Candidate best known for tracking down war criminals and slapping a chancellor, will stand against Joachim Gauck
A "Nazi hunter" famous for giving a German chancellor a slap in the face will stand against the favourite, Joachim Gauck, in the race to be Germany's next president.
Beate Klarsfeld, 73, has been chosen as the presidential candidate of Die Linke, the smallest political party represented in the German parliament, the Bundestag.
She will now go head-to-head with the favourite, Joachim Gauck, a 72-year-old protestant pastor best known for "hunting" Stasi agents, while commissioner of the Stasi files in Berlin after German reunification.
Die Linke decided to boycott Gauck after being snubbed by Angela Merkel 10 days ago. They were furious that the chancellor did not invite them to a key meeting where the other main parties decided Gauck was best placed to restore trust in the presidency following Christian Wulff's forced resignation after a corruption scandal.
After much dithering and bickering, Die Linke finally agreed on their own candidate on Monday night. They settled on Klarsfeld, who hit the headlines in November 1968 when she was photographed slapping the then German chancellor, Kurt Georg Kiesinger. She had invaded the stage at the party conference of his Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and shouted "Nazi! Nazi! Nazi!", in reference to Kiesinger's past as a functionary in Goebbels's propaganda ministry.
Pictures of Klarsfeld, then 29, wearing a white headscarf and striped coat as she was led away by police following her arrest, caused a storm in a country still coming to terms with its dark past. She was sentenced to a year in prison, subsequently reduced to four months on probation. The sentence meant leaving her three-year-old son in the care of her husband, a Jewish Frenchman whose father was murdered in Auschwitz.
Following her release, she and her husband, Serge Klarsfeld, devoted their lives to tracking down Nazis. They scored their biggest coup in 1987 when they persuaded prosecutors to arrest Klaus Barbie. The so-called Butcher of Lyon was sentenced to life in prison for his direct involvement in the torture and death of approximately 14,000 people while serving as an Gestapo captain during the second world war.
She always said that as a "Non-Jew and a German, I have a moral duty" to see those responsible for the Holocaust punished for their brutality. By standing against Gauck, she said parliamentarians – who vote for the new president on 18 March – were being given a clear choice between "two very moral candidates".
But while Gauck has received one of Germany's highest honours, the Great Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany With Star (Großes Bundesverdienstkreuz mit Stern), Klarsfeld's work has largely been ignored in Germany.
She is, however, celebrated in her adopted home of France. In 2007 Nicolas Sarkozy awarded her the Officer of the Legion of Honour. Last November, Sarkozy also invited her to a reception at the Élysée palace at which he told her, "Beate, you embody the struggle for justice". But Der Spiegel last week reported that the German presidential office recently struck her name off a list of potential candidates for the next German honours list – "the German state does not forget a slap", said the magazine.
Klarsfeld, who is passionately pro-Israel, is not necessarily a logical choice for Die Linke, many of whom are vigorous supporters of an independent Palestine. Cem Özdemir, boss of the Green party, said he hoped Klarsfeld's candidacy would prompt Die Link to "rethink their crude anti-Israeli policy and muddled position on the Middle East conflict".
Regardless, Gauck is almost certain to triumph. Die Linke have a maximum of 125 votes in the presidential ballot next month, while Merkel's CDU has up to 489, the Social Democrats 329 and the Greens up to 147.