Germany inaugurates president

Joachim Gauck was inaugurated before the two chambers of parliament, the Bundestag and the Bundesrat, Friday morning in Berlin.

Gauck used his inaugural speech to underline the interconnectedness of freedom and justice.

"Freedom is a necessary condition of justice," Gauck said, adding that the "commitment to justice [is] necessary to preserve freedom."

Germany should be a country that connects "social justice, participation and opportunities for advancement," he stressed.

Gauck said he sees Germany as a country of a "democratic miracle," but that he was concerned to see Germans losing faith in democratic institutions as show by declining voter turnout when elections are held.

"No one wins from distance between those governing and those being governed," he said.

He paid tribute to outgoing President Christian Wulff, saying he would continue his predecessor's stress on the integration of people with foreign family backgrounds, and he called for courage in the fight against far-right extremism.

"To those who despise democracy we say: Your hate is our incentive," he said.

First East German

Bundestag President Norbert Lammert, who presided over the inauguration, said Gauck's election, as the first president who comes from the former East Germany, was a sign of the "inexorable progress of unified Germany."

Gauck was accompanied by his partner, Daniela Schadt, a journalist from Nuremburg.

He already started his new job on Monday at Bellevue Palace, the presidential residence, in Berlin, where he met with President Wulff.

The former pastor and East German civil rights activist was voted in last week by the Federal Assembly, a body made up of elected officials and members of the public.

Gauck, who was born in Rostock in north-eastern Germany, has no party affiliations, but a reputation for speaking his mind. He studied theology, became a Lutheran pastor and emerged in the tense years before the fall of the Berlin Wall as a spokesman for "New Forum," an East German group that demanded democratic reforms.

From 1990 until 2000, in the initial phase of German reunification, Gauck headed the agency that opened the archives of the dreaded Stasi, the East German secret police, and made its misdeeds public. He once described himself as a "conservative from the liberal left."

Gauck has said Germany's relationship to Poland is especially important to him, and his first trip abroad as president will be to Warsaw. He is expected to visit France and other neighboring countries soon after.

At 72, Gauck is the oldest president Germany has ever had.

The president is Germany's head of state, though the post is largely ceremonial.

ncy/sej (dpa, dapd, epd)