West Berlin state election, 1950

Early elections to the Berlin House of Representatives were held on 3 December 1950. In October 1950 Germany’s new constitution went into force in West Berlin which made the election required. This is the first election to the new Berlin House of Representatives as opposed to the City Council.

The top candidate of the SPD was the popular mayor Ernst Reuter , but Franz Neumann; The CDU nominated Walther Schreiber . The SPD had considerable losses, dropping 19.8 percentage points in just two years, however they still received 44.7% of the vote and were far from the largest party. The main reason for the SPD has been lost because of the tension in the state of the world. The CDU gained 5.3 percentage points to win 24.7% of the vote. The FDP won surprisingly high 23.0% of the vote.

After the inaugural session of the House of Representatives, Reuters and Schreiber both received 62 votes, Schreiber withdrew his candidacy in favor of incumbent mayor Reuters. This then leads to the continuation of the SPD-CDU-FDP unity coalition with Reuters choosing Schreiber as his deputy.

Ernst Reuter died on September 29, 1953. The CDU and FDP agreed to form a coalition government with the then deputy mayor Walther Schreiber becoming mayor. This pushed the SPD into opposition, and meant that for the first time since 1948 Berlin actually had a parliamentary opposition.