Who was the President of Germany who resigned in May 2010 after being accused of 'Gunboat Diplomacy' following comments in which he suggested that Germany's military missions abroad also served to secure trade?
"them to the President of the Bundesrat. If the president dies, resigns or is otherwise removed from office, a successor is to be elected within thirty days. Horst Köhler, upon his resignation on May 31, 2010, became the first president to trigger this re-election process. Jens Böhrnsen, President of the Senate and Mayor of the Free Hanseatic City of Bremen and at the time President of the Bundesrat, assumed the powers and duties of head of state. Similarly, when Christian Wulff resigned in 2012, it was Horst Seehofer, Minister-President of Bavaria, as President of the Bundesrat, who assumed the powers"
"term on 1 July 2009. On 31 May 2010, Köhler announced his resignation as President of Germany. This came after German politicians criticised comments made by Köhler in relation to overseas military deployments: After coming under criticism for his statements that Germany's military missions abroad also served to secure trade, critics accused him of advocating the use of ""gunboat diplomacy"". He subsequently stated that his comments referred to piracy off the coast of Somalia. Köhler stated that there was no substance to accusations that in the interview he had overstepped his formal role by favoring an unconstitutional position. After getting"
"no substantial support in the dispute, Köhler stepped down on 31 May 2010, issuing a statement saying ""I declare my resignation from the Office of President, with immediate effect."" The resignation was considered a ""surprise"", and both pundits and opposition politicians labeled it ""an overreaction"". The following days he was criticized for not being able to handle criticism while being a rigorous critic himself. His unprecedented act of immediate resignation was also considered showing a lack of respect for his position. As stipulated by the German constitution, the powers of the vacant office were executed by the current President of"
"Christian Wulff Christian Wilhelm Walter Wulff (; born 1959) is a German politician and lawyer. He served as President of Germany from 2010 to 2012. A member of the Christian Democratic Union, he served as Prime Minister of the state of Lower Saxony from 2003 to 2010. He was elected President in the 30 June 2010 presidential election, defeating opposition candidate Joachim Gauck and taking office immediately, although he was not sworn in until On 17 February 2012, Wulff resigned as President of Germany, facing the prospect of prosecution for allegations of corruption relating to his prior service as Minister-President"
"another scandal with his departure speech from the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution. According to a copy of this speech leaked to the public in early November 2018, in it Maaßen presented himself as the victim of a conspiracy of ""radical left-wing"" forces in the German government against him, due to his criticism of the government's ""naive"", ""left-wing"" security and migration policies. On 5 November, as a result, Interior Minister Horst Seehofer concluded that a trusting relationship with Maaßen was no longer possible, asking president Frank-Walter Steinmeier to place him in early retirement. Hans-Georg Maaßen Hans-Georg Maaßen"
"for several months and in November 2009 led to the resignation of German labor minister Franz Josef Jung, who was defense minister during the attack. In early 2010, further material came to light, especially about the political handling in the German government, which brought further pressure on a number of people, including Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg, the new defense minister. The major German newsweekly ""Der Spiegel"", in an exhaustive research article published in February 2010, called the incident a war crime due to the fact that the attack on the tankers had broken a number of rules of conduct, and had"
"paid for these holidays, Wulff was subsequently accused of favoritism and unethical behavior. The district attorney’s office in Hanover requested the lifting of Wulff's immunity on February 16, 2012. He resigned as German President the next day. He was acquitted of all corruption charges in February 2014. In January 2010, German media reported that Christian Wulff, then Minister-President of Lower Saxony, had accepted a complimentary flight upgrade from Air Berlin for a family trip to Miami on September 15, 2009. In doing so, he violated ministerial laws of Lower Saxony, which prohibit members of state government from accepting gifts worth"
"such as Afghanistan and Iran, rose significantly. On 1 July 2018, German Interior minister Horst Seehofer offered to resign after rejecting Chancellor Angela Merkel's EU migration deal. Merkel's foreign policy has focused on strengthening European cooperation and international trade agreements. Merkel has been widely described as the ""de facto"" leader of the European Union throughout her tenure as Chancellor. One of Merkel's priorities was strengthening transatlantic economic relations. She signed the agreement for the Transatlantic Economic Council on 30 April 2007 at the White House. Merkel enjoyed good relations with U.S. Presidents George W. Bush, and Barack Obama. Obama described"
"McAllister. Wulff's candidacy for President of Germany in the 2010 presidential election was formally confirmed by Angela Merkel, Guido Westerwelle and Horst Seehofer, the heads of the CDU, FDP and CSU parties, during the evening of 2010. In August 2011, President Wulff opened an economists' conference on with a speech on the euro. He criticized the European Central Bank (ECB), which had entered a second round of bond buy-ups from heavily indebted euro-zone nations, calling the plan to stabilize the euro ""legally and politically questionable"". See List of presidential trips made by Christian Wulff for more information about his presidency."
"the Bundesrat, Jens Böhrnsen, until Christian Wulff was elected president on 30 June 2010. Wulff himself resigned less than two years later after allegations of corruption were levelled against him. Wulff resigned on 17 February 2012 and was succeeded by Joachim Gauck. Since leaving office, Köhler continues to voice his opinion on selected foreign and domestic policy matters, most notably on Europe-Africa relations, the global fight against poverty and climate change as well as on the need for a new spirit of global partnership. Between 2010 and 2011, Köhler served as member of the Palais Royal Initiative, a group convened"
"moving out of their Hannover home. They started divorce proceedings in March 2015, but only two months later they got together again and stopped the proceedings. In August 2017 it was revealed that Wulff works as an advisor for the German branch of Yargici, a Turkish high-street fashion company. Christian Wulff Christian Wilhelm Walter Wulff (; born 1959) is a German politician and lawyer. He served as President of Germany from 2010 to 2012. A member of the Christian Democratic Union, he served as Prime Minister of the state of Lower Saxony from 2003 to 2010. He was elected President"
"Merkel government. In response, Steinmeier rejected the charges and said that he had asked the University of Giessen to check his dissertation for unacknowledged citations. In May 2013, a university committee for safeguarding academic practices found that Steinmeier had no fraudulent intent and had not committed academic misconduct in his dissertation. The committee did find ""technical weaknesses"" in Steinmeier's citations, but said they were not severe enough to consider revoking his degree. Frank-Walter Steinmeier Frank-Walter Steinmeier (; born 5 January 1956) is a German politician serving as President of Germany since 19 March 2017. He previously was Minister for Foreign"
"his family spent their private vacations. Since it was not clear who had paid for these holidays, Wulff was subsequently accused of favoritism and unethical behavior. After the district attorney’s office in Hanover had requested the lifting of his immunity on 16 February 2012, Wulff then resigned as German President the following day. On 27 February 2014, two years after his resignation, Wulff was acquitted of all corruption charges by the Hanover regional court. In 2016 Wulff was awarded the Mercator Visiting Professorship for Political Management at the Universität Essen-Duisburg's NRW School of Governance. He gave both seminars and lectures"
"handing his resignation letter to Landtag President Hermann Dinkla, who was also a delegate to the Federal Convention, before heading towards the podium to formally accept his election. On 3 June 2010, the Social Democratic Party, the Greens and the SSW, nominated independent Joachim Gauck, an anti-communist civil rights activist from East Germany and the first Federal Commissioner for the Stasi Records, as their presidential candidate. In the days following the official nominations, several FDP and CDU politicians expressed their support for Gauck, among them former Brandenburg CDU chairman Jörg Schönbohm and Oliver Möllenstädt, chairman of Bremen's FDP. Gauck is"
"Frank-Walter Steinmeier Frank-Walter Steinmeier (; born 5 January 1956) is a German politician serving as President of Germany since 19 March 2017. He previously was Minister for Foreign Affairs from 2005 to 2009 and again from 2013 to 2017, and Vice-Chancellor of Germany from 2007 to 2009. He was chairman-in-office of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) in 2016. Steinmeier is a member of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD), holds a doctorate in law and was formerly a career civil servant. He was a close aide of Gerhard Schröder when Schröder was Prime Minister of"
"proposed by the task force."" The ""New York Times"" wrote that ""no matter what happens, the report's legacy may well be that it tried to tackle the issues head-on."" Murphy served as United States Ambassador to Germany under President Barack Obama from 2009 to 2013. The possibility of his being named to the post was first reported by ""Spiegel Online International"" in May 2009. The former U.S. Ambassador John Kornblum supported the choice, saying, ""Murphy has been involved in German-American relations for many years. He's a good choice."" An agrément was issued, and Obama formally nominated him to the position"
"Horst Köhler Horst Köhler (; born 22 February 1943) is a German politician of the Christian Democratic Union, and served as President of Germany from 2004 to 2010. As the candidate of the two Christian Democratic sister parties, the CDU and the CSU, and the liberal FDP, Köhler was elected to his first five-year term by the Federal Assembly on 23 May 2004 and was subsequently inaugurated on 1 July 2004. He was reelected to a second term on 23 May 2009. Just a year later, on 31 May 2010, he resigned from his office in a controversy over his"
"and politicians inside Germany at the request of the NSA. A German Parliamentary Committee investigating the NSA spying scandal was set up in 2013. U.S. President Barack Obama described her at the end of 2016 as his ""closest international partner"" throughout his tenure as President. Obama also said he would vote for Merkel if he could. Obama's farewell visit to Berlin in November 2016 was widely interpreted as the passing of the torch of global liberal leadership to Merkel as Merkel was seen by many as the new standard bearer of liberal democracy since the election of Donald Trump as"
"abilities, with one cable comparing him unfavorably to former German foreign minister Hans-Dietrich Genscher. On 3 December 2010, Westerwelle dismissed his personal assistant Helmut Metzner following a WikiLeaks diplomatic cables release which led to Metzner admitting that he regularly spied for the U.S. By May 2011, opinion polls ranked Westerwelle as one of the most unpopular and ineffective foreign ministers since the late 1940s. At the time, his party had collapsed in several states, including Rhineland-Palatinate and Bremen where they failed to secure the 5% threshold necessary for a seat in parliament. Analysts said one of the main reasons Westerwelle"
"suggested that Germany was not likely to come up with more aid for the country. He also sought to detach himself from the close personal relationship that his predecessor, Helmut Kohl, had with Boris Yeltsin, saying that German-Russian relations should ""develop independently of concrete political figures."" Soon after, however, he cultivated close ties with Yeltsin's successor, President Vladimir Putin, in an attempt to strengthen the ""strategic partnership"" between Berlin and Moscow, including the opening of a gas pipeline from ""Russian Dan Marino-Pipelines"" over the Baltic Sea exclusively between Russia and Germany (see ""Gazprom controversy"" below). During his time in office,"
"a U.S.-bound parcel trans-shipped at Cologne Bonn Airport. On 2 March 2011, Merkel announced that Maizière was to take over from Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg, the federal defence minister who had resigned from office the previous day. On 3 March, he was formally appointed to this post. He held the defence ministry portfolio until 17 December 2013. Signaling one of the biggest shake-ups in decades for the German military, in 2011 Maizière unveiled plans to reduce troop numbers, cut bureaucracy, and eliminate duplication inside the Federal Ministry of Defence. Under these proposals, the army was to be turned into a wholly"
"by the rapid succession of highly visible public diplomacy disasters: revival of anti-German sentiments in southern and eastern Europe, deliberate air-crash of Germanwings Flight 9525 and the Volkswagen diesel emissions scandal. On 5 October 2015, Angela Merkel visited Mahatma Gandhi's memorial at Raj Ghat and was accorded a ceremonial welcome at the Presidential Palace prior to the Third Indo-German Inter-Governmental Consultations which led to the signing of 18 Memorandums of Understanding (MoU). Germany returned a 10th-century relic, a statue of the Hindu goddess Durga in her Mahishasuramardini avatar, which had been stolen from India. On 6 October 2015, Prime Minister"
"preferred insolvency for Opel rather than the infusion of unconditional financial assistance from the German state. Because of the resultant financial risks to the German state, Guttenberg opposed the sale of Opel to Magna International, favoured by Chancellor Merkel, and—according to media coverage—even offered his resignation over the controversy. The Opel-Magna deal later failed, and Opel remained a subsidiary of GM, who had to reimburse financial assistance to Germany. In the summer of 2009, he surpassed Angela Merkel as the most popular politician in Germany. The 2009 Bundestag elections led to a change in government, as the incumbent grand coalition"
"her outspoken speech and her black belt in karate. Grybauskaitė, who speaks Lithuanian, English, Russian, French and Polish, has mentioned Margaret Thatcher and Mahatma Gandhi as her political role models. Grybauskaitė assumed presidential duties on 12 July 2009, and accepted half of her presidential salary (312,000 litas). Her first presidential visits abroad were made to Sweden and Latvia; in April 2011, she made a state visit to Norway. On 19 December 2013, Grybauskaitė decided to boycott the Sochi Winter Olympics together with other Western leaders, including German president Joachim Gauck, French president François Hollande, and the US president Barack Obama,"
"of Chancellor. After the 23 May announcement that federal elections were to be advanced to September 2005, Wulff announced that he was not a candidate for the Christian Democrat nomination for Chancellor, particularly as he had not completed his first term as Premier of Lower Saxony. Instead, Wulff declared his support for Angela Merkel, the CDU leader in the Bundestag. Although there was speculation that Wulff would be given a position in the new government, entering federal politics, he remained Premier of Lower Saxony. Wulff was elected President of Germany on 2010 to follow Horst Köhler, who had resigned on"
"and Energy. As Foreign Minister Gabriel has said Germany's ""arms will remain outstretched"" to the US to continue the trans-Atlantic alliance between the two countries. However he has said that Germany will step into global markets the US abandons and take on a bigger role on the international stage if Donald Trump continues his protectionist and isolationist policies. Gabriel has been staunchly against German soldiers remaining in Afghanistan. In 2010, he called for an independent assessment that would determine whether the U.S. counter-insurgency strategy would succeed. However, he voted in favor of extending German participation in the NATO-led security mission"
"policy. He supported the policy of ""change through trade"" with Russia, but was widely criticized for not having a clear foreign policy doctrine. He called for more inclusion of Russia in the international community, but criticized Moscow, for example, for supporting President Assad's government in Syria. Upon taking office, Westerwelle opposed the appointment of Erika Steinbach, a German politician and member of Chancellor Merkel's party, to a board overseeing the creation of the Centre Against Expulsions, a place documenting the expulsion of Germans from Eastern Europe after World War II. In November 2010, together with his Russian counterpart Sergey Lavrov,"
"that Germany's policies were ""extremely bad for civil society, democracy and the country as a whole"". In February 2009, Steinmeier became the first member of Merkel's cabinet to be received by the incoming Obama administration. During his time in office, Steinmeier managed to extract German hostages from Iraq and Yemen. In 2007, he also succeeded in securing the release of a German citizen who was imprisoned in Iran for illegally entering the country's waters on a fishing expedition. Steinmeier served as acting chairman of the SPD from 7 September 2008 to 18 October 2008. Domestically, throughout his term he was"
"2010 German presidential election An indirect presidential election (officially the 14th Federal Convention) was held in Germany on 30 June 2010 following the resignation of Horst Köhler as President of Germany on 31 May 2010. Christian Wulff, the candidate nominated by the three governing parties, the Christian Democratic Union, the Christian Social Union of Bavaria and the Free Democratic Party, was elected President in the third ballot. His main contender was the candidate of two opposition parties, the Social Democratic Party and the Alliance '90/The Greens, independent anti-communist human rights activist Joachim Gauck. On 3 June 2010, Christian Wulff (CDU),"
"past to gradually recede. Germany will not answer lingering questions about its normalcy; it will transcend them. By our lights today, Germany will not be normal, but nothing else will be either."" A German translation of this article appeared in the ""Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung"" on November 6, 2009. Kornblum expanded his commentary on the Obama era in the book ""Mission Amerika"" (2009), written in German together with well-known television commentator Dieter Kronzucker. Here the authors argued that the basis for the vision of change proclaimed by President Obama was created by wide-ranging social and demographic changes that had taken place"
"apologized for his choice of words. Künast also stated that any future cooperation with the Left was ""miles away"", particularly in light of the party's rejection of Gauck. The SPD and Greens also blamed The Left for the election of Christian Wulff. Gysi, on the other hand, criticized the SPD of not cooperating with his party, which is considered extreme by federal authorities, and again pointed out differences in political positions between Gauck and the Left. On 2 July 2010 Wulff was sworn into office as President of Germany. 2010 German presidential election An indirect presidential election (officially the 14th"
"the incumbent Premier of Lower Saxony, was nominated as the candidate of the government parties (CDU, CSU, FDP). Prior to this, Federal Minister of Labour Ursula von der Leyen (CDU) had been considered the front-runner for the nomination of the government parties. Because the Constitution of Germany forbids the President to hold other offices, Christian Wulff resigned from his seat in the Landtag of Lower Saxony on 11 June 2010 and announced to leave the supervisory board of Volkswagen the following week. He resigned from his post as Premier of Lower Saxony upon being elected as President on 30 June,"
"and Pakistan between 2009 and 2013. On 16 March 2010, Germany's Minister for Foreign Affairs Guido Westerwelle appointed Klose to succeed Karsten Voigt as the government's coordinator for German-American affairs, a rare case of a senior political appointment not being given to a member of the governing party . He resigned from that position in 2011. After leaving politics, Klose took up a position as senior advisor to the Robert Bosch Foundation. In March 2013 the Congressional Study Group on Germany presented Klose with the inaugural International Statesmanship Award in appreciation “for his longstanding service to strengthening the US-German relationship”."