The Basic Law naturally included many of the intentions of the Western occupying powers, who with the Frankfurt Documents presented on 1 July 1948 authorized the western German minister-presidents to draw up a constitution. But that document also reflects much of Germany’s experience with the Weimar Republic and the unjust National Socialist state.

The constitutional convention held at Herrenchiemsee (10-23 August 1948) and the Parliamentary Council which met in Bonn on 1 September 1948 (65 delegates of the state parliaments) incorporated in the Basic Law (adopted on 8 May 1949) provisions requiring future governments, parties and other political groupings to protect the democratic system. Ever since, all attempts to do away with the free, democratic basic order or to replace it with a right-wing or left-wing dictatorship have been treated as criminal offenses, and the organizations concerned can be banned. The Federal Constitutional Court, the guardian of the constitution, is the authority which decides whether a party is unconstitutional or not.

Whereas the authors of the Weimar constitution, naively believing in the uprightness of parliament, had, through its Article 76, made it possible for enemies of the constitution to destroy what in those days was the most liberal constitution in the world, Article 79 of the Basic Law prohibits any change in the commitment of all public authority to the protection of human rights (Article 1). Any attempt to do away with the country’s democratic, rule-of-law, social and federal order is likewise prohibited (Article 20).