PROFILE: Gesine Schwan, Germany's first Mrs. President?

By Helen Maguire May 19, 2009, 5:09 GMT

Berlin - Gesine Schwan's campaign for president is the Social Democrats' (SPD) second attempt to put a woman into Germany's largely ceremonial head-of-state position.

The 65-year-old political scientist, recognizable in Germany by the tumbling blonde shock of curly hair stacked above her head, is the main challenger to incumbent President Horst Koehler, who narrowly won when Schwan first stood against him in 2004.

'I'm not saying that I'll win, but it's completely open,' Schwan said of this year's ballot on May 23, when the 612 members of the Bundestag parliament and a matching number of delegates chosen by Germany's 16 states elect the next president in a secret vote.

The parliamentary size of Koehler's Christian Democrats (CDU) should again give him the upper hand, but the secret nature of the ballot allows for party defections and means no vote is secure.

For months, Schwan has been touring the country, drumming up support from independents and undecided electoral college voters, while Koehler has remained more faithful to the convention of not openly campaigning for the post.

Schwan's outspoken stance often generates strong reactions, not least from within her own party. Last month she courted controversy when she warned that the current economic crisis could stoke social unrest, as unemployment increases over coming months.

'If there isn't a glimmer of hope that the situation is improving, the mood could become explosive,' she told daily Muenchener Merkur.

Schwan's presidential nomination split the Social Democrats, as many felt they should stay loyal to the governing SPD-CDU coalition and support the incumbent Koehler, ahead of parliamentary elections later in the year.

Now that Germany has a female chancellor in Angela Merkel, there are those who feel the time is right for a woman to occupy Bellevue Palace, the presidential home in Berlin's Tiergarten park.

'Men can learn more from women than the other way around,' Schwan told German Spiegel news magazine, adding that women should be less self-critical. 'I try to set an example,' the academic said.

But Schwan is not campaigning on a feminist ticket. 'I have never been disadvantaged because of being a woman,' she said.

The former politics professor is dismissive of those who say the German presidency is about little more than cocktail parties and ribbon-cutting.

'This office has as its main task to strengthen democracy, to strengthen it culturally,' Schwan said, adding that people needed to be encouraged to engage in politics and understand the value of democracy.

Twenty years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, Schwan worries that the democratic tradition is less firmly rooted in Germany's former East. 'Practice is an important teacher,' the political scientist said.

Schwan, who learnt Polish at university, feels as much at home in Germany as in Poland, and has spoken of the great pleasure it would give her, as German president, to address Poles in their native tongue.

The retired president of a university on the Polish border, Schwan travels frequently between both countries. Since 2004 she has done so in her official capacity as coordinator for German-Polish relations.

Schwan grew up in a politically active household, where social issues were debated at the dinner table. Her parents belonged to the opposition movement in Nazi Germany and hid a Jewish girl in their home during World War II.

From 1977, Schwan taught Marxism and socialism as a professor at Berlin's Free University. She joined the SPD in 1972, where her anti- communist stance and her Catholicism often put her at odds with party leaders.

In 2004 Schwan married Peter Eigen, founder of the anti-corruption organization Transparency International. She has two adopted children from her marriage to political scientist Alexander Schwan, who died of cancer in 1989.