“His has been a worthwhile political career”

Thomas Unger, scientific director of the School for Cardiovascular Diseases (CARIM), was closely involved last year in the awarding of an honorary doctorate to his former colleague, the German pharmacologist Detlev Ganten. This year, he looked on from the sidelines. Does Gauck deserve this honour? “Absolutely. He’s a very popular president with few opponents. That in itself is an achievement.”

Gauck, born in 1940 in the northern city of Rostock, grew up under the dictatorship of the GDR. He experienced the terror of communism first-hand when his father vanished without a trace and spent several years imprisoned in a Siberian labour camp. The young Gauck was left with a deep-seated distrust of the system. After refusing to join the Communist Party, he saw his dream of being a journalist go up in smoke. Instead he opted for theology, eventually becoming a minister. He played an important role in the peaceful revolution of 1989, and was a member of the first freely elected GDR parliament in 1990. On 2 October of that year he was appointed director of the government agency responsible for unravelling and preserving the secret Stasi documents. The Stasi Records Agency would soon become known as simply the ‘Gauck office’.

“That was quite a career change”, Unger says. “Imagine a preacher from the East suddenly become a political player on the national scene. He spent ten years working on kilometres’ worth of Stasi archives, aware of how sensitive it would be for some people. And he didn’t act out of revenge or resentment, which is something that shouldn’t be taken for granted, considering his own experiences. Instead he opted for a nuanced and just approach. I think this is what led people in Germany to take a different view of their own past. Not everyone who collaborated with the Stasi was inherently bad or immoral – people were influenced and sometimes forced into impossible situations. He built up a lot of respect by always standing up for values like democracy, freedom and justice.”

Gauck as moral authority: it’s hardly an overstatement. But perhaps his greatest asset is his ability to bring people together. Is this a character trait that can be traced back to the Church? “Yes, he still has a very pastoral attitude”, Unger says. “He’s a good speaker, always knows how to strike the right tone and takes the audience with him in his story. As president, of course, his role is mainly ceremonial. But because he has this ability to connect with people, he’s able to make things happen, build bridges. That was very clear when he was elected president in 2012. He had the support of all the traditional parties, which is quite unique.”

The link between Gauck and UM, in Unger’s view, lies in Gauck’s unflinching support for Europe. “Gauck is a European at heart, something he often says himself. I agree with him that European cooperation above all provides opportunities, which we absolutely mustn’t pass up. So it’s appropriate that Gauck should receive an honorary doctorate here, in the city that gave the starting shot for the establishment of the European Union. Add to that the fact that many Germans study and work at UM. Honouring a representative of Germany pays tribute to this special relationship.”

Thomas Unger (1950) studied medicine in Germany and the UK. After obtaining his PhD at the University of Heidelberg, he worked as a postdoc in Montreal, Canada. In 1986 he was appointed professor of pharmacology in Heidelberg. He has served as director of the Institute for Pharmacology at the University of Kiel, director of the Institute for Pharmacology at the Humboldt University of Berlin, and founder and scientific director of the Centre for Cardiovascular Research at the Charité University Hospital in Berlin. He has been scientific director of the CARIM School for Cardiovascular Diseases since 2012.