New President Elected in Berlin

Johannes Rau, a smooth-talking moderate in Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder’s left-leaning Social Democratic Party, won election as Germany’s eighth postwar president in a vote in the renovated Reichstag building in Berlin. Rau won an absolute majority in a special federal assembly that convened in the refurbished Parliament building 50 years to the day after the constitution written in the aftermath of Adolf Hitler’s dictatorship took effect. He will be sworn in to succeed Roman Herzog on July 1. Rau, 68 and the son of a preacher, had long sought the office that holds few executive powers but wields symbolic authority. “It’s an exciting challenge, and I’m glad to take it on,” Rau said.