Joachim Gauck was born on 24 January 1940 in Rostock. After completing his secondary education, he studied theology. From 1965 to 1990, he served the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Mecklenburg and worked for many years as a pastor, most of that time in Rostock, where he was also youth pastor and head of his regional church's church congress work for a time.

Even as a young man, Joachim Gauck opposed the dictatorship in the GDR. In 1989, he was a co-initiator of the church and public resistance against the SED dictatorship. He led weekly ‘peace prayers,’ which gave rise to protests against the SED regime. Joachim Gauck co-founded the New Forum in Rostock and became its spokesperson.

In March 1990, he entered the first freely elected People's Chamber as a member of Alliance 90. Joachim Gauck was elected chairman of the special parliamentary committee to oversee the dissolution of the Ministry for State Security. Since 3 October 1990, he has been Special Commissioner and later Federal Commissioner for the Records of the State Security Service of the former GDR. His second term of office ends in 2000.

From 2001 to 2004, Joachim Gauck is the German member of the Management Board of the European Monitoring Centre on Racism and Xenophobia in Vienna.

From 2003 to 2012, he succeeded Hans-Jochen Vogel and Hans Koschnick as Federal Chairman of the association ‘Gegen Vergessen – Für Demokratie e.V.’ (Against Forgetting – For Democracy).

When the Federal Assembly elected Christian Wulff as the new Federal President in 2010, he was the candidate of the SPD and Alliance 90/The Greens.

On 18 March 2012, the Federal Assembly elected Joachim Gauck as the eleventh President of the Federal Republic of Germany. His term of office ends on 18 March 2017.

Since 2017, he has been Honorary Chairman of the association ‘Gegen Vergessen – Für Demokratie e.V.’ (Against Forgetting – For Democracy).