An anticommunist human rights activist in what was formerly East Germany has been elected the president of Germany.

Seventy-two-year-old Joachim Gauck received 991 of the one-thousand-232 ballots cast in a special session of German lawmakers. He won an overwhelming victory over Beate Klarsfeld from the ex-communist Left Party.

Gauck is the first candidate from the former communist east to be the head of state.

He is a pastor who participated in the democratic movement in East Germany before reunification. After the two Germanys were united in 1990, Gauck headed a federal agency overseeing the vast archive of files left by East Germany’s Stasi secret police until 2000.

With his election, now both the president and Chancellor Angela Merkel are from the former East German region.