President of Germany
Friedrich Ebert (SPD) served as Germany's first president, followed by Paul von Hindenburg. The office effectively came to an end upon Hindenburg's death in 1934 and its powers merged with those of chancellor. Adolf Hitler now ruled Germany as "Führer und Reichskanzler", combining his previous positions in party and government. The office, however, was not abolished and briefly revived at the end of the Second World War when Hitler appointed Grand Admiral Karl Dönitz as his successor as President of Germany. Dönitz agreed to the surrender to the Allies and was arrested a few days later.
Legal status of Germany
Under the Potsdam Agreement the three Allied Powers, the United States, the United Kingdom and the Soviet Union, had agreed that a final peace agreement would have to wait on the re-establishment of a German government adequate for the purpose of agreeing to Allied peace terms. In the interim, it was intended that the Allied Control Council would act exercise all sovereign authority within Germany; while the Council of Foreign Ministers would oversee the development of new German State institutions. France was invited to membership of both bodies (although De Gaulle had not been invited to Potsdam, and refused to be bound by any agreements made there); but France from the first pursued a policy of obstructing any joint Allied actions that might lead to the re-emergence of Germany as a single unified state. Consequently, any establishment of formal institutions or agencies that might eventually restore unified German sovereignty was initially stalled by French objections. Subsequently, as Cold War antagonisms grew, the same institutions came to be largely nullified by disputes between the Western Allies and the Soviet Union. The United States and the United Kingdom therefore came round to the French view that a unified German state partially subject to Soviet authority could not be allowed to emerge while the Soviet Bloc remained in eastern Europe, and so the three Western Allies resolved upon the foundation of a West German federation consisting of the territories in their three zones of occupation. This was established on 23 May 1949 with the promulgation of the Basic Law as it had been adopted by the Parliamentary Council and approved by the Western occupation forces. The Federal Republic created by the Basic Law was empowered to act upon the federal election held on August 14, the constitutive meeting of the Bundestag parliament on September 7, the investiture of the first Federal President, Theodor Heuss on September 13, the appointment of Konrad Adenauer as the first Federal Chancellor on September 15 and the accession of the Federal Cabinet on September 20, 1949. In turn the Soviet Military Administration on October 7 implemented the People's Chamber ("Volkskammer") parliament in the Soviet occupation zone and East Berlin, which passed the Constitution of East Germany, officially named "German Democratic Republic" (GDR). The Council of Ministers of the GDR assumed office on October 12, 1949.