Official days of remembrance and public holidays are among the symbols through which a state publicly portrays itself.

They serve to emphasize key events or profound experiences in the collective past as significant for the present and worthy of remembrance. The collective remembrance of specific historic experiences keeps alive the fundamental values on which the system of government and constitutional order are based. Days of remembrance and public holidays thus help to forge consensus and promote identification with our liberal democracy.

Germany's constitution, the Basic Law, confers no express legislative powers on the Federation to regulate public holidays. The states are responsible for observing the individual holidays.

An exception to this rule – due to its status as a state symbol – is the national holiday: The Day of German Unity on 3 October is by its very nature regulated by federal law under the Treaty between the Federal Republic of Germany and the German Democratic Republic on the Establishment of German Unity (Unification Treaty).

Two days of remembrance were instituted by proclamation of the Federal President in light of their special significance: 27 January as the Day of Remembrance for the Victims of National Socialism and 17 June as the National Day of Remembrance for the German People.

Further days of remembrance that figure importantly in the representation of the state are 20 June, Germany’s annual Day of Remembrance for Refugees and Expellees, 20 July, the day on which the resistance to National Socialist tyranny and the victims are remembered, and the Day of National Mourning.