Joachim Gauck

Born 24 January 1940, the son of a Gulag survivor, Gauck grew up under the weight of totalitarianism and became a Lutheran pastor in East Germany. In 1989 he co-founded the New Forum opposition movement during the Peaceful Revolution. After reunification he was elected to the Bundestag in 1990 but served only one day before taking the job that would define him: Federal Commissioner for the Stasi Records, a position he held until 2000, methodically exposing the crimes of the communist secret police. He ran for president in 2010, lost in the third ballot to Christian Wulff despite his popularity, then won in 2012 after Wulff stepped down. He served until 2017, a founding signatory of the Prague Declaration on European Conscience and Communism, author of books including Freedom: A Plea, and recipient of the 1997 Hannah Arendt Prize. His presidency was an extension of the work: keeping memory alive, delegitimising the old regime, refusing to let the reckoning end.