“The German government” sounds like a large thing. Constitutionally it is about eighteen people.
Article 62 of the Grundgesetz (Basic Law) defines it in one line. The government consists of the chancellor and the federal ministers. That’s the whole list. State secretaries don’t count, nor does the government spokesman, nor the thousands of civil servants staffing the ministries. They all work for the government without being it.
How the person at the head of that group gets there, and what the job allows, sits on German chancellor. This page is about the rest of the machine.
The Cabinet Meets on Wednesdays
Every Wednesday morning the ministers gather around one table in the chancellery. Bills going to parliament, regulations, official reports, the federal budget: all of it passes through that room first.
Very little of it gets argued out there. The fighting happens in the weeks beforehand, between departments, at official level, and what reaches the table on Wednesday is usually settled. A cabinet meeting that runs long is news.
One minister carries a second title, vice chancellor, and takes the chair when the chancellor can’t. In a coalition that person almost always comes from the other party, which makes the deputy job a running check as much as a stand-in.
Around all of this sits the chancellery itself, a federal agency with a staff of its own. Its business is coordination: making sure sixteen or seventeen ministries pull roughly the same direction, and catching the collisions before they reach Wednesday.
Nobody Fixed the Number of Ministries
The constitution says nothing about how many ministries there should be, or what they should cover. That is the chancellor’s decision, limited in practice by what the coalition partners were promised.
The first cabinet, in 1949, had thirteen ministers. Recent ones have run to seventeen. Portfolios move as well, so a subject can sit in one ministry for a term and turn up somewhere else after the next election. Digital policy, transport, housing, and energy have all been reshuffled that way.
It means the name on a German ministry is worth checking before you quote it. The one that handled your subject four years ago may not exist under that name today.
The Government Writes Laws It Cannot Enforce
Most German laws start life as a draft in a ministry. The government sends the bill to parliament, parliament argues over it, amends it, and passes something. So far this looks like any other country.
Then comes Article 83, and this is where Germany parts company with most of the world. Federal laws are carried out by the states, as their own affair. Berlin writes the rule. Sixteen state administrations apply it.
There is barely any federal presence on the ground. Take the office where you register an address, or the one that issues your driving license. Add the school and the police patrol on your street. All of it belongs to a state or a town rather than to the government in Berlin. Which is why one federal law can feel different depending on which corner of the country you deal with. The German states page has the full picture.
Two Capitals, One Government
When parliament voted in 1991 to move to Berlin, Bonn did not simply hand everything over. A law passed in 1994 split the government between the two cities and has held ever since.
Several ministries still have their first official seat on the Rhine. The ones based in Berlin keep a second office in Bonn, and the traffic runs both ways all year.
Running a government across two cities costs somewhere north of ten million euros a year, and the largest single item is travel. Civil servants shuttling up and down the country, permanently. ;-)
For a visitor it means Bonn is worth more than a passing look. The old parliament quarter is still there and still in use. Walking along the Rhine past it is one of the more pleasant history lessons in the country.
Three Times a Week, the Journalists Do the Inviting
Here’s the part that surprises foreign correspondents. Germany’s main government press conference doesn’t belong to the government.
The Bundespressekonferenz is a private association of around 900 journalists who cover federal politics. It runs its own house, elects its own board, and invites the government spokesman to appear. Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, he and the ministry spokespeople sit down and take questions.
A journalist chairs the session and decides who speaks. The government has no say over which questions come, how long the thing lasts, or when it ends. Spokespeople are guests in somebody else’s room, and they are reminded of it regularly.
Berlin journalists set that up in 1918, right after the monarchy collapsed. They rebuilt it in 1949, after twelve years in which no German journalist got to ask anything. No other country does it this way. Sessions are streamed, so you can watch one from anywhere.
For how the whole system fits together, start with German politics. The parties that form these coalitions, and the parliament that keeps the government in check, each have a page coming.