The Reichstag building, seat of the Bundestag since 1999, west front with the glass dome, October 2006.Luukas, 2006. Wikimedia Commons. Public domain.
Bonn · Berlin
Berlin was already Germany’s capital. On 20 June 1991 the Bundestag decided that parliament and government would follow, and a law of 1994 said that the greater part of the ministries’ jobs should stay on the Rhine. Nine years after the move, Berlin had the majority.
01The question
In 1949 the first Bundestag confirmed Bonn as the provisional seat of the federal institutions. It also resolved that they should move to Berlin once democratic elections had been held across the city and the Soviet zone.
The Unification Treaty settled half the matter and postponed the other half. Its second article reads: “Hauptstadt Deutschlands ist Berlin. Die Frage des Sitzes von Parlament und Regierung wird nach der Herstellung der Einheit Deutschlands entschieden.” Berlin, in other words, became the capital on 3 October 1990. What the Bundestag still had to decide was where it would sit, and where the government would sit.
02The vote
The debate ran from 10.00 in the morning until the evening. Party discipline played no part: members voted as individuals, and 107 speeches were made. Each square below is one ballot.
Every ballot, 20 June 1991
20 June 1991, from 10.00
The Bundestag had sat in Bonn’s converted waterworks since 9 September 1986. That day it had five motions on the seat of parliament and government before it. Half of the ballots cast would be 330.
The Bonn motion
The Bonn motion, titled “Bundesstaatslösung”, would have kept parliament and government on the Rhine. Bonn was still building its new chamber. 320 members voted for it.
The Berlin motion
The Berlin motion, “Vollendung der Einheit Deutschlands”, was signed by Willy Brandt and Wolfgang Schäuble, among others. It promised Bonn a “fair division of labour”. 338 members voted for it.
The margin
Berlin won by 18 votes over Bonn, but only eight past half of the ballots cast. Helmut Kohl’s name stands in the final list of Yes votes for the Berlin motion.
The first count
The president of the Bundestag first announced 337 votes for Berlin, 320 for Bonn and two abstentions, with 659 valid ballots.
The final count · sitting closed 21.49
The final result in the record gives Berlin 338, with one abstention and one invalid ballot. The sitting had lasted 11 hours 49 minutes.
03The law
The Berlin/Bonn Act was passed by the Bundestag on 10 March 1994, signed on 26 April 1994 (BGBl. I S. 918) and in force from 7 May 1994. It made Berlin the seat of both parliament and government, and called Bonn the Bundesstadt, the federal city. Every ministry was to keep an office in both cities. The jobs were dealt with in section 4:
“Die Entscheidungen nach den Absätzen 1 bis 3 sollen so gestaltet werden, daß insgesamt der größte Teil der Arbeitsplätze der Bundesministerien in der Bundesstadt Bonn erhalten bleibt.”
The decisions under paragraphs 1 to 3 should be made in such a way that, overall, the greater part of the jobs in the federal ministries remains in the federal city of Bonn.
Berlin/Bonn-Gesetz, § 4 (4)
Sollen means “should”, not “must”. In 2008 Bonn’s share of the ministries’ jobs fell below half. The federal government’s own status report later concluded: “Diese Erwartung des Gesetzgebers hat sich nicht erfüllt.” (“The legislator’s expectation has not been fulfilled.”) Total costs, including Bonn’s compensation, were capped at DM 20 billion, and DM 16 billion of that was for the move itself.
04The move
Between 5 and 31 July 1999 the Bundestag moved to Berlin: 24 trains of furniture, files and books in four weeks.
Both bars on one scale, at their true length.
05The slide
The count is of posts in the federal ministries, the measure the government’s own reports use. All three years are drawn on one scale. The tick on each bar marks half of that year’s total, the line the law hoped Bonn would stay above.
Posts in the federal ministries, by city
2000
A year after the move, the law’s hope held. Bonn had 10,470 ministry posts and Berlin 6,756.
2008
In 2008 Bonn’s share fell below half. Officials called the steady drift of posts to Berlin the Rutschbahneffekt, the slide effect.
2015
By the end of 2015 Berlin held 62.8% of the posts. Bonn’s count had fallen by 3,773 since 2000.
2025
At the end of 2025 Berlin had 19,185 posts and Bonn 6,633. Bonn has about a quarter: 25.7%.
2000 → 2025
Since 2015 Bonn has lost only 64 posts, while Berlin gained 7,884. Berlin’s count is now 2.8 times what it was in 2000.
06What Bonn kept
Six federal ministries still have their first seat in Bonn, and ten others a second one. Between 1994 and 2004 about €1.437 billion of compensation went into 90 projects in the Bonn region. The city now hosts more than 25 United Nations institutions and about 150 non-governmental organisations.
Two seats cost money. The government’s report put the bill for 2025 at about €10.3 million. Business travel between the cities, its largest item, rose by just over 15 per cent to €5.9 million.
07A capital, not a centre
The 1991 vote moved the parliament and the government. Germany’s top courts and its central bank sit where federal statutes put them, away from the capital. In May 1992 a federal–state commission recommended moving one court out of Berlin, into the east.
Distance from Berlin, as the crow flies
Each dot sits at its true great-circle distance from Berlin, measured between OpenStreetMap city points and rounded to the kilometre. The labels are spread out so they can be read; their leader lines lead back to the true position.
148 km from Berlin · Federal Administrative Court
The Federal Administrative Court left Berlin on 26 August 2002 for the former Reichsgericht building.
The former Reichsgericht in Leipzig, home of the Federal Administrative Court since 2002, photographed in 2010. Photo: Andreas Praefcke, 2010. Wikimedia Commons. CC BY 3.0.
236 km from Berlin · Federal Labour Court
The Federal Labour Court moved here from Kassel; its first working day in Erfurt was 22 November 1999.
The Federal Labour Court in Erfurt, built 1996–99, photographed in 2005. Christoph Hoffmann, 2005. Wikimedia Commons. CC BY-SA 2.0 de.
299 km from Berlin · Federal Social Court
The Federal Social Court opened on 11 September 1954.
The Federal Social Court in Kassel, north side, 2006. Peter Schlömer, 2006. Wikimedia Commons. CC BY 2.5.
423 km from Berlin · Deutsche Bundesbank
The Deutsche Bundesbank replaced the Bank deutscher Länder on 1 August 1957. Its seat is Frankfurt by law.
The Bundesbank’s headquarters in Frankfurt am Main, the long slab on the horizon, 2007. dontworry, 2007. Wikimedia Commons. CC BY-SA 3.0.
525 km from Berlin · Federal Constitutional Court and Federal Court of Justice
The Federal Constitutional Court opened on 28 September 1951. The Federal Court of Justice sits here too. Both seats are fixed in statute.
The Federal Constitutional Court, Karlsruhe, at dusk, 2015. Baden de, 2015. Wikimedia Commons. CC BY 3.0.
The Federal Court of Justice in Karlsruhe, in the former Erbgroßherzogliches Palais, 2012. Photo: Andreas Praefcke, 2012. Wikimedia Commons. CC BY 3.0.
The law could say where the ministries sat. On their jobs it could only say “should”, and from 2008 the greater part of them sat in Berlin.
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