The 72-year-old Gauck is a former Lutheran priest who opposed East Germany’s then-communist regime and became head of a federal agency dealing with the painful past of the Communists’ ubiquitous domestic intelligence service after Germany’s reunification in 1990.
Chancellor Angela Merkel said at a hastily called news conference that her center-right coalition government, and the center-left opposition rallied behind Gauck, who was initially proposed by the opposition Social Democrats and Greens. He is not a member of any political party.
“What moves me the most, is that a man who was still born during the gloomy, dark war, who grew up and lived 50 years in a dictatorship ... is now called to become the head of state,” Gauck said. “This is of course a very special day in my life.”
Merkel, who as Gauck grew up in then-communist East Germany or the GDR, said their life stories strongly connect them. “We have both spent a part of our life in the GDR and our dream of freedom has become true in 1989.”
The chancellor stressed that clergymen such as Gauck were at the forefront of the protests that eventually brought down the Communist regime.
Christian Wulff, 52, quit as president Friday after prosecutors asked parliament to strip him of his immunity from prosecution over accusations of improper ties to businessmen. The move followed two months of allegations he received favors such as a favorable loan, and hotel stays from friends when he was state governor of Lower Saxony.
Wulff was Merkel’s candidate when elected less than two years ago, triumphing at that time over Gauck in a messy election.
Opposition leader Sigmar Gabriel therefore took a jibe at Merkel at their joint news conference at Berlin’s chancellery, saying “it is now evident that all involved regret that Joachim Gauck failed to get elected (in 2010), therefore it is good that we now have him as joint candidate.”
When Wulff resigned, Merkel immediately said she would work with the Social Democrats and Greens to find a consensus candidate to succeed him.
Merkel appeared eager to quickly resolve the troublesome issue, bringing an end to the scandal that had engulfed Wulff, allowing her to refocus on fixing Europe’s debt crisis.
The Greens’ leader Claudia Roth said: “Joachim Gauck is someone who is able to restore radiance to democracy.”
“Gauck will restore the respect for the office, will restore dignity” after the presidency became tainted by Wulff’s scandal, she added.
Gauck urged Germans not to make him out to be a “superman” or a “man without faults,” but pledged to do his utmost to restore a sense of pride to the nation, telling them “that they live in a good country that they can love because it gives them the wonderful possibility to enjoy freedom in a rich life.”
While his name widely circulated as the opposition’s favorite, it wasn’t clear until late Sunday whether the governing coalition would rally behind the candidate.
“I’m coming right out of a plane, I was in a taxi when the chancellor called me. I haven’t even washed,” he said at the news conference.
He added he was still stunned by the nomination, unable to voice great joy, but “very late tonight, I will also be happy.”
Merkel’s coalition seemed shaken by the search for a new candidate as the junior partner, the Liberals, broke the government’s ranks earlier Sunday by announcing that they would endorse the opposition’s Gauck.
“It appears to have been the case that the governing coalition almost broke up over the issue and that Miss Merkel therefore changed course,” the Social Democrat’s Gabriel told public broadcaster Phoenix. “But whatever, I believe it is a good decision.”
Germany’s head of state holds a largely ceremonial role. The incumbent typically uses his moral authority, standing above party politics, to influence debates in society and politics.
Gauck, born in 1940 at the beginning of World War II, grew up in East Germany where he was not allowed to become a journalist because he refused to join organizations affiliated with the Communist Party. Instead, he studied theology and became a Lutheran priest, later becoming a prominent voice in the run-up to the fall of the Berlin Wall.
Immediately after the reunification in 1990, Gauck became the head of the agency that preserves and facilitates investigation into the archives of East Germany’s former communist secret police, or the Stasi. Gauck led the federal agency for 10 years.
The new president will be elected by a special assembly next month, tentatively planned for March 18, but with cross-party backing, the process should be a formality.
Merkel’s center-right coalition, which is prone to infighting, only had a wafer-thin majority in that assembly, and not seeking a compromise candidate with the opposition would have been a risky move.
The only party represented in the parliament’s lower house opposing Gauck is the Left party, an offshoot of East Germany’s former communist party.
In the meantime, the speaker of parliament’s upper house, conservative Bavarian governor Horst Seehofer, has taken over the presidential duties on an interim basis, mostly signing legislation into law.
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