Federal President Joachim Gauck’s 75th birthday
The issues dominating the German Head of State’s life have been freedom and democracy.
Perhaps there is a date in 2015 that means more to Joachim Gauck than his own 75th birthday: the 25th anniversary of German Reunification. Germany’s recent past – with its partition between East and West – and the citizens’ successful uprising against oppression are his life’s topic. He has had to confront the issue from many, very different positions – as a church official, a parliamentarian, the Federal Commissioner for the Stasi Records and, since 2012, as President of the Federal Republic of Germany.
Joachim Gauck was born on 24 January 1940 in Rostock on the Baltic Sea. His father was a German navy captain during the Second World War who was abducted by the Soviet secret police to a labour camp in Siberia in the early 1950s – a fact that was to permanently influence Joachim Gauck’s attitude towards the former East Germany (GDR) and today leads him to call for an “enlightened (form of) anti-communism”.
Gauck actually wanted to be a journalist, but this was not possible under the GDR regime. Instead, the young man studied Protestant theology – partly because he saw room for debate in this field. He became a pastor and later organized church congresses which served, not least, as forums for such issues as peace and human rights. The autumn of 1989 changed everything for Joachim Gauck: “During those eight weeks we didn’t walk, we flew. The euphoria was incredible.”
Driving force in the process of coming to terms with the SED dictatorship
After the fall of the Berlin Wall, Gauck stood as a candidate in the GDR’s first democratic elections; he became an MP and committed himself to analysing the years of dictatorship. On 3 October 1990, the Day of German Unity, he became the German Government’s Federal Commissioner for the Stasi Records. Few people have had a government authority named after them, but Gauck is one: the Germans simply use the term Gauck Commission for the agency he headed until 2000.
Gauck took part in the debate as a publicist, before taking over the office of Federal President in 2012. He has remained vocal, despite his politically neutral role. He triggers debates – like at the Munich Security Conference in 2014 when he called on Germany to take on more international responsibility. Most recently he caused controversy by expressing concern at the election of the new Prime Minister of Thuringia. For the first time, a left-wing politician from the “Linkspartei” – successor to the SED, the party that had ruled the GDR – has become Prime Minister of a German federal state. “You are an admonisher, a real teacher of democracy,” said Federal Chancellor Angela Merkel five years ago in her speech to mark Gauck’s 70th birthday. And that is just as true today as it was then.
75th birthday of President Joachim Gauck on 24 January 2015
