do we have a choice

No we have not.

The head of state will not be elected directly by the citizens on Sunday - although this has been demanded time and again, including by the Federal President himself. Rather, the Federal Assembly convenes, a creative body that has only one purpose: the election of the President.

Reinhard Muller

Responsible editor for "current affairs" and FAZ objection, responsible for "state and law".

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The election and office came about as a result of the Weimar experience.

It was precisely the President of the Reich, directly elected by the people and endowed with extensive powers, who was not wanted again after the war.

They didn't want an opponent to parliament who could dissolve it and govern it with emergency decrees and who also had supreme command of the armed forces.

A replacement emperor was no longer wanted, the need for Hindenburgs was covered.

But the President should remain.

It is not the case that the office is "designed primarily to have a spiritual and moral effect".

Of course, the head of state can make a difference by talking and pulling the strings, depending on personality and circumstances.

But his express powers, which are assigned to him by the Basic Law, are not small either.

More than a mere executive body

The Federal President is a constitutional body.

He embodies the unity of the state and represents Germany externally under international law.

This does not mean any power to shape foreign policy.

However, Joachim Gauck once voiced harsh criticism of the Turkish government and personally “boycotted” the Olympic Games in Sochi.

As with the appointment of civil servants, officers and ministers - up to and including the Federal Chancellor, who is also proposed by the Federal President, this is at least a participation.

The President is not called upon to deal with personnel policy, but he is also not just an executive body.

He could also turn down an appointment.

In any case, if he does not consider the legal requirements to be given.

As with the laws drafted by the Federal President, one could ask whether one of the guardians of the constitution can be expected to participate in a process that appears to him to be clearly unconstitutional.

After all, in 2005 the Office of the Federal President under Horst Köhler informed the designated Chancellor Merkel that she should please revise her announcement that she would present an unconstitutional budget;

the Federal President cannot propose anyone for election who intends to break the constitution.

Merkel followed.

Complaints in Karlsruhe against the Federal President

Again and again, federal presidents have not passed laws because they considered them unconstitutional (which caused some party friends in government and parliament to rage), or they reported concerns and went before the Federal Constitutional Court.

Incumbent Frank-Walter Steinmeier also repeatedly raised constitutional doubts.

But the Federal President himself has also been the subject of several proceedings in Karlsruhe.

Because of course the Federal President is also part of the structure of the Basic Law, not above him.

Karl Carstens and Horst Köhler, for example, dissolved the Bundestag after "questions of confidence" that were doubted - but the Federal Constitutional Court saw no violation of the constitution.

According to the Karlsruhe judges in 2005, the President made the decision to dissolve the Bundestag "as a key political decision on his own responsibility and at his due discretion".

Such a decision, which after all was preceded by that of the Federal Chancellor and the Bundestag, can only be checked to a limited extent.

The constitutional court also respects the limits of the office of the head of state – upon request.

When Federal President Joachim Gauck spoke in front of vocational school students with a view to the NPD about showing the “crazy ones” their limits, according to the federal constitutional judges, he acted “in the sense of the integration of the community”.

He decides autonomously how to fulfill his role.

The Federal President is not a politically indifferent "official administrator", but represents "state and people".

This means that he is just as free in his choice of topics as in the type of communication.

The Federal Constitutional Court only objected to his statements if the president "clearly neglected his task of integration and thus arbitrarily took sides".

Popular through differentiation from the parties

In principle, the President can therefore be put in his place by the Federal Constitutional Court;

he can only lose his office by impeaching the president, which involves high hurdles.

You cannot vote him out.

So the Federal President definitely has ways and means of pursuing his own agenda.

It mostly becomes popular precisely because of the demarcation from political parties from which it arose.

His election by the Federal Assembly, i.e. by the members of the Bundestag and an equal number of representatives of the federal states, corresponds quite well to his position.

He is part of the system.

A direct election would shift the actual balance of power in favor of the president.

He could then (again) become the opponent of Parliament, citing his direct democratic legitimacy.

In his office as the embodiment of the unity of the state, as in his freestyle on Sunday, there is still something pre-democratic.

A debate is not planned.