Popular President Gauck Outspoken Fighter for Liberal Germany
Joachim Gauck made his name as a human rights activist under communism and later restored the relevance of the president's ceremonial office with bold stands on the refugee crisis and Germany's growing role on the world stage.
Gauck, 76, who announced Monday that he would not stand for a second term next year due to his advanced age, looks back on a remarkable biography that parallels his country's tumultuous history.
Born in 1940 in the northeastern city of Rostock, Gauck lived through the Nazi and communist dictatorships, honing a keen sense of justice and a firm commitment to historical reconciliation that would mark his tenure as head of state.
Gauck's father, a captain in Hitler's navy, was arrested and sent to a Siberian gulag after being sentenced to 25 years by a Russian military tribunal.
He returned home four years later a broken man and a distant, authoritarian parent.
Thwarted in his dream of becoming a journalist when he failed to secure a place to study German, Gauck instead pursued a degree in theology, joined the Lutheran Church in 1965 and was ordained in 1967.
He once told an interviewer that "at the age of nine, I knew socialism was an unjust system" and he used the pulpit to preach human rights and freedom.
When the first protests began that would eventually lead to the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, Gauck became the spokesman of the "New Forum" in Rostock, an opposition movement that demanded democratic reforms.
And when Germany was reunified amid joyous scenes in October 1990, the man who was formerly closely watched by the hated Stasi secret police was placed in charge of sorting through and opening access to their millions of files.
He served there until 2000, earning respect for balancing the causes of truth and reconciliation.
The father of four in March 2012 succeeded Chancellor Angela Merkel's handpicked candidate for the presidency, Christian Wulff, who became embroiled in scandal and was eventually forced from office under a prosecutor's investigation.
- 'Good partner' -
Merkel, who like Gauck grew up in communist East Germany, hailed him as a "true teacher of democracy" who had helped the country overcome its divisions.
But once in office, the popular, charismatic and plain-spoken Gauck created a stir by criticizing Merkel's full-throated support for Israel and a lack of transparency in her hardline stance in the eurozone debt crisis.
The subsequent blistering media attention led him in future not to seek out conflict with the country's elected leader.
As the presumably last German president of the World War II generation, Gauck paid highly symbolic visits to the sites of Nazi massacres in Europe, often weeping as he embraced survivors.
Gauck said Germany had to own up to its brutal past in order to take on new responsibilities in global crisis spots, despite lingering reticence among citizens.
"Germany should engage as a good partner earlier, more decisively and more substantially," he said in 2014.
Last year he became the highest-ranking German official to call the mass killing of Armenians by Ottoman forces during World War I a "genocide", drawing Turkey's ire.
A year later, on June 2, the German parliament reached the same conclusion.
As Germany saw a record influx of nearly 1.1 million refugees and migrants in 2015, Gauck lashed out at rising xenophobia and attacks on shelters.
However earlier this year he warned that it was "morally and politically necessary" to limit Europe's refugee flows, arguing that failing to do so risked ceding ground to populists and extremists.
Gauck has been separated from his longtime wife for several years and resides at the Bellevue palace with his companion, former journalist Daniela Schadt. She was reportedly instrumental in convincing him not to stand for a second term.
Source: Agence France Presse
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