2005 German federal election
Federal elections were held in Germany on 18 September 2005 to elect the members of the 16th Bundestag. The snap election was called after the government's defeat in the North Rhine-Westphalia state election, which caused them to intentionally lose a motion of confidence to trigger an early federal election. The outgoing government was a coalition of the centre-left Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) and Alliance 90/The Greens, led by federal Chancellor Gerhard Schröder. The election was originally intended for the autumn of 2006.
Image: Angela Merkel, 2005 (cropped)
Image: Guido Westerwelle 2007 (cropped)
Image: The Left.PDS 2005 leadership
Image: Msc 2005 Sunday IMG 3947
The Bundestag is the German federal parliament. It is the only federal representative body that is directly elected by the German people, comparable to the House of Commons of the United Kingdom. The Bundestag was established by Title III of the Basic Law for the Federal Republic of Germany in 1949 as one of the legislative bodies of Germany and thus it is the historical successor to the earlier Reichstag.
Bundestag
The German Unity Flag is a national memorial to German reunification that was raised on 3 October 1990; it waves in front of the Reichstag building in Berlin, seat of the Bundestag.
Bundestag ballot from the 2005 election in the Würzburg district. The column for the constituency vote (with the name, occupation, and address of each candidate) is on the left in black print; the column for the party list vote (showing top five list candidates in the state) is on the right in blue print.
The Marie-Elisabeth-Lüders-Haus, one of the official buildings of the complex, housing the parliamentary library
