1. Joachim Gauck served as Federal Commissioner from 1990 to 2000, earning recognition as a "Stasi hunter" and "tireless pro-democracy advocate" for exposing the crimes of the communist secret police.
47 Facts About Joachim Gauck
1. 2.
Joachim Gauck was nominated as the candidate of the SPD and the Greens in the 2010 presidential election but lost in the third ballot to Christian Wulff, the candidate of the government coalition.
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Joachim Gauck's candidacy was met by significant approval of the population and the media; Der Spiegel described him as "the better President", while the Bild called him "the president of hearts".
4.
Later, after Wulff stepped down, Joachim Gauck was elected as president with 991 of 1,228 votes in the Federal Convention in the 2012 German presidential election, as a nonpartisan consensus candidate of the CDU, the CSU, the FDP, the SPD, and the Greens.
5.
Joachim Gauck was a founding signatory of the Prague Declaration on European Conscience and Communism, together with Vaclav Havel and other statesmen, and of the Declaration on Crimes of Communism.
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Joachim Gauck has called for increased awareness of Communist crimes in Europe, and for the necessity of delegitimizing the Communist era.
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Joachim Gauck is the author and co-author of several books, including The Black Book of Communism.
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Joachim Gauck has been described by Angela Merkel as a "true teacher of democracy" and a "tireless advocate of freedom, democracy, and justice".
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Joachim Gauck has received numerous honours, including the 1997 Hannah Arendt Prize.
10.
Joachim Gauck's father was an experienced ship's captain and distinguished naval officer, who after World War II worked as an inspector at the Neptun Werft shipbuilding company.
11.
When Joachim Gauck was eleven years old in 1951, his father was arrested by Soviet occupation forces; he was not to return until 1955.
12.
Joachim Gauck was convicted by a Russian military tribunal of espionage for receiving a letter from the West and 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.
13.
Joachim Gauck was freed in 1955, following the state visit of Konrad Adenauer to Moscow.
14.
Joachim Gauck graduated with an Abitur from Innerstadtisches Gymnasium in Rostock.
15.
Joachim Gauck 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.
16.
Joachim Gauck took part in major demonstrations against the Communist regime of GDR.
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Joachim Gauck served in this position until 2000, when he was succeeded by Marianne Birthler.
18.
Joachim Gauck served as a member of the Bundestag, the Parliament of Germany, from 3 to 4 October 1990.
19.
Joachim Gauck stepped down following his appointment as Special Representative of the Federal Government.
20.
Joachim Gauck was succeeded by fellow civil rights activist Vera Lengsfeld.
21.
Joachim 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.
22.
Joachim 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.
23.
In 2007, Joachim 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.
24.
All parties participated, except The Left, whose members walked out in protest against Joachim Gauck's delivering the speech.
25.
Joachim Gauck has lauded the SPD for distancing itself from The Left.
26.
Joachim Gauck is a founding signatory of both the Prague Declaration on European Conscience and Communism, with Vaclav Havel, and the Declaration on Crimes of Communism, both calling for the condemnation of communism, education about Communist crimes, and punishment of Communist criminals.
27.
In 2010, Joachim Gauck criticized the political left of ignoring Communist crimes.
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Joachim Gauck is a supporter of the idea to establish a Centre Against Expulsions in Berlin.
29.
Joachim Gauck supported the economic reforms initiated by the red-green government of Gerhard Schroder.
30.
Joachim Gauck supported the 1999 NATO bombing of Yugoslavia to end Yugoslav atrocities in Kosovo, and supports the German military presence in Afghanistan.
31.
Joachim Gauck is a proponent of market economy, and is sceptical towards the Occupy movement.
32.
In 2012, Joachim 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 previous president Christian Wulff.
33.
On 3 June 2010, Joachim Gauck was nominated for President of Germany in the 2010 election by the SPD and the Greens.
34.
Joachim Gauck is not a member of either the SPD or the Greens, and has stated that he would have accepted a nomination by the CDU.
35.
Joachim Gauck was originally proposed as a presidential candidate for the Greens by Andreas Schulze, then communications adviser to the Greens in the Bundestag.
36.
Joachim Gauck was thus supported by all major parties represented in the Federal Convention, except Die Linke.
37.
Joachim Gauck's nomination was "broadly welcomed" by the German media, which were described as "jubilant".
38.
Joachim Gauck's candidacy was criticized by Die Linke, and met with some other individual criticism; he was criticized by individual CSU members for not being married to the woman he lives with, and by individual politicians of the Greens, notably for his earlier statements on Sarrazin and the Occupy movement.
39.
Gabriel stated that the reason that Die Linke was the only party that did not support Joachim Gauck was its "sympathy for the German Democratic Republic".
40.
On 18 March 2012, Joachim Gauck was elected President of Germany with 991 of 1.228 votes in the Federal Convention.
41.
On 6 June 2016, Joachim Gauck announced he would not stand for re-election in 2017, citing his age as the reason.
42.
Joachim Gauck has visited a significant number of countries as president.
43.
On 3 August 2014, Joachim Gauck joined Francois Hollande to mark the outbreak of the war between Germany and France in 1914 during World War I by laying the first stone of a memorial in Hartmannswillerkopf, for French and German soldiers killed in the war.
44.
Joachim Gauck regularly welcomed state officials in different parts of Germany, especially for remarkable events in history.
45.
On 18 September 2014, Joachim Gauck welcomed the heads of states of partly German-speaking countries, such as Austria, Switzerland, Belgium, Luxembourg, and Liechtenstein, to his home region of Mecklenburg.
46.
Joachim Gauck married Gerhild "Hansi" Joachim Gauck, his childhood sweetheart whom he met at age ten; the couple has been separated since 1991.
47.
Joachim Gauck's children were discriminated against and denied the right to education by the communist regime because their father was a pastor.