Wulff was born in Osnabrück and is Roman Catholic. He was the first Roman Catholic to hold the post of President of Germany in more than 40 years. His father left the family, and he grew up with his mother. As a teenager, he took responsibility for the care of his younger sister, after his mother developed multiple sclerosis. After completing his Abitur at the Ernst Moritz Arndt Gymnasium in Osnabrück, Wulff studied law with a specialisation in economics at the University of Osnabrück. He joined the Christian Democratic Union of Germany in 1975 . In 1987 and 1990, he passed the first and second state examinations in law, and has since worked as an attorney.
After the 23 May announcement that federal elections will be advanced to September 2005, Wulff announced that he was not a candidate for the Christian Democrat nomination for Chancellor, particularly as he has not completed his first term as Premier of Lower Saxony. Instead, Wulff declared his support for Angela Merkel, the CDU leader in the Bundestag. Although there was speculation that Wulff would be given a position in the new government, entering federal politics, he remained Premier of Lower Saxony.
Christian Wulff was elected President of Germany on 30 June 2010, when he won 625 of 1242 votes in the third ballot of the Federal Convention.[12] He became Germany's youngest president at the age of 51. Wulff was sworn in on 2 July 2010 in front of the Bundestag and the Bundesrat.
His main contender in the election was Joachim Gauck, a civil rights activist from East Germany and a former Federal Commissioner for the Stasi Archives. Himself not a member of any party, Gauck was nominated by the opposition SPD and Greens as their presidential candidate on 3 June.
Wulff was succeeded as Premier of Lower Saxony by David McAllister. Wulff's candidacy for President of Germany in the 2010 presidential election was formally confirmed by Angela Merkel, Guido Westerwelle and Horst Seehofer, the heads of the CDU, FDP and CSU parties, during the evening of 3 June 2010.
In December 2011, allegations emerged over President Christian Wulff’s former ties with affluent businessmen. While he still was governor of Lower Saxony, the state parliament inquired whether Wulff had any business ties with friend and millionaire entrepreneur Egon Geerkens. This he denied, keeping secret though that he had received a private loan of some €500,000 from Egon's wife Edith in 2008 to purchase a house. Geerkens even admitted to managing the deal. On 22 December, Wulff made a public statement apologizing for his handling of the loan affair and conceded that he should have made his personal records available more quickly. "That was not straightforward and I am sorry," he added.
Just when the affair seemed to settle down, it was revealed that President Wulff had applied undue pressure on Springer Press to suppress initial revelations on the loan scandal. When Wulff found out that the BILD tabloid was going to break the story, he called editor-in-chief Kai Diekmann, but only reached his voice mail and left a message in which he angrily threatened a "final break" in relations with the Springer publishing house and to take legal action. By the beginning of January 2012, President Wulff lost support by the public, commentators called for him to resign, the opposition increased pressure again, and his own party was distancing itself from him for his attempted censure of freedom of the press.
On the evening of 4 January 2012 then, Wulff gave a much anticipated interview in a program broadcast jointly by the two main public TV stations ARD and ZDF. He declared that he wanted to stay in office and that the call to Diekmann had been a "serious mistake" that was "unworthy" of a president and for which he had already apologised. He further promised to have his office put a summary of the responses to about 450 recent press inquiries online.
Christian Wulff met his first wife, lawyer Christiane Wulff (born 1959), when they were both law students in Osnabrück in 1983. They married in March 1988, and have a daughter, Annalena (born 1993). In June 2006, Wulff announced that he would divorce his wife. Wulff subsequently married an aide from the PM's Office, Bettina Körner (born 1973 in Hanover), on 21 March 2008 in a low-key ceremony. She has a son from a previous relationship, and on 12 May 2008, she gave birth to their first child together, also a boy.
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