Joachim Gauck life and biography

Joachim Gauck is the current President of Germany (since 18 March 2012). A former Lutheran pastor, he came to prominence as an anti-communist civil rights activist in East Germany.

During the Peaceful Revolution, he was a co-founder of the New Forum opposition movement in East Germany, which contributed to the downfall of the Soviet-backed dictatorship 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 Archives, serving from 1990 to 2000. As Federal Commissioner, he earned Joachim Gauck recognition as a "Stasi hunter" and "tireless pro-democracy advocate," exposing the crimes of the former communist secret police.

He was nominated as the candidate of the Social Democratic Party and the Alliance '90/The Greens for President of Germany in the 2010 election, but narrowly lost 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" and the Bild called him "the president of hearts." After Christian Wulff had stepped down, Gauck was elected President with 991 of 1228 votes in the Federal Convention in the 2012 election, as a nonpartisan consensus candidate of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), the Christian Social Union (CSU), the Free Democratic Party (FDP), the Social Democratic Party (SPD) and the Alliance '90/The Greens.

Gauck's political life was strongly influenced by the fate of his family and his upbringing in totalitarian communist East Germany; his father suffered five years in a Soviet Gulag and the family faced discrimination in East Germany. Gauck was a founding signatory of the Prague Declaration on European Conscience and Communism, together with Václav Havel and other statesmen, and the Declaration on Crimes of Communism. He has called for increased awareness of communist crimes in Europe, the prosecution of communist criminals, and for the necessity of delegitimizing the communist era. He has written on Soviet-era concentration camps such as the NKVD Special Camp No. 1, the crimes of communism, and political oppression in East Germany, and contributed to The Black Book of Communism. Gauck has accused the political left of ignoring communist crimes. 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."

1965 completed his theological studies from Joachim Gauck. Although he had thought it did not originally, he became pastor in 1967 a network of fourteen small villages around Lüssow. In the presbytery there was no toilet or running water. 1970 he rejoined the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Mecklenburg in the development area Evershagen Rostock, where his job was to build a church.

Gauck's sister Sabine fell in love with after high school in spring 1965 in a young man from Hamburg and good relations ensures that the GDR, in May 1966 dismissed from citizenship.

From 1983, could leave applications for marriage and family reunification should be made. Christian and Martin Gauck decided in early 1984 to leave the GDR. They were not allowed to do both in the High school graduation. Christian, who wanted to become a doctor, had learned a trade and made up the school at night school. Although he had thus become factory workers, he was not allowed to study medicine. (He was later in Hamburg.) Until the end of 1987 had to wait and Christian Martin. Then exit the applications were approved. On two consecutive days, they took their leave with their wives and children at the station in Rostock from their parents and siblings. Christmas celebrated Olga and Joachim Gauck only with the two daughters Catherine and Gesine.

Gesine wanted to stay in the GDR, but in 1988 she met a young man from Bremen to know, and a year later they moved to West Germany.

From 1983, Joachim Gauck was ("larva") from the Stasi monitored.

In October 1989, he was exempt from the church service and turned to politics. As Willy Brandt on 6 December 1989 came to Mecklenburg-Vorpommern and the ZDF broadcast the show from this event "code D" from Rostock, Joachim Gauck sat as one of the two representatives of the New Forum in addition to the former Chancellor.

For the first free election for the People's Chamber on 18 March 1990 presented to the Alliance 90 Joachim Gauck as a leading candidate in Rostock. Although the party won only 2.9 percent of the vote, but because there were no 5-percent threshold, they sent twelve deputies to the People's Chamber. One of them was Joachim Gauck.

As chairman of a Special Committee, he worked mainly with the fact that the Parliament on 24 August 1990, the "Law on the Preservation and Use of Personal Data of the former Stasi / AfNS" adopted. As envisaged in the contract agreement to leave the Stasi files after the reunification of the Federal Archives, Joachim Gauck continued successfully for the formation of an independent authority. He was born on 19 September 1990 as a "Special Representative of the Federal Government for the management of files and files of the former Ministry of State Security," proposed at the last meeting of the People's Chamber on 28 September and voted on 3 October by Federal President Richard von Weizsäcker and Federal Chancellor Helmut Kohl confirmed. He was also one of the 144 People's Chamber deputies who have been delegated to the German Bundestag. But he put his seat on 4 Down in October in order to devote himself to his new role.

I changed the location, profession, and I am separated from my wife. (Joachim Gauck, supra, page 249)

Joachim Gauck worked initially with three employees in the building complex of the SED Central Committee in Behrenstraße. In 1989 he moved with his staff at the Glinka Street. There were second Forms issued in January 1992 for the first time, with which an application could be made to private access to the file. Of the 20 000 copies available in the evening was none left. Because of the rush-printed newspapers in the form. 420 000 people out in the first hundred days of a request for private access to the file. To 130 000 applications were submitted for review by persons in public service.

The entry into force of the Stasi documentation law on 2 January 1992 was Joachim Gauck for "Federal Commissioner for the Records of the State Security Service of the former GDR."

On 21 September Joachim Gauck was the German Bundestag for a further term of five years confirmed. Because the relevant law does not allow more than two terms, his work ended on 10 October 2000, and Marianne Birthler took the succession.

Joachim Gauck lives since 1991, separated from his wife, had not divorced. Since 2000, the journalist Daniel Schadt (b. 1960), his girlfriend. Since 2003, he has been chairman of the association Gegen Vergessen – Für Demokratie ("Against Forgetting – For Democracy"), and he served on the Management Board of the European Monitoring Centre on Racism and Xenophobia 2001–2004. He has received numerous honors, including the 1997 Hannah Arendt Prize.

Following the surprise resignation of Federal President Horst Köhler on 31 May 2010 nominated SPD and "Alliance '90 / The Greens," the non-party candidates as Joachim Gauck. The consent of the people was overwhelming, and on the 30th election June 2010 subject to the Gauck provided by the government candidate, Christian Wulff, despite their majority in the Federal Assembly until the third ballot.

Christian Wulff came after months of wrangling on 17 February 2012 by the Office of the President back. Two days later agreed CDU, CSU and FDP, the SPD and the "Alliance '90 / The Greens" on Joachim Gauck as a candidate for the election of a successor. "The Left" nominated Beate Klarsfeld as a counter-candidate. In the 15th Federal Assembly on 18 March 2012 was elected Joachim Gauck with a record (991 of 1228 valid votes) and the eleventh President took office. At his side is Daniel Schadt.

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