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Joachim Gauck
Gauck in 2012
President of Germany
In office 18 March 2012 – 18 March 2017
Chancellor
Angela Merkel
Preceded by
Christian Wulff
Succeeded by
Frank-Walter Steinmeier
Federal Commissioner for the Stasi Records
In office 4 October 1990 – 10 October 2000
Preceded by
Office established
Succeeded by
Marianne Birthler
Parliamentary constituencies
Member of the Bundestag for Volkskammer
In office 3 October 1990 – 4 October 1990
Preceded by
Constituency established
Succeeded by
Vera Lengsfeld
Member of the Volkskammer for Rostock
In office 5 April 1990 – 2 October 1990
Preceded by
Constituency established
Succeeded by
Constituency abolished
Personal details
Born
(1940-01-24) 24 January 1940 (age 84) Rostock, Nazi Germany
Political party
Independent (since 1990)
Other political affiliations
New Forum/Alliance 90 (1989–1990)
Spouse
Gerhild Radtke
(m. 1959; sep. 1991)
Domestic partner
Daniela Schadt (since 2000)
Children
4
Signature
Website
Official website
Joachim Wilhelm Gauck (German:[joˈʔaxɪmˈɡaʊk]ⓘ; born 24 January 1940) is a German politician who served as President of Germany from 2012 to 2017. A former Lutheran pastor, he came to prominence as an anti-communist civil rights activist in East Germany.[1][2][3][4]
During the Peaceful Revolution in 1989, Gauck was a co-founder of the New Forum opposition movement in East Germany, which contributed to the downfall of the Socialist Unity Party of Germany (SED) and later with two other movements formed the electoral list Alliance 90. In 1990, he was a member of the only freely elected East German People's Chamber in the Alliance 90/The Greens faction. Following German reunification, he was elected as a member of the Bundestag by the People's Chamber in 1990 but resigned after a single day having been chosen by the Bundestag to be the first Federal Commissioner for the Stasi Records. This made him the Bundestag member with the shortest tenure. He also served as Federal Commissioner from 1990 to 2000, earning recognition as a "Stasi hunter" and "tireless pro-democracy advocate" for exposing the crimes of the communist secret police.[5][6][7][8]
He was nominated as the candidate of the SPD and the Greens in the 2010 presidential election but lost in the third ballot to Christian Wulff, the candidate of the government coalition. His candidacy was met by significant approval of the population and the media; Der Spiegel described him as "the better President",[9] while the Bild called him "the president of hearts".[10][11][12] Later, after Wulff stepped down, Gauck was elected as president with 991 of 1,228 votes in the Federal Convention in the 2012 German presidential election, as a nonpartisan consensus candidate of the CDU, the CSU, the FDP, the SPD, and the Greens.
A son of a survivor of a Soviet Gulag,[13][14][15][16][17] Gauck's political life was formed by his own family's experiences with totalitarianism. Gauck was a founding signatory of the Prague Declaration on European Conscience and Communism, together with Václav Havel and other statesmen, and of the Declaration on Crimes of Communism. He has called for increased awareness of Communist crimes in Europe, and for the necessity of delegitimizing the Communist era.[1] As president, he was a proponent of "an enlightened anti-communism",[18] and he has underlined the illegitimacy of Communist rule in East Germany.[19] He is the author and co-author of several books, including The Black Book of Communism. His 2012 book Freedom: A Plea calls for the defense of freedom and human rights around the globe.[20][21] He has been described by Angela Merkel as a "true teacher of democracy" and a "tireless advocate of freedom, democracy, and justice".[22]The Wall Street Journal has described him as "the last of a breed: the leaders of protest movements behind the Iron Curtain who went on to lead their countries after 1989."[23] He has received numerous honours, including the 1997 Hannah Arendt Prize. In 2022, he criticized Germany's policies towards Russia in the period after the Cold War, and said that "we should have listened to the voices of our eastern neighbours – Poles and the Baltic states as well as our Atlantic friends" when they warned about Russian aggression.[24]
^ abRobert Coalson, Longtime Anticommunist Activist To Become Germany's Next President, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, 20 February 2012
^"German Presidential Nominee's Background Seen as an Asset", The New York Times, 20 February 2012
^"A crucial test for Angela Merkel". FRANCE 24. 30 June 2010. Retrieved 21 February 2012.
^"Gauck's civic engagement wins him wide support". DW.DE. 17 February 2012. Retrieved 21 February 2012.
^"German media roundup: Little excitement for Wulff presidency". thelocal.de. 4 June 2010. Retrieved 30 June 2010.
^"Politik Inland : Joachim Gauck, der Stasi-Jäger – Archiv – Westfälische Nachrichten" (in German). Wn.de. 30 June 2010. Retrieved 20 February 2012.
^Gathmann, Florian (20 February 2012). "Germany's Next President: 'I'm No Superman' – SPIEGEL ONLINE – News – International". Spiegel Online. Spiegel.de. Retrieved 20 February 2012.
^"Merkel Names Gauck as Unity Candidate for German Presidency". Businessweek. 8 December 2009. Archived from the original on 20 July 2012. Retrieved 20 February 2012.
^"DER SPIEGEL 23/2010 – Inhaltsverzeichnis". Spiegel.de. Retrieved 20 February 2012.
^"Profile: Joachim Gauck, Germany's 'President of Hearts' – The Local". Thelocal.de. 1 January 2012. Retrieved 20 February 2012.
^"Joachim Gauck: Der "Kandidat der Herzen" – Politik Inland" (in German). Bild.de. 19 February 2012. Retrieved 20 February 2012.
^"Vom Sieger der Herzen zum Bundespräsidenten?" (in German). MDR.DE. Archived from the original on 6 September 2012. Retrieved 20 February 2012.
^Online, FOCUS. "Das Geheimnis um den Onkel" (in German). Retrieved 10 January 2017.
^"Joachim Gauck: Anti-communist pastor who could turn out to be Angela Merkel's nemesis – World news, News". Belfasttelegraph.co.uk. 30 June 2010. Retrieved 20 February 2012.
^Connolly, Kate (20 June 2010). "Joachim Gauck: the dissident hero who holds the destiny of Germany in his hands". The Guardian. London.
^Feldenkirchen, Markus (29 June 2010). "Eastern Inspiration: Gauck the Therapist Wants to Put Germany On the Couch – SPIEGEL ONLINE – News – International". Spiegel Online. Spiegel.de. Retrieved 20 February 2012.
^"Rival candidate for president new headache for Merkel". Reuters. 6 June 2010.
^Sturm, Daniel Friedrich (14 June 2013). "Gedenken: Gauck wirbt für "aufgeklärten Antikommunismus"". Die Welt (in German) – via www.welt.de.
^"German president slams communism in provocative speech to Shanghai students on his China visit". 23 March 2016.
^"Gauck-Buch: Plädoyer für Freiheit und Menschenrechte". Volksstimme.de. Archived from the original on 14 September 2012. Retrieved 21 February 2012.
^"Angela Merkel backs 'German Nelson Mandela' for president". Globalpost.com. Retrieved 21 February 2012.
^Cite error: The named reference spiegel-merkel was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
^The Gauck File, The Wall Street Journal, 22 February 2012, p. 14
^Cite error: The named reference tvpworld was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
Joachim Wilhelm Gauck (German: [joˈʔaxɪm ˈɡaʊk] ; born 24 January 1940) is a German politician who served as President of Germany from 2012 to 2017. A...
and the Alliance '90/The Greens, independent human rights activist JoachimGauck. On 3 June 2010, Christian Wulff (CDU), the incumbent Premier of Lower...
resignation of Christian Wulff as President of Germany on 17 February 2012. JoachimGauck was elected on the first ballot by a Federal Convention, consisting...
a majority in the first and second ballots, while his main opponent JoachimGauck had an unexpectedly strong showing. In the end, Wulff obtained a majority...
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independent politician elected president of Germany until the election of JoachimGauck nearly 80 years later. World War I had resulted in the collapse of all...
German edition, published by Piper Verlag, includes a chapter written by JoachimGauck. The introduction was written by Courtois. Historian François Furet...
candidate for The Left in the 2012 German presidential election against JoachimGauck, but lost by 126 to 991. Beate Auguste Künzel was born in Berlin, the...
communism; commemorative plaque in the foyer of the main university building JoachimGauck, 11th President of Germany, studied theology in Rostock until 1965,...
"Franco A.", a lieutenant, had planned to target President of Germany JoachimGauck, Heiko Maas, Claudia Roth, and unnamed "human rights activists and journalists"...
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was proposed as an official European remembrance day by Václav Havel, JoachimGauck and a group of human rights activists and former political prisoners...
presidential visits to foreign countries made by JoachimGauck, the former President of Germany. Gauck was elected and assumed the office for a five-year...
2012 by German Chancellor Angela Merkel in the presence of President JoachimGauck. The memorial is on Simsonweg in the Tiergarten in Berlin, south of...
Johannes Rau, Horst Köhler and Christian Wulff. Former German President JoachimGauck gave the opening address at the interdisciplinary meeting in 2015. German...
3 August 2014, French President François Hollande and German President JoachimGauck together marked the centenary of Germany's declaration of war on France...
reconstructed Berlin Palace. The foundation stone was laid by President JoachimGauck in a ceremony on 12 June 2013. On completion in 2020, the City Palace...
leaders at the Royal Palace of Zarzuela, such as the German president JoachimGauck and his wife, Gerhild Radtke, and the Hungarian president János Áder...
In 1990, JoachimGauck (who is a former German President, centrist politician and activist without party affiliation) took part in the Alliance 90, which...
of France, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau of Canada, German President JoachimGauck, President Enrique Peña Nieto of Mexico and King Felipe VI of Spain...