Some Britons reacted to the news of Queen Elizabeth II's death with the frightened fear that her passport would now become invalid. Finally, on the first page, the British Foreign Secretary, "on behalf of Her Majesty", addressed to all those concerned the request to "let the holder of this document pass freely" and to grant him "all assistance and protection" that may prove necessary. But the blue passports with the golden royal coat of arms remain in circulation, as do the banknotes on which the queen promised in the small print next to her portrait to pay the holder of a 20-pound note "the equivalent of twenty pounds on demand". But after the coronation of Charles III, a personal pronoun must now be exchanged in the new passports and stamps and banknotes will increasingly reflect his profile.

Johannes Leithäuser

Political correspondent for the United Kingdom and Ireland.

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From this weekend on, the king does not represent himself on these stamps, but the monarchy, or more precisely the crown. And he thus symbolizes the state, whose power he has not exercised for more than three centuries, in a comprehensive way. The entire unwritten constitution of Great Britain is based on the crown, the term "crown in parliament" describes that the nobles in the House of Lords and the "commons" in the House of Commons derive their legislative power from rights once granted to them by the monarch.

The British Prime Minister is still not elected by the majority of the House of Commons, but appointed by the monarch – he can only be overthrown by parliament by a lost vote of confidence. And the term "His Majesty" – Her or His Majesty – adorns not only the warships of the Royal Navy, but also the prisons – Boris Becker recently spent some time in London's "HM Prison Wormwood Scrubs". Even if they are no longer operated by the state itself, but by private companies.

The coronation of Charles III is a historical spectacle, with rites and rituals deeply rooted in the Middle Ages, but it is also an act of state of the present. The crowned king renews the legitimacy of state power. The BBC drew a comparison to a royal wedding in view of the colourful spectacle in Westminster Abbey – and in fact, the last time the abbey appeared in such bright splendour was twelve years ago at the wedding of Prince William and Kate Middleton. But in the current case, the king does not marry a wife, but the state. And unlike a wedding, he does not receive a ring, but a crown.

Deep roots in church and state

And because the crown is the symbol of the state, it actually has a higher meaning than its wearer. She has her own place of storage – in the Tower of London – and she even travels independently in her own carriage when she travels to the ceremonies where she is needed. In addition to the coronation rite, this is above all the almost annual opening of the parliamentary session, the second most colourful event in the royal ritual calendar. There, the monarch with the crown on his head reads out his prime minister's government program and thus formally legitimizes it – just as he will later officially legitimize the laws that arise from it by signing it.

British "sovereignty", which has been repeatedly invoked by Brexit supporters, especially in the ranks of the Conservatives, over the past decade and reclaimed by the EU, derives from a sovereign monarch, not from the electorate, as in Germany, where Article 20 of the Basic Law states: "All state power emanates from the people."