Less than 72 hours after Christian Wulff announced his resignation as German president, Germany has found a successor. On Sunday evening, Germany's main political parties announced that they had agreed on a common candidate, Joachim Gauck. The former East German civil rights activist is now expected to be elected in a vote that is likely to be a mere formality.

Gauck's nomination came after a dramatic conflict between Merkel's conservatives and their junior coalition partner, the business-friendly Free Democratic Party (FDP). Merkel's Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and its Bavarian sister party, the Christian Social Union (CSU) had originally opposed Gauck's candidacy, favoring former German Environment Minister Klaus Topfer or the former head of the Protestant Church in Germany, Wolfgang Huber, instead. The FDP leadership, however, announced on Sunday afternoon that it supported Gauck, the preferred candidate of the two main opposition parties, the center-left Social Democrats (SPD) and the Greens. The split between the two partners threatened to turn into a serious crisis within the coalition. Merkel, however, prevented further escalation by giving in to the FDP.

The choice of Gauck represents something of a humiliating defeat for Merkel. Gauck was the opposition's candidate for president at the last election in 2010, which followed the unexpected resignation of then-president Horst Kohler. The Federal Assembly, the specially convened body which chooses the German president, only elected Merkel's hand-picked candidate, Christian Wulff, after three rounds of voting. At the time, observers saw the protracted vote as a slap in the face for Merkel. By supporting Gauck now, Merkel is arguably admitting that she made a mistake by backing Wulff in 2010.