Joachim Gauck
Joachim Gauck born 24 January 1940, is the President of Germany, serving since March 2012. A former Lutheran pastor, he came to prominence as an anti-communist civil rights activist in East Germany. During the 1989 revolution, he 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). In 1990 he served as a member of the only freely elected People\'s Chamber for the Alliance 90. Following German reunification, he was elected by the Bundestag as the first Federal Commissioner for the Stasi Records, serving from 1990 to 2000. As Federal Commissioner, he earned recognition as a \"Stasi hunter\" and \"tireless pro-democracy advocate,\" exposing the crimes of the communist secret police. He was nominated as the candidate of the SPD and the Greens for President of Germany in the 2010 election. His candidacy was met by significant approval of the population and the media; Der Spiegel described him as \"the better President\" and the Bild called him \"the president of hearts.\" Later, after Christian Wulff stepped down, Gauck was elected as President with 991 of 1228 votes in the Federal Convention in the 2012 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, 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. 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. He has been described by Chancellor Angela Merkel as a \"true teacher of democracy\" and a \"tireless advocate of freedom, democracy, and justice.\" 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.\" He has received numerous honours, including the 1997 Hannah Arendt Prize.
