Johannes Rau

Johannes Rau (16 January 1931 in Wuppertal - 27 January 2006 in Berlin) was President of Germany from July 1, 1999 to June 30, 2004.

Biography

Training and working life

Born in Barmen, Wuppertal (Rhineland), he was the third of five children of a Protestant preacher opposed to Nazism and a housewife. Johannes, of deep religious convictions,^{[quotes required]} already as a student he was part of the Confessing or Confessing Church (Bekennende Kirche in German), a movement of German Protestantism that was actively opposed from society civilian to the Third Reich.

In 1948 Johannes Rau left the Gymnasium (high school or lyceum) without graduating. He chose to enter a bookstore school and begin training as a bookseller editor (from 1949 to 1951). Also during this period he became involved in politics and worked as a journalist, among others for the Westdeutsche Rundschau. In 1952 he took the professional exam at the Bookshop School and from 1954 to 1967 he was director of a publishing house. In 1952 he began work as a bookseller publisher. In 1953 and 1954 he worked as a reader and commercial agent for two publishers.He was interested in content on religious and social themes and linked to Protestant circles.

Between 1954 and 1967 he was the manager of a publishing house. Also in 1954 he became a member of the editorial staff of a newspaper, the Gesamtdeutsche Rundschau.

Political career

On December 2, 1952, he joined the German People's Party (GVP), founded, among others, by Helene Wessel, Gustav Heinemann and Erhard Eppler, a pacifist group favorable to the reunification of Germany and opposed to its rearmament (limited) as desired by the Western powers.

In 1957, Johannes Rau supported and seconded Gustav Heinemann's idea of dissolving the GVP and joining the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD). Johannes Rau became secretary of the Wuppertal Youth Socialists (the Young Socialists are the organization of the Social Democrats for young members, that is, for members under 35 years of age). He held this position from 1958 to 1962. From 1964 to 1978 he was a Wuppertal councilor. He held the mayoralty of this population between 1969 and 1970.

In 1958 he was elected a member of the Landtag (parliament) of the federal state of North Rhine-Westphalia, a seat in which he was to be re-elected without interruption for the following 41 years. Between 1962 and 1970 he was a member of the board of the parliamentary group of the SPD in the parliament (Landtag) of North Rhine-Westphalia and in 1967 he became head of the parliamentary group of his party in the Landtag. From 1964 to 1978 he was a councilor in the Wuppertal city council and in 1969 and 1970 the first mayor of Wuppertal. He was a member of the SPD executive at the federal level from 1968 to 1999. From 1970 to 1978 he was Minister of Science and Research for the state of North Rhine-Westphalia in the government of Heinz Kühn. He gained prestige by managing him in this department (five higher schools and a distance university were founded, the first in Germany).

In 1977 Rau was appointed head of the SPD of North Rhine-Westphalia and on September 20, 1978 he became Minister-President of North Rhine-Westphalia, a position he held until 1998. The SPD Rhenish triumphed in the elections of 1980, 1985, 1990 and 1995.

When Rau stood as a candidate for chancellor in the German general elections in 1987 with his SPD party, he opposed agreeing to a coalition government with the ecologists^{[citation needed]} and could not prevail over Helmut Kohl, the candidate of the Christian-Democratic Union (CDU) who triumphed in the elections. In 1994 Johannes Rau presented his candidacy for the federal presidency of Germany but was defeated by Roman Herzog, the candidate of the Christian Democrats (CDU).

On May 23, 1998, Rau resigned as head of the SPD and on May 27, 1998, as Minister-President of North Rhine-Westphalia. On May 23, 1999, he was elected federal president by the Convention Federal (Bundesversammlung), succeeding Roman Herzog, a Christian Democrat. He held the presidency until June 30, 2004, ceding the head of state to Horst Köhler when he did not wish to renew his mandate.

In 2000 Rau was the first German head of state to address the Knesset, the Israeli parliament, in German, apologizing for the Holocaust on behalf of his country. He had shown interest in Judaism for some time. He carried out representative functions as federal president but in the last years of his term, in his public interventions, he denounced the lack of public morality in some sectors of the economic elites, in the political class and the gradual distancing of the latter from the population.

Private life

Johannes Rau in May 2004.

Johannes Rau was known for his deep Christian convictions (he was nicknamed "Brother John") and made his status as a layman of the Rhenish Evangelical Church compatible with that of a member of a left-wing party. He married on August 9, 1982 with Christina Delius (b.1956), political scientist and granddaughter of his political mentor Gustav Heinemann. The marriage had three children: Anna Christina, Philip Immanuel and Laura Helene.

Tomb (Dorotheenstädtischer Friedhof).

After leaving the German presidency, he settled in the city of Berlin but kept his house in Wuppertal. In the last years of his life he had serious health problems, he underwent surgery twice for heart problems, on January 16, 2006 he was unable to attend a party on the occasion of his birthday due to suffering from a stomach and intestinal infection.. Johannes Rau died on January 27, 2006 in Berlin when he had just turned 75.

Awards

He was doctor honoris causa by the universities of Düsseldorf, Haifa, Ben-Gurion of the Negev (in Beersheva) and Austral de Chile, and by the Theological Academy of the Reformed Church of Budapest.