Summary — The Bundesrat represents a singular institutional experience in the context of the Upper Houses and the representation of territory. The interest of this experience consists principally in the history of this administrative and legislative body, in its formal immobility since the nineteenth century, but also in his present aspect, in its power to attract and to hide the institutionals and politicals conflicts. This article principally concern the historicals outlines, in the first place in the Reich of the Chancellor Bismarck: here the Bundesrat discloses its part as a synthesis of the monarchic principle and the federal principle contrasting with the parliamentary system. In the Republic of Weimar the Bundesrat is marked of these contradictions, that will be overcome in the Grundgesetz of 1949. The author thinks that the historical side is introductory to following analysis about the present working of the Bundesrat, to locate correctly the connection between institution and territory.