West German presidential election, 1969

On March 5, 1969, the 5th Federal Assembly elected the Minister of Justice, Gustav Heinemann, the third President. He ran on a proposal from the SPD ( 449 seats in the Federal Assembly ). Shortly before the election, the FDP decided (83 seats), to support him. The NPD (22 seats) declared in favor of the of the CDU (482 seats) nominated Defense Minister Gerhard Schröder.

Heinemann won the third ballot with 512 and thus only six votes ahead of Schroeder (506 votes), the scarcest result in a presidential election. He is the only President who was not elected with an absolute majority. Even if all 18 are not the votes cast and abstentions of the last ballot Social and Liberal Democrats are attributed, but two of them the CDU candidate Schröder must have chosen. Only in 1994 and 2010, there were in the presidential election again a third ballot, but in the Roman Herzog and Christian Wulff reached the absolute majority.

Heinemann said after the election of a "piece of power ". After the parliamentary elections on 28 September 1969, the social liberal coalition of SPD and FDP came in the Bundestag.