Succession
The Basic Law did not create an office of vice president. If the president is outside of the country, or the position is vacant, the President of the Bundesrat (a position that is rotated among the state premiers on an annual basis) temporarily assumes the powers of the president until a successor is elected without assuming the office of president as such. While doing so, he or she does not continue to exercise the role of chair of the Bundesrat. If the president dies, resigns or is otherwise removed from office, a successor is to be elected within thirty days. This process was triggered for the first time on May 31, 2010, when Horst Köhler resigned the office, as all his predecessors (with the exception of Heinrich Lübke, who announced in 1968 that he would resign the following year, his resignation taking effect after the regular election of his successor and just three months before the scheduled end of his term of office) had served their terms in full. Jens Böhrnsen, Mayor of Bremen and at the time President of the Bundesrat, assumed the powers and duties of head of state.
While the president is abroad on a state visit the President of the Bundesrat does not assume all of his responsibilities but may deputise for the president, performing on the president's behalf merely those tasks that require his or her physical presence, such as the signing of documents.
Read more about this topic: President Of Germany
Famous quotes containing the word succession:
“The heart of man ever finds a constant succession of passions, so that the destroying and pulling down of one proves generally to be nothing else but the production and the setting up of another.”
—François, Duc De La Rochefoucauld (1613–1680)
“the negro Babo took by succession each Spaniard forward, and asked him whose skeleton that was, and whether, from its whiteness, he should not think it a white’s.”
—Herman Melville (1819–1891)
“We then entered another swamp, at a necessarily slow pace, where the walking was worse than ever, not only on account of the water, but the fallen timber, which often obliterated the indistinct trail entirely. The fallen trees were so numerous, that for long distances the route was through a succession of small yards, where we climbed over fences as high as our heads, down into water often up to our knees, and then over another fence into a second yard, and so on.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)