Volkskammer

The Volkskammer (German: [ˈfɔlkskamɐ], "People's Chamber") was the parliament of East Germany. Formally, it was the supreme organ of power in the state, and (in accordance with the principle of unified power) its only branch of government, with all other state organs subservient to it. In practice, however, like most communist parliaments, it was a rubber stamp body that did little more than ratify decisions already made by the SED Politburo.

The Volkskammer was initially the lower house of a bicameral representative body. The upper house was the Länderkammer (Chamber of States), but in 1952 the states of East Germany were dissolved, and the Länderkammer was abolished in 1958. Constitutionally, the Volkskammer was the highest organ of state power in the GDR, and both constitutions vested it with great lawmaking powers. All other branches of government, including the judiciary, were responsible to it. By 1960, the chamber appointed the State Council (the GDR's collective head of state), the Council of Ministers (the GDR's government), and the National Defence Council (the GDR's collective military leadership).

By the 1970s and before the Peaceful Revolution, the Volkskammer only met two to four times a year.

In October 1949 the Volksrat ("People's Council"), charged with drafting the Constitution of East Germany, proclaimed itself the Volkskammer and requested official recognition as a national legislature from the Soviet Military Administration in Germany. This was granted by Soviet Deputy Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko. The Volkskammer then convened with the Länderkammer to elect Wilhelm Pieck as the first President of East Germany and Otto Grotewohl as the first Prime Minister of East Germany.

From its founding in 1949 until the first competitive elections in March 1990, all members of the Volkskammer were elected via a single list from the National Front, a popular front/electoral alliance dominated by the SED. In addition, seats were also allocated to various organizations affiliated with the SED, such as the Free German Youth. Effectively, the SED held control over the composition of the Volkskammer. In any event, the minor parties in the National Front were largely subservient to the SED, and were required to accept the SED's "leading role" as a condition of their continued existence.

The members of the People's Chamber were elected in multi-member constituencies, with four to eight seats. To be elected, a candidate needed to receive half of the valid votes cast in their constituency. If, within a constituency, an insufficient number of candidates got the majority needed to fill all the seats, a second round was held within 90 days. If the number of candidates getting this majority exceeds the number of seats in the respective constituency, the order of the candidates on the election list decided who got to sit in the Volkskammer. Candidates who lost out on a seat because of this would become successor candidates who would fill casual vacancies which might occur during a legislative period.

Only one list of candidates appeared on a ballot paper; voters simply took the ballot paper and dropped it into the ballot box. Those who wanted to vote against the National Front list had to vote using a separate ballot box, without any secrecy. The table below shows an overview of the reported results of all parliamentary elections before 1990, with the resulting disposition of parliamentary seats.

In 1976, the Volkskammer moved into a specially constructed building on Marx-Engels-Platz (now Schloßplatz, as it was before the birth of the DDR), the Palace of the Republic (Palast der Republik). Prior to this, the Volkskammer met at Langenbeck-Virchow-Haus [de] in the Mitte district of Berlin.