Topic summary
Berlin Senate
Extracted from the Wikipedia article Senate of Berlin.
History
Under the new constitution of West Berlin which came into force on 1 September 1950, Berlin was defined as a state of the Federal Republic of Germany; however, due to the Allied veto, its representatives in the federal parliament (and later in the European Parliament) were not directly elected by the citizenry, but appointed by the Berlin parliament (Abgeordnetenhaus) and had no voting power, but a merely advisory vote in those parliaments. On the model of the two Hanseatic city-states within the Federal Republic, Hamburg and Bremen, the Berlin Senate, chosen by the parties represented in the Berlin parliament, was established to perform the functions of a state government, with each of its members heading a department, equivalent to a state ministry, and a Regierender Bürgermeister (Governing or Executive Mayor) at its head and one Bürgermeister as his/her deputy. In the 1950 constitution the maximum number of senators was 16, then each elected by the parliament, but the first Senate had 13.