Instruct: Given a question, retrieve passages that answer the question.
Query: Who was the first German president?
Friedrich Ebert (German pronunciation:[ˈeːbɐt]; 4 February 1871– 28 February 1925) was a German politician of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) and the first President of Germany from 1919 until his death in office in 1925.
In Germany, politicians can have dual citizenship. David McAllister, who holds British and German citizenship, was minister president of the State of Lower-Saxony from July 1, 2010 to February 19, 2013. He was the first German minister president to hold dual citizenship.
Its predecessor, the Catholic Society of Germany (), was founded in 1848 by Charles, 6th Prince of Löwenstein-Wertheim-Rosenberg, who served as its first President. In 1952, it was renamed the Central Committee of German Catholics. In May 2015 the Central Committee of German Catholics voted in favour of Blessing of same-sex unions in Christian churches.
In 1984 the new Green Party prepared to enter into a German state government for the first time in its history. The first Green cabinet minister in German history was going to be Joschka Fischer who later became minister of Foreign Affairs in the German Federal Government under Chancellor Gerhard Schröder. The 1984 Hesse coalition under minister-president Holger Börner was to be based on an official policy agreement negotiated by both parties.
The law provided that the presidency was open to all German citizens who had reached 35 years of age. The direct election of the president occurred under a form of the two round system. If no candidate received the support of an absolute majority of votes cast (i.e. more than half) in a first round of voting, a second vote was held at a later date. In this round the candidate who received the support of a plurality of voters was deemed elected. A group could also nominate a substitute candidate in the second round, in place of the candidate it had supported in the first.
On 3 August 2014, the centenary of Germany's declaration of war on France was marked by French President François Hollande and German President Joachim Gauck, who together laid the first stone of a new joint memorial at Hartmannswillerkopf for French and German soldiers killed in the war. Over 30,000 soldiers from both sides died in the fighting here at the Battle of Hartmannswillerkopf. The site, in the Vosges mountains of Alsace in France, is the location of a cemetery and a crypt containing the ashes of 12,000 unknown soldiers. The presidents observed a minute's silence in the crypt.
Martin Sigismund Eduard von Simson (10 November 1810 – 2 May 1899) was a German jurist and distinguished liberal politician of the Kingdom of Prussia and German Empire, who served as President of the Frankfurt Parliament as well as the first President of the German Parliament and of the Imperial Court. He was ennobled by Frederick III in 1888.
After being elected to the first German Bundestag, he relinquished his parliamentary mandate on 12 September 1949, when he was elected President by the Federal Convention (Bundesversammlung) defeating the Social Democrat leader Kurt Schumacher in the second ballot. He took the oath required by article 56 of the Basic Law before a joint session of the Bundestag and the Bundesrat on the same date.[9] By the time he was confirmed as the first democratic German president since Paul von Hindenburg, he refused to be called “Excellency”, preferring instead to be called simply “Herr Heuss”,[10] Herr Bundespräsident is the German term of address up to today. Heuss's plans for a new national anthem were aborted by Adenauer, who – in rare accordance with Kurt Schumacher – had the third stanza of the old Deutschlandlied established in 1952.
At the congress there were two candidates for the presidency of IFTU. The Briton W. A. Appleton was elected with 31 votes against 18 for the Dutchman Jan Oudegeest. Appleton had been nominated by Samuel Gompers whilst Oudegeest had been nominated by Arvid Thorberg. Two vice-presidents were also elected. In the election for the first vice-president the German Carl Legien was defeated by the Frenchman Léon Jouhaux. The defeat of the German candidate could be seen as an indication that many trade unionists in the former Allied countries were suspicious of the Germans, who had dominated the international labour movement before the war. Following Legien's defeat, the German and Austrian delegations abstained from nominating candidates for the second vice-president. The Belgian Cornel Mertens was elected to the position. Jan Oudegeest and fellow Dutchman Edo Fimmen were elected general secretaries.
Behind the long table set up on the steps of the Rathaus Schöneberg were U.S. and German dignitaries, including Dean Rusk (Kennedy's Secretary of State), Lucius D. Clay (the US administrator of Germany), Konrad Adenauer (the German chancellor), Willy Brandt, and Otto Bach (President of the "Abgeordnetenhaus" of Berlin). The crowd was estimated at 450,000 people. Bach spoke first, of the recent developments in Berlin, especially the wall. He was followed by Konrad Adenauer, who spoke briefly and introduced the president.
The Deutscher Lehrerpreis is a teacher award in Germany. It is awarded in two major categories: the first category awards teachers who exhibit innovative teaching practices, and the second category allows students to nominate their teachers for responsible student-teacher collaboration. The award was created and is organized by the Vodafone Foundation and the German Philological Association.
It is supported by German education researchers, such as Professor Dr. Jürgen Baumert who is the vice-president of the Max Planck Institute for Human Development in Berlin and who conducted the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) study, and German politicians such as Chancellor Angela Merkel.
German Honor Society is made up of inducted members who have shown proficiency and outstanding knowledge in German. The members are from the German IV Honors and AP German V Honors courses, and must have met numerous criteria in order to be considered for nomination and induction. This group has an elected executive board made up of members who serve as President, Vice President, Treasurer, and Secretary. It is advised by a German teacher.
On his trip to Israel in October 1985, Weizsäcker was greeted on arrival by his Israeli counterpart, President Chaim Herzog. The president was given a full honor-guard welcome at Ben-Gurion Airport; among Cabinet ministers who lined up to shake his hand were right-wingers of the Herut party, the main faction of Foreign Minister Yitzhak Shamir's Likud party, who had previously refused to greet German leaders. Weizsäcker's visit was the first by a head of state, but not the first by a West German leader, as Chancellor Willy Brandt had paid a visit to Israel in June 1973. During a four-day state visit to the United Kingdom in July 1986, Weizsäcker addressed a joint session of the Houses of Parliament, the first German to be accorded that honor.
On 3 August 2014, French President Francois Hollande and German President Joachim Gauck together marked the centenary of Germany's declaration of war on France by laying the first stone of a memorial in Vieil Armand, France, known in German as Hartmannswillerkopf, for French and German soldiers killed in World War I.Franco-German collaborative enterprises include;
The presidential election ("Reichspräsidentenwahl") of 1919 was the first election to the office of President of the Reich ("Reichspräsident"), Germany's head of state during the 1919-1933 Weimar Republic. The constitution that stipulated a direct popular vote was not completed before 11 August 1919. Because a head of state was needed immediately the 1919 presidential election was held indirectly, by the National Assembly, on 11 February 1919. The winner was SPD chairman Friedrich Ebert, who beat former (Imperial) Secretary of the Interior Arthur von Posadowsky-Wehner in the first round of voting by 277 to 49 votes. Ebert was supported by the SPD, the German Centre Party and the German Democratic Party (DDP), the parties of the "Weimar Coalition", which held more than 77 per cent of the seats in the National Assembly. He became president of Germany.
The first German Theosophical Society was established in July 1884, under the presidency of Wilhelm Hübbe-Schleiden, a conservative German nationalist turned spiritual seeker who sought to establish Theosophy on a "scientific" basis. Between 1886 and 1895 Hübbe-Schleiden published the monthly periodical "Die Sphinx". In Vienna, a theosophical society was founded in 1887, its president was Friedrich Eckstein. Among his circle at this time Franz Hartmann, a leader of theosophical work who emphasized personal spiritual experience, and the young Rudolf Steiner were members. A "German Theosophical Society", as a branch of the "International Theosophical Brotherhood", then was established in 1896 when the American theosophists around William Quan Judge, Katherine Tingley, "E. T. Hargrove" and "C. F. Wright" travelled through Europe. Its president was Franz Hartmann, who also founded a theosophical lay-monastery at Ascona in 1889. His periodical Lotusblüten ("Lotus Blossoms", 1892–1900) was the first German publication to use the theosophical swastika on its cover.
According to the constitution, the empire was a federation (federally organised national state) of 25 German states under the permanent presidency of Prussia, the largest and most powerful state. The presidency of the confederation ("Bundespräsidium") was a hereditary office of the King of Prussia, who had the title of German Emperor. The Emperor appointed the Chancellor, the head of government and chairman of the "Bundesrat", the council of representatives of the German states. Laws were enacted by the "Bundesrat" and the "Reichstag", the Imperial Diet elected by male Germans above the age of 25 years.
Georg Friedrich Karl Freiherr (From 1914, Graf) von Hertling (31 August 1843 – 4 January 1919) was a German politician who served as the Minister-President of Bavaria 1912–1917 and then as Minister-President of Prussia and Chancellor of the German Empire from 1917 to 1918. He was the first party politician to hold the office.
Grimm took "Forseti", ""praeses"", to be the older form of the name, first postulating an unattested Old High German equivalent *"forasizo" (cf. modern German "Vorsitzender" "one who presides"). but later preferring a derivation from "fors", a "whirling stream" or "cataract", connected to the spring and the god's veneration by seagoing peoples. It is plausible that "Fosite" is the older name and "Forseti" a folk etymology. According to the German philologist Hans Kuhn the Germanic form Fosite is linguistically identical to Greek "Poseidon", hence the original name must have been introduced before the Proto-Germanic sound change, probably via Greek sailors purchasing amber. The Greek traveller Pytheas of Massalia, who describes the amber trade, is known to have visited the region around 325 BC.
There were also many Germans in Istanbul who supported the Young Turk movement and nurtured its relationship with the SPD as well as the German Liberals around Friedrich Naumann. From the circle around Naumann came Ernest Jäckh (1875–1959), purveyor of Young Turk propaganda (and later professor at Columbia University.) Jäckh however did not live in Constantinople for too long and can't be considered a "Bosporus German" in the true sense. Another visitor to Constantinople during the First World War was Theodor Heuss, a friend of Naumann and Jäckh, who designed the German Cultural Centre in Constantinople and later became the first Federal President of Germany from 1949 until 1959. Active Social Democrats in Constantinople included Alexander Parvus (1867–1924) (in the city from 1910–1914), and Dr. Friedrich Schrader (1865–1922) ("İştiraki" {translation: Socialist}, active 1891-1918).
In 1950, Hermann Maas became the first German to be officially invited to Israel. It took another fifteen years until West Germany and Israel established diplomatic relations on May 12, 1965. Since then, mutual state visits regularly occur, although for many years relations were affected by the fact that Jews both in and outside Israel maintained a deep mistrust of Germany and the German people. German President Roman Herzog's first official visit outside Europe was to Israel in 1994. Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak was the first foreign leader received in Berlin after the German government's relocation from Bonn in 1999. German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder visited Israel in October 2000.
In 2005, the year of the 40th anniversary of bilateral diplomatic relations, German President Horst Köhler and Israel's former President Moshe Katsav exchanged state visits.
Two aspects of the charter were notable. The first was that it confirmed that the requirement for voting membership in the Society was direct descent from Pennsylvania German settlers. The second was that it removed the term limits for certain board members. From its beginning, the Pennsylvania German Society had prohibited reelection of the president, vice president, and treasurer of the Society. The charter, however, removed such prohibition. As a result, the Society entered the age of longer presidencies. Ralph Beaver Strassburger, who had been elected in 1928, was the first president to serve for more than one term and ultimately served for 12 terms.
Felix Mann (10 April 1931 – 2 October 2014) was a German-born acupuncturist. He devised the system known as Scientific Acupuncture and was the founder and past-president of the Medical Acupuncture Society (1959–1980). He was also the first president of the British Medical Acupuncture Society (1980), and the author of the first comprehensive English language acupuncture textbook "Acupuncture: The Ancient Chinese Art of Healing" first published in 1962. In 1995, he received The German Pain Prize. Mann, who was based in England, also lectured internationally on medical acupuncture. Mann distanced himself from traditional beliefs in the existence of acupuncture points and meridians.
Before World War I he was extensively working with Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk (1850–1937), first President of the Czechoslovakia. His intelligence activities are credited with the exposure of the Hindu–German Conspiracy. In 1917, Voska was one of four Czech patriots who traveled to Petrograd with the British author Somerset Maugham, who was then working as a British intelligence agent, on a secret mission with the objectives of propping up the Provisional Government in Russia and preventing them from concluding a unilateral peace treaty with Germany. Voska was also instrumental in preventing the efforts of German agent Franz von Rintelen to restore Victoriano Huerta to the Mexican presidency during World War I.
At the Heidelberg meeting and the preliminary convention ("Vorparlament") of Frankfurt he deeply impressed the assemblies with the breadth and moderation of his views; with the result that when the German national parliament met (18 May), he was elected its first president. His influence was at first paramount, both with the Unionist party and with the more moderate elements of the Left, and it was he who was mainly instrumental in imposing the principle of a united empire with a common parliament, and in carrying the election of the Archduke John as regent. With the growing split between the Great Germans ("Grossdeutschen"), who wished the new empire to include the Austrian provinces, and the Little Germans ("Kleindeutschen"), who realized that German unity could only be attained by excluding them, his position was shaken.