List of members of the 3rd Bundestag

3rd Bundestag
3rd Bundestag
Overview
Legislative body	Bundestag
Meeting place	3 Kongresshalle (Berlin-Tiergarten) [de] ; Bundeshaus (Bonn); Big lecture hall of the Physics Institute of Technische Universität Berlin;
Term	October 15, 1957 – October 15, 1961
Election	1957 West German federal election
Government	Third Adenauer cabinet
President of the Bundestag	Eugen Gerstenmaier

The 3rd German Bundestag, the lower house of parliament of the Federal Republic of Germany, was elected on 15 September 1957,^[2]^[3]^[4] and existed^{[clarification needed]} from 15 October 1957 to 15 October 1961. It held a total of 168 parliamentary sittings; the last sitting was on 22 August 1961.

On 22 October 1957 the Bundestag elected Konrad Adenauer as federal chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany on the fourth ballot, with 274 (+8)^[a] yes votes, 193 (+13)^[a] no votes and nine abstentions.^[5]

Presidium of the Bundestag

Marie-Elisabeth Lüders (FDP) served as Alterspräsidentin (Mother of the House), after Konrad Adenauer (CDU) who should have had this role, had rejected it, because he considered it inappropriate for the incumbent federal chancellor to serve as Alterspräsident. She presided over the first session of the 3rd Bundestag until Eugen Gerstenmaier was elected President of the Bundestag.^[6]

Eugen Gerstenmaier was elected President of the Bundestag on the first ballot with 437 votes in favor, 54 abstentions and 3 invalid votes.^[8]^[6]

The CDU/CSU (Christian Democratic Union of Germany/Christian Social Union in Bavaria) party gained the first — and to date, only — absolute majority for a single German parliamentary group in a free election. However the CDU/CDU still formed a coalition with the German Party (DP) until 1960 when nine of their 17 Bundestag members left the DP and joined the CDU.^[9] After that, the DP left the governing coalition. (Hans-Joachim von Merkatz, the Federal Minister of the Bundesrat and State Affairs, and Hans-Christoph Seebohm, the Federal Ministry for Transport, the DP members in the governing cabinet, had left in July 1960 and joined the CDU in September 1960.)^[10]^[11] The SPD won new seats as well. The FDP was the only party in the election that lost seats.

Changes in the numbers of the four caucuses (CDU/CSU, SPD, FDP, German Party)
Date	Reason for change	CDU/CSU	SPD	FDP	DP	Others	Total number
1961	First meeting	277	181	43	17	1	519
9 October 1957	Karl Hübner becomes a guest member^{[clarification needed]} of the CDU/CSU caucus	278		43	17
3 June 1958	Otto Eisenmann leaves the DP caucus and joins the FDP caucus			44	16
20 June 1958	Alexander Elbrächter leaves the DP caucus and becomes unaffiliated				15	1
24 June 1958	Alexander Elbrächter joins the CDU/CSU caucus	279			15
1 July 1960	Georg Ripken, Heinrich Schild, Hans-Christoph Seebohm, Willy Steinmetz, Margot Kalinke, Hans-Joachim von Merkatz, Ludwig Preiß, Victor-Emanuel Preusker, Wilhelm Probst leave the DP caucus and become unaffiliated	279			6	9
20 September 1960	The same nine former DP members join the CDU/CSU caucus	288
8 November 1960	Peter Nellen leaves the CDU/CSU caucus and joins the SPD caucus	287	182
24 February 1961	Arno Behrisch leaves the SPD caucus and becomes unaffiliated		181			1
25 April 1961	Fritz Logemann leaves the DP caucus and joins the FDP caucus			45	5	1
3 May 1961	Herbert Schneider, Helmuth Schranz, Heinz Matthes leave the DP caucus and become unaffiliated				2	4
3 May 1961	Peter Tobaben, Ludwig Schneider leave the DP caucus and join the CDU/CSU caucus	289				4
18 August 1961	Georg Richard Kinat leaves the SPD caucus and becomes unaffiliated	289	180			5

This is a list of members of the 3rd Bundestag, whose members were in office from 1957 until 1961:

^ ^a ^b During the existence of West Germany the Abgeordnetenhaus of Berlin elected representatives to the Bundestag for West Berlin. But since they were prohibited by an international treaty to participate in Germanys legislative process, their votes were trivial.