Grumbles over Gauck

Angela Merkel moved swiftly to put forward Joachim Gauck as the successor to the disgraced Christan Wulff as Germany's next president.  Gauck has been celebrated as a consensus candidate; after all, he was the favorite of the Social Democrats SPD and the Greens in 2010 when the office was vacated by Horst Koehler.  So what could go wrong?

But not everyone is so enthusiastic, as the Tageszeitung reports:  

Nein, er ist nicht der Kandidat aller Herzen. Zwar freuen sich etliche frühere DDR-Bürgerrechtler über die Aussicht ihres Mitstreiters auf das höchste Amt im Staate. Und die Spitzen von CDU, FDP, SPD und Grünen erwarten ein geschlossenes Abstimmungsverhalten, wenn es darum geht, Joachim Gauck zu wählen. Doch in der linken Öffentlichkeit, an der grünen Basis und unter Migranten regt sich Kritik.

(No, he is not the universally beloved candidate. Sure, a number of former civil rights activists from the former East Germany are enthusiastic that one of their comrades may take the highest office in the country.  And the leaders of the CDU, FDP, SPD and Greens expect a swift process when it's time to vote for Joachim Gauck.  But on the left, in the Green base, and among immigrants there is considerable criticism.)

People have been looking at Gauck's comments and interviews and have found some disturbing material.  For example, Gauck admires the controversial pundit Thilo Sarrazin, the "gene expert" who claims that Turkish and Arab immigrants have inferior intelligence.  Gauck, who led the "Monday Demonstrations" that brought down the GDR, ridicules demonstrations in the Federal Republic.  He considers the Occupy Movement "silly". 

Die Schriftstellerin Daniela Dahn zweifelt: "Gauck ist kein Versöhner, er polemisiert und klagt an. So hat er auch seine Behörde geführt", erinnert sie sich. "Er war nicht objektiv und hat unterstützt, was in sein konservatives, teilweise reaktionäres Weltbild passte", so ihr Urteil. Anetta Kahane von der Amadeu-Antonio-Stiftung fürchtet gar, mit Gaucks Betonung des Patriotismus und seinem Totalitarismusbegriff, der DDR-Unrecht und Drittes Reich gleichsetze, "ins Fahrwasser einer Relativierung der NS-Vergangenheit zu geraten".

(The writer Daniela Dahn has doubts: "Gauck is not a conciliator, he's divisive and accusatory. That's how he managed his agencies," she recalled. "He wasn't objective and was always pushing whatever fit with his conservative - even reactionary - views." Anetta kahane of the Amadeu Antonio Foundation is worried that Gauck's emphasis on patriotism and his views on totalitarianism where he puts the injustices of the GDR on the same footing as the Third Reich "which borders on relativizing the crimes of the Nazi period.")

A number of opinion writers - including Sascha Lobo in Der Spiegel - have attacked Gauck's critics for taking his words out of context.  But the Web site Publikative.org published an entire interview with Gauck from (Swiss)  NZZ TV.  In the interview Gauck again praises Sarrazin once again for his "incisive" analysis of the immigration problem in Germany, and Gauck also uses the emotionally charged term Überfremdung (literally "overcome with foreigners") to describe the situation of Muslims in Germany. 

Comments

[Strahler 70]

A German Pope in Rome, a pastor the German president, both of them, in a their own ways, inquisitors. I see patterns...God help us all.

[Zyme]

David - you might find this piece in TAZ interesting:

http://taz.de/Kolumne-Besser/!88071/

2 years ago I thought what could you like in a protestant priest who is favored by SPD and Green Party?

The more I read about him, the more reasonable he appears to me though. A decisive anti-communist who is determined to be proud of German heritage regardless of the country's past, a person who does not consider Fascism more evil than Socialism - quite astonishing for a public figure in his generation.

He might be the right person to create a consensus between younger and older Germans.

And it appears to me he might have a striking similarity to Koehler: Being accepted by the people as one of them in contrast to the political class, which might add to the growing alienation of the people and the established political parties.

[David]

@Zyme,

Thanks and good to hear from you again!

[Zyme]

David, this sounds as if you intended to warm my cold heart :-)

I will do my best to add my thoughts more often.

[James]

"I love it when a book sparks controversy."

I love it when a book is well written.