Constitution of Germany. The state structure of post-war Germany

After the end of the bloody slaughter of World War II, the western part of Germany, which was the occupation zone of the allies (Great Britain, the USA and France), began to rise from the ruins. This also concerned the state structure of the country, which learned the bitter experience of Nazism. The FRG Constitution, adopted in 1949, approved a parliamentary republic based on the principles of civil liberties, human rights and federalism.

Of great interest is the fact that initially this document was adopted as a temporary basic law of the transition period, in effect until the full political unification of the two parts of the state. That was stated in the preamble. But later the FRG constitution of 1949 was recognized as the most successful in German history. After the reunification of Germany, the paragraph on the interim action of this document was deleted from the preamble. Thus, the postwar constitution is still in force.

The FRG Constitution on the principles of its construction and on the right standards declared therein became an extremely progressive document that had a significant impact on the development of a democratic free society in a revitalized Germany. Knowingly, her first nineteen articles detail in detail the rights of citizens of the newly created state and a clear commitment to the principles of democracy.

By these provisions, the FRG constitution, as it were, strikes out the dark Nazi past from the history of the German people. By providing citizens with ample opportunities to realize their own rights, the basic law simultaneously prohibits any actions that pose a potential threat to the democratic order and the foundations of a civilized European society. In 1951, the Federal Republic of Germany introduced a constitutional court. This was another significant step on the complex path of building a democratic society in a country that had only recently experienced the triumphs and fiasco of National Socialism.

A very revealing fact was that, according to the new constitution, not only the activity of various neo-Nazi parties, but also communists, was banned throughout West Germany. The latter can be regarded as a kind of curtsey towards the victorious allied powers. Also the FRG Constitution of 1949 establishes several predominant principles of democracy: the dominant role of law and order, socially oriented institutions of state power and the federal structure of the country.

At the same time, for the introduction of any amendments, amendments and additions to the main law, their approval and approval by at least two-thirds of the members of the Bundestag and the Bundesrat was necessarily required. However, some of the fundamental provisions of the constitution could not be changed even in this case. Here, the lessons learned from the Nazis coming to power and the fruits of their activities are clearly affecting them.

The principle of federalism, where the subjects of the state are the land, is historically traditional for Germany. This form of state structure has passed a difficult path from centralized federalism to the modern model of cooperative federalism, in which each land is an equal participant in state political life, having its own government, constitution and other attributes of statehood. Such a device turned out to be declared in the post-war constitution, which most fully corresponds to the historical traditions of the German people. Now Germany also boasts the most developed labor legislation in Europe.