Former GDR Activist Pastor Joachim Gauck to Become German President

"Joachim Gauck, a former anti-Communist human rights activist in East Germany who is set to become the next German president, is a moral authority to be reckoned with. The Lutheran pastor, who has been called Germany’s answer to Nelson Mandela, was one of a number of Protestant clerics who helped bring down the communist East German regime, setting the stage for the fall of the Berlin Wall and reunification in 1990."