Title: Joachim Gauck
Content:  Joachim Wilhelm Gauck (born 24 January 1940) is a German politician and civil rights activist who served as President of Germany from 2012 to 2017. A former Lutheran pastor, he came to prominence as an anti-communist civil rights activist in East Germany. During the Peaceful Revolution in 1989, he was a co-founder of the New Forum opposition movement in East Germany, which contributed to the downfall of the Socialist Unity Party of Germany (SED) and later with two other movements formed the electoral list Alliance 90. In 1990 he was a member of the only freely elected East German People's Chamber in the Alliance 90/The Greens faction. Following German reunification, he was elected as a member of 
Title: Joachim Gauck
Content:  a Centre Against Expulsions in Berlin. On the occasion of his 70th birthday in 2010, Gauck was praised by Chancellor Angela Merkel as a "true teacher of democracy" and a "tireless advocate of freedom, democracy and justice". The Independent has described Joachim Gauck as "Germany's answer to Nelson Mandela". The Wall Street Journal has described him as "the last of a breed: the leaders of protest movements behind the Iron Curtain who went on to lead their countries after 1989," comparing him to Lech Wałęsa and Václav Havel. Corriere della Sera has referred to him as the "German Havel." Gauck supported the economic reforms initiated by the red-green government 
Title: Joachim Gauck
Content:  Bundestag by the People's Chamber in 1990 but resigned after a single day having been chosen by the Bundestag to be the first Federal Commissioner for the Stasi Records, serving from 1990 to 2000. He earned recognition in this position as a "Stasi hunter" and "tireless pro-democracy advocate", exposing the crimes of the communist secret police. He was nominated as the candidate of the SPD and the Greens for President of Germany in the 2010 election, but lost in the third draw to Christian Wulff, the candidate of the government coalition. His candidacy was met by significant approval of the population and the media; Der Spiegel described him as "the better President" and the Bild called him 
Title: Joachim Gauck
Content:  the occupy movement. The SPD chairman, Sigmar Gabriel, however, stated that the reason that Die Linke was the only party that did not support Gauck was its "sympathy for the German Democratic Republic." David Gill was appointed head of Gauck's transition team, and later became head of the Bundespräsidialamt. On 18 March 2012, Gauck was elected President of Germany with 991 of 1228 votes in the Federal Convention. Upon accepting his election, he assumed the presidency immediately. The new President took the oath of office required by article 56 of Germany's Constitution on Friday 23 March 2012 in the presence of the assembled members of the Bundestag and the Bundesrat. On 6 June 2016, President Gauck announced he would not stand for re-election in 2017, citing his age as the reason.
Title: Joachim Gauck
Content:  On 3 June 2010, Joachim Gauck was nominated for President of Germany in the 2010 election by the SPD and the Greens. Gauck is not a member of either the SPD or the Greens (although his former party in East Germany eventually merged with the Greens after reunification), and has stated that he would have accepted a nomination by the CDU as well. Gauck once described himself as a "leftist, liberal conservative" and after his nomination, stated: "I'm neither red nor green, I'm Joachim Gauck". The Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung described him as a liberal conservative. Gauck is widely respected across the political spectrum, and is very popular also among CDU/CSU 
Title: Joachim Gauck
Content:  a proponent of "an enlightened anti-communism" and he has underlined the illegitimacy of communist rule in East Germany. He is the author and co-author of several books, including The Black Book of Communism. His 2012 book Freedom: A Plea calls for the defense of freedom and human rights around the globe. He has been described by Chancellor Angela Merkel as a "true teacher of democracy" and a "tireless advocate of freedom, democracy, and justice." The Wall Street Journal has described him as "the last of a breed: the leaders of protest movements behind the Iron Curtain who went on to lead their countries after 1989." He has received numerous honours, including the 1997 Hannah Arendt Prize.
Title: Independent politician
Content:  Joachim Gauck, President of Germany from March 2012 to March 2017 and the first Federal President without party affiliation, was to date the most prominent independent politician. In the German presidential election of 2010 he was the candidate of the Social Democrats and Greens, in 2012 the candidate of all major parties except The Left. His presidency—though his powers are limited—constitutes an exception, as Independent politicians have rarely held high office in German history, at least not since World War II. It has nevertheless happened that a presidential candidate without any chances of election by the Federal Convention was not a 
Title: Joachim Gauck
Content:  the position of President of the Federal Agency for Civic Education as well as offers to be nominated as a candidate for parliament by the SPD. Voices inside the CSU proposed him as a possible conservative presidential candidate (against SPD career politician Johannes Rau) in 1999, and his name was also mentioned as a possible candidate for CDU/CSU and Free Democratic Party in subsequent years. For instance the Saxon FDP state party proposed him as a liberal-conservative candidate in 2004, before the leaders of the parties agreed on Horst Köhler. Since 2003, he has been chairman of the association Gegen Vergessen – Für Demokratie ("Against Forgetting – For Democracy"), and he served on the Management Board of the European Monitoring Centre on Racism and Xenophobia 2001–2004.
Title: Joachim Gauck
Content:  president of hearts." Later, after Christian Wulff stepped down, Gauck was elected as President with 991 of 1228 votes in the Federal Convention in the 2012 election, as a nonpartisan consensus candidate of the CDU, the CSU, the FDP, the SPD and the Greens. A son of a survivor of a Soviet Gulag,    Gauck's political life was formed by his own family's experiences with totalitarianism. Gauck was a founding signatory of the Prague Declaration on European Conscience and Communism, together with Václav Havel and other statesmen, and of the Declaration on Crimes of Communism. He has called for increased awareness of communist crimes in Europe, and for the necessity of delegitimizing the communist era. As President he 
Title: Joachim Gauck
Content:  Government for the Stasi Records by President Richard von Weizsäcker and Chancellor Helmut Kohl. As such, he was in charge of the archives of the Stasi and tasked with investigating communist crimes. In 1992, his office became known as the Federal Commissioner for the Stasi Records. He served in this position until 2000, when he was succeeded by Marianne Birthler. Gauck served as a member of the Bundestag, the Parliament of Germany, from 3 to 4 October 1990 (the 1990 People's Chamber was granted the right to nominate a certain number of MPs as part of the reunification process). He stepped down following his appointment as Special Representative of the Federal Government. As such, he was the shortest serving Member of Parliament of Germany ever. He 

Question: Verify the following claims with "True" or "False": When was Joachim Gauck a leader of Germany?
Answer: True