An indirect presidential election (officially the 3rd Federal Convention) was held in
West Germany on 1 July 1959. For the first time in the Federal Republic, the incumbent president,
Theodor Heuss, was not eligible for reelection. In the buildup to the election, Chancellor
Konrad Adenauer initially declared his candidacy, but then withdrew for political reasons. The
Christian Democratic Union instead nominated
Heinrich Lübke. The
Social Democrats nominated
Carlo Schmid who had been the party's caucus chair at the
Parliamentary Council. The
Free Democratic Party nominated the chair of its
Bundestag caucus,
Max Becker. Like the first contested presidential election ten years prior, it took two rounds to determine a winner.
Heinrich Lübke fell two votes short of the absolute majority in the first round, winning the election with 526 votes in the second.
Composition of the Federal Convention
The President is elected by the Federal Convention consisting of all the members of the
Bundestag and an equal number of delegates representing the states. These are divided proportionally by population to each state, and each state's delegation is divided among the political parties represented in its parliament so as to reflect the partisan proportions in the parliament.