to clearly distinguish regular from acting officeholders by naming their position as part of the list. Now there's no way that some readers might not properly understand the position of acting presidents and therefore confuse them with regular presidents. It is very clearly defined now, and I think it pretty much conclude this discussion. --Sundostund (talk) 23:14, 8 June 2012 (UTC)
thread_title: Acting???

message: :Feel free to state your position on the renaming proposal by beginning a new line in this section with *Support or *Oppose, then sign your comment with ~~~~. Since polling is not a substitute for discussion, please explain your reasons, taking into account Wikipedia's policy on article titles.
*Oppose incorrect capitalization. I'm not sure an exception of 1 versus the general list is a good idea. You can create a redirect at your proposed name (with the capitalization fixed ) -- 65.94.169.222 (talk) 07:40, 8 August 2014 (UTC)
thread_title: Survey

message: :Any additional comments:
:The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move.  Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page or in a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.</div>
Who is the current leader of German  Mukama Patrick (talk) 20:19, 10 November 2016 (UTC)
thread_title: Discussion

message: There is a move discussion in progress on Talk:List of Presidents of Austria which affects this page. Please participate on that page and not in this talk page section. Thank you.  —RMCD bot 12:46, 12 May 2019 (UTC)
thread_title:  Move discussion in progress 

message: Hitler was not a president!
No one calls Hitler a president, it's not even WP:COMMONNAME.
Altanner1991 (talk) 02:39, 14 August 2020 (UTC)
replies: text: The article/list doesn't call him president. His proper title is given. It would be rather artificial to leave a 11-year gap instead of list of listing one of the most important (in a very bad way) heads of state. Str1977 (talk) 07:33, 14 August 2020 (UTC)
replies: text: Ok yes, and I compare it with List of English monarchs which includes the Commonwealth even though the Cromwells weren't monarchs. Altanner1991 (talk) 20:01, 14 August 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  Hitler was not a president! No one would ever call Hitler a president, it's not even [[WP:COMMONNAME]] 

message: I think these are useless because they're unsourced and it is hard to count across Nazism etc. They should simply be removed. Altanner1991 (talk) 19:59, 14 August 2020 (UTC)
replies: text: Fully agree that numbers shouldn't be used here, as they aren't commonly used (unlike for US presidents). If someone disagrees, they should show many sources that care about this numbering. —Kusma (t·c) 21:42, 19 August 2020 (UTC)
replies: text: Such numbers are indeed never used. Removing all numbers avoids any temptation for editors to count presidents across the 1945 threshold which would be factually wrong. Heuss was the 1st Federal President of Germany, not the 4th President of Germany. Also, it is quite pointless to number the sole East German President as "1" and it would be factualyl incorrect to then continue numbering, making Walter Ulbricht a "2". Str1977 (talk) 10:14, 22 August 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  Numbers of presidents