Gauck, East German Stasi Hunter, Elected Germany’s President
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Joachim Gauck, a Protestant pastor from East Germany who oversaw the opening of communist-era Stasi files in the decade after the collapse of the Berlin Wall, was voted in as Germany’s 11th postwar president.
Gauck, 72, was elected today in Berlin by the 1,240-member Federal Assembly, a special body that convenes to choose the Federal Republic’s mainly ceremonial head of state. Gauck succeeds Christian Wulff, 52, a one-time party ally of Chancellor Angela Merkel who resigned last month after less than two years in office amid corruption allegations and a looming investigation.