Joachim Wilhelm Gauck (; 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."German Presidential Nominee's Background Seen as an Asset" , The New York Times, 20 February 2012
During the Peaceful Revolution in 1989, Gauck was a of the New Forum opposition movement in East Germany. Following German reunification, he was elected as a member of the Bundestag in 1990 but served for only one day before becoming the first Federal Commissioner for the Stasi Records. He served as Federal Commissioner from 1990 to 2000, earning recognition for exposing the crimes of the communist secret police.
Gauck was nominated as a candidate in the 2010 presidential election but, despite his popularity, lost in the third ballot to Christian Wulff. After Wulff stepped down, Gauck was elected as president in the 2012 German presidential election. 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 and the Declaration on Crimes of Communism. He has called for increased awareness of Communist crimesRobert Coalson, Longtime Anticommunist Activist To Become Germany's Next President , Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, 20 February 2012 and delegitimising Communist rule in East Germany.
He is also the author and co-author of several books, including The Black Book of Communism and Freedom: A Plea (2012). He has received numerous honours, including the 1997 Hannah Arendt Prize.
Childhood and life in East Germany (1940–1989) Gauck was born into a family of sailors in Rostock, the son of Olga (née Warremann; born 1910) and Joachim Gauck Sr. (born 1907). His father was an experienced ship's captain and distinguished naval officer (Kapitän zur See – captain at sea), who after World War II worked as an inspector at the Neptun Werft shipbuilding company. Both parents were members of the Nazi Party (NSDAP). Following the Soviet occupation of Germany at the end of World War II, the Socialist Unity Party of Germany (SED) was installed into power in what became the German Democratic Republic (East Germany). When Gauck was eleven years old in 1951, his father was arrested by Soviet occupation forces; he was not to return until 1955. He was convicted by a Russian military tribunal of espionage for receiving a letter from the West and also of anti-Soviet demagogy for being in the possession of a western journal on naval affairs, and deported to a Gulag in Siberia, where he was mistreated to the extent that he was considered physically disabled after one year, according to his son.Gauck 2009, p. 37 For nearly three years, the family knew nothing about what had happened to him and whether he was still alive. He was freed in 1955, following the state visit of Konrad Adenauer to Moscow. Adenauer negotiated the release of thousands of German prisoners of war and civilians who had been deported.
Gauck graduated with an Abitur from Innerstädtisches Gymnasium in Rostock. According to Gauck, his political activities were inspired by the ordeal of his father,„Wir Deutsche können Freiheit", Interview, Ostseezeitung Rostock, 23/24 January 2010 and he stated that he grew up with a "well-founded anti-communism".Eckhard Jesse, Eine Revolution und ihre Folgen: 14 Bürgerrechtler ziehen Bilanz, 2000 Already in school in East Germany, he made no secret of his anti-communist position, and he steadfastly refused to join the SED's youth movement, the Free German Youth. He wanted to study German and become a journalist, but because he was not a member of the ruling Communist party, he was not allowed to do so. Instead, he chose to study theology and become a pastor in the Protestant church in Mecklenburg. He has stated that his primary intention was not to become a pastor but that the theology studies offered an opportunity to study philosophy and the church was one of the few institutions in East Germany where Marxist–Leninist ideology was not dominant. Nevertheless, he eventually became a pastor. His work as a pastor in East Germany was very difficult due to the hostility of the Communist regime towards the church, and for many years he was under constant observation and was harassed by the Stasi (the secret police). The Stasi described Gauck in their file on him as an "incorrigible anti-communist" (unverbesserlicher Antikommunist). He has said that "at the age of nine, I knew socialism was an unjust system."
In his memoirs, Gauck writes that "the fate of our father was like an educational cudgel. It led to a sense of unconditional loyalty towards the family, which excluded any sort of idea of fraternisation with the system."Kate Connolly, Joachim Gauck: the dissident hero who holds the destiny of Germany in his hands , The Guardian, 20 June 2010
Career during and after the Peaceful Revolution of 1989
During the Peaceful Revolution of 1989, he became a member of the New Forum, a democratic opposition movement, and was elected as its spokesman. He also took part in major demonstrations against the Communist regime of GDR. In the free 1990 East German general election, he was elected to the People's Chamber of the GDR, representing the Alliance 90 (that consisted of the New Forum, Democracy Now, and the Initiative for Peace and Human Rights), where he served until the dissolution of the GDR in October 1990.
On 2 October 1990, the day before the dissolution of the GDR, the People's Chamber elected him Special Representative for the Stasi Records. After the dissolution of the GDR the following day, he was appointed Special Representative of the Federal Government for the Stasi Records by President Richard von Weizsäcker and Chancellor Helmut Kohl. As such, he was in charge of the archives of the Stasi and tasked with investigating Communist crimes. In 1992, his office became known as the Federal Commissioner for the Stasi Records. He served in this position until 2000, when he was succeeded by Marianne Birthler.
Gauck served as a member of the Bundestag, the Parliament of Germany, from 3 to 4 October 1990. The 1990 People's Chamber was granted the right to nominate a certain number of MPs as part of the reunification process and he was one of the 144 Volkskammer co-opted to the Bundestag. He stepped down following his appointment as Special Representative of the Federal Government. As such, he was the shortest serving member of the Bundestag in history. He was succeeded by fellow civil rights activist Vera Lengsfeld.
Gauck refused the position of president of the Federal Agency for Civic Education as well as offers to be nominated as a candidate for parliament by the SPD. Voices inside the CSU proposed him as a possible conservative presidential candidate (against SPD career politician Johannes Rau) in 1999, and his name was also mentioned as a possible candidate for CDU/CSU and Free Democratic Party in subsequent years. For instance the Saxon FDP state party proposed him as a liberal-conservative candidate in 2004, before the leaders of the parties agreed on Horst Köhler. Since 2003, Gauck 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.Commemoration of the 20th Anniversary of the Commissioner for Civil Rights Protection in Poland , Government of Poland, 2008
Political views and reception
Gauck has written on Soviet-era concentration camps, such as the NKVD Special Camp No. 1, the crimes of Communism, and political repression in East Germany, and contributed to the German edition of The Black Book of Communism. In 2007, Gauck was invited to deliver the main speech during a commemoration ceremony at the Landtag of Saxony in memory of the reunification of Germany and the fall of the Communist government. All parties participated, except The Left (the successor of SED), whose members walked out in protest against Gauck's delivering the speech. Gauck supports the observation of The Left by the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution and the corresponding state authorities. Gauck has lauded the SPD for distancing itself from The Left.
Gauck is a founding signatory of both the Prague Declaration on European Conscience and Communism (2008), with Václav Havel, and the Declaration on Crimes of Communism (2010), both calling for the condemnation of communism, education about Communist crimes, and punishment of Communist criminals. The Prague Declaration proposed the establishment of the European Day of Remembrance for Victims of Stalinism and Nazism, that was subsequently designated by the European Parliament. In 2010, Gauck criticised the political left for ignoring Communist crimes. Gauck is also a supporter of the idea to establish a Centre Against Expulsions in Berlin.
On the occasion of his 70th birthday in 2010, Gauck was praised by Angela Merkel as a "true teacher of democracy" and a "tireless advocate of freedom, democracy and justice". The Independent has described Gauck as "Germany's answer to Nelson Mandela". 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", comparing him to Lech Wałęsa and Václav Havel.The Gauck File , The Wall Street Journal, 22 February 2012, p. 14 Corriere della Sera has referred to him as the "German Havel".
Gauck supported the economic reforms initiated by the red-green government of Gerhard Schröder. He also supported the 1999 NATO bombing of Yugoslavia to end Yugoslav atrocities in Kosovo, and supports the German military presence in Afghanistan. Gauck is a proponent of market economy, and is sceptical towards the Occupy movement. In 2010, he said that SPD politician Thilo Sarrazin had "demonstrated courage" in opening a debate on immigration. He criticized several of Sarrazin's views.
In an interview with Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty in 2007, Gauck said that "we have to delegitimatise [the Communist era] not only because of the many victims and criminal acts, but [also because] modern politics in the entire Soviet empire was basically taken backward." According to The Wall Street Journal, he "has dedicated his life to showing that the Soviet system's evils were no less than the Third Reich's". In his 2012 book Freedom. A Plea, he outlines his thoughts on freedom, democracy, human rights, and tolerance. In 2012, Gauck said that "Muslims who are living here are a part of Germany"; he refused to say whether Islam was a part of Germany, as asserted by the previous president Christian Wulff. The Central Council of Muslims in Germany welcomed the remarks. In May 2015, Gauck urged Germans to openly acknowledge that "millions of soldiers of the Red Army lost their lives during Nazi internment."
In 2022, Gauck criticised 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.
2010 presidential candidate
On 3 June 2010, Gauck was nominated for President of Germany in the 2010 election by the SPD and the Greens. Gauck is not a member of either the SPD or the Greens (although his former party in East Germany eventually merged with the Greens after reunification), and has stated that he would also have accepted a nomination by the CDU. Gauck once described himself as a "leftist, liberal conservative", After his nomination, he stated: "I'm neither red nor green, I'm Joachim Gauck." The Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung described him as a liberal conservative.