NOWY PREZYDENT RFN – JOACHIM GAUCK
The New President of Germany

Summary/Abstract: The article presents the profile and life stations of Joachim Gauck, a former Lutheran pastor, an opposition ‘‘symbol of the breakthrough’’, a civil rights activist, the creator and first Federal Commissioner for the Stasi Archives, who on account of his merits and many years of struggle for freedom and democracy is seen to be a ‘‘signpost for contemporary Germany’’. He became the 11th president in the history of the FRG on 18th March 2012. From his biography we can know what the FRG was really like, why the breakthrough occurred and was followed by reunification, why it is so difficult to settle accounts with the past and why so many Germans even until today have traumatic memories of the period when the German-German border and the Berlin Wall divided not only one nation but a large number of families. Many of these questions can be answered by referring to the biography of the present head of the state of Germany.

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