New German president active in interreligious dialogue groups

BERLIN, May 23 (JTA) — Johannes Rau has been elected Germany’s eighth postwar president in elections that coincided with the 50th anniversary of West Germany’s Constitution. In his acceptance speech, he said he saw it as his “personal duty from this day on to be president for all Germans and a voice for all those who live and work here without a German passport.” Rau promised to uphold the values of not only Germans, but of “humanity.” “I will never be a nationalist, but definitely a patriot,” Rau said. “A patriot is someone who loves his fatherland, but a nationalist is someone who hates the homelands of others.” Rau, 68 — a member of Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder’s Social Democratic Party — will replace the Christian Democratic Union Party’s incumbent, Roman Herzog, on July 1. Herzog, 65, who in his five-year term earned the respect of Jewish organizations worldwide, this month received a humanitarian award from the Anti-Defamation League in New York for fighting bigotry, xenophobia and anti-Semitism in Germany. Rau also has demonstrated support for Jewish causes. Though the position of president is largely ceremonial, it carries moral weight and has been described as the voice of Germany’s conscience. Rau, the son of a Protestant minister, has been “very active for much of his life in Jewish-Christian dialogue and has lots of contact in the Jewish community,” said Joel Levy, Germany chairman of the Ronald S. Lauder Foundation and former senior diplomat at the United States Embassy in Berlin. “It is assumed that he will be a very positive force from the Jewish point of view,” Levy said. Rau has been the state premier of North Rhine-Westphalia for 20 years.