Tina de Vries, advocate, mediator, senior research fellow with responsibility for Poland, Institute for East European Law, Munich (www.ostrecht.de) Introduction to German Constitutional Law, October 11th 2010, Kiew In this lecture I will give an overview about the German Basic Law (Grundgesetz) as the German Constitution is called. The Basic Law was enacted in 1949. In its now over 60 year old history it served as a model for different constitutions all over the world. Especially influential became the idea of the constitutional state (Rechtsstaat). Due to the time of its creation, it was designed as a temporal constitution but in 1990, when the reunification of Germany occurred, it was decided to keep the Grundgesetz. One of the major characteristics of the Basic Law is the enforceability of its provisions guaranteed by the existence of the Constitutional Tribunal. The Basic Law consists of two parts, a human right part and the organizational law of the State. One of the main challenges the German Basic Law faces today, is to balance the tension between the European law and the national law. Another field of development is the idea of the federal state. In the lecture we´ll take a brief look on all of these issues.