Germany's 'Unpolitical' New President

NYTimes.com ^ | March 26, 2012 | JOHN VINOCUR

[Iam1ru1-2]

Could you become president of the Federal Republic of Germany if you told the Germans that they have a “repulsive” inclination to hysteria and overblown fears?

Or that they have a shallower, less instinctive relationship to freedom than Poles or Americans? Or that they live in a culture of dissatisfaction, with many of them behaving as if there were a secret German constitution whose first article enunciates the unassailable protection of their living standards?

Joachim Gauck has said just that over the last few years, and didn’t really let up Friday at his swearing-in as Germany’s effective moral arbiter: He described the strongest country in Europe as a place where “fear sometimes so diminishes our courage and self-confidence that we could completely lose both — even to the point that we take cowardice for a virtue and regard running away as a legitimate political position.”

On the scale of genuine political novelty, Mr. Gauck being given the job of becoming Germany’s official gadfly, conscience and consensual voice rates a 10-plus.

Happily, the former East German pastor, dissident and head of the commission that opened the files of the East German secret police after the fall of the Berlin Wall also retains a preacher’s gift for embracing his congregation. Still, he is a man unlikely ever to speak from the summit of Mount Righteous, Germany’s designated perch for its political class to scold the world on its armed interventions, economic frailties, or failure to separate its garbage correctly.

[aquila48]

“Mr. Gauck’s message is clear. He stated in his inaugural speech that freedom was the central theme in his life. “

As contrasted with our socialist president for whom “freedom” is one of the least used word.

[Amberdawn]

Hard to believe this ran in the Slimes.

[Katya]

Great article! and from the Times no less, I will have to read up a bit more on Gauck.