Today, Joachim Gauck was elected the 11th President of the Federal Republic of Germany. The non-partisan consensus candidate of the five mainstream parties (SPD, Green Party, CDU, CSU and FDP) was elected by a majority of 991 votes out of 1228 votes cast in the Federal Convention.

In the previous Federal Convention in 2010, Joachim Gauck (72) was the candidate of the center-left coalition of the Greens and the Social Democrats. In 2010, Gauck lost narrowly to Christian Wulff who became the 10th President of Germany. In February, Wulff resigned after only 2 years (out of a 5-year term) amidst allegations of corruption during his time as Prime Minister of the state of Lower Saxony.

With President Gauck and Chancellor Merkel, two of Germany’s top Government positions are now occupied by devout Lutherans who grew up in the East Germany and were active in the anti-communist opposition under the Communist regime there.

Herzlichen Glückwunsch, Herr Gauck!

This entry was posted on Sunday, March 18th, 2012 at 9:25 am and is filed under Germany, History. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.