Long criticised for a bland public profile as Germany’s youngest-ever head of state, President Christian Wulff, who resigned yesterday, hurtled to the centre of the political stage with a rapid series of scandals that proved to be his ultimate undoing.

He stepped down in a dramatic three-and-a-half minute televised statement, saying he no longer enjoyed the trust of a large majority of the German public

Chancellor Angela Merkel had hoped that hand-picking the genial, inoffensive Mr Wulff as her candidate for the largely honorific office could help her shore up support for her unpopular government while sidelining what could be a potential challenger.

However, Mr Wulff’s courtship of the wealthy and powerful in business and media, cultivated to his advantage in his home state Lower Saxony and later with his glamorous wife Bettina in Berlin, proved to be his undoing.

He stepped down in a dramatic three-and-a-half minute televised statement, saying he no longer enjoyed the trust of a large majority of the German public.

The resignation followed a request by prosecutors for the Bundestag lower house of Parliament to consider removing his immunity so they could investigate various allegations.

The preternaturally youthful Mr Wulff, 52, governed the state of Lower Saxony, home to automaker Volkswagen, from 2003 to 2010, when he became Germany’s youngest President.

A high-profile perch, Lower Saxony was seen as a possible launchpad for Mr Wulff to one day pose a challenge to Ms Merkel.

By having him elected President, Germany’s first woman Chancellor effectively neutralised him by placing him in a golden cage far removed from the real instruments of political power.

But he retained close ties to the state’s business elite, who sponsored a number of holidays in the sun and offered a helping hand at crucial moments, including the 2008 home loan from the wife of a tycoon friend that touched off the affair that brought him down.

He left his long-time wife Christiane in 2006 for public relations executive Bettina Koerner, 14 years his junior, and launched a charm offensive to mollify his conservative base after the shock announcement.

They married in 2008 and have a small son, in addition to a teenage daughter from Mr Wulff’s previous marriage, and the powerful mass market Bild daily helped to restore his image as a wholesome family man.

However, his cosy relations with the paper’s publisher Springer soured when he reportedly threatened journalists on two separate occasions over their reporting, and these revelations proved a stinging blow to his political career.

The German President, ensconced in Berlin’s sumptuous Bellevue Palace, serves as a kind of moral arbiter for the nation, receiving state guests and occasionally weighing in with contemplative speeches on the issues of the day.

Soon after taking office, he ruffled conservative feathers by wading into a heated national debate on Muslim immigrants by stating that Islam was part of German life and the country would do well to embrace the fact.

Last year he took the unusual step of criticising the European Central Bank, whose independence is seen as sacrosanct in Germany, by saying it was “asking for trouble” by buying up sovereign bonds to beat back the debt crisis.

And during a visit of Pope Benedict XVI to his native Germany in September, the Catholic Wulff called on the Church to be more understanding of people like himself who divorced. Born on June 19, 1959, in the northwestern city of Osnabrueck, the boy who would become Germany’s youngest President had to take on enormous responsibilities at a tender age.

At 14 he became the primary caregiver for his divorced mother, who was suffering from multiple sclerosis, and his younger sister.

He became active in the CDU at the age of 20, and was just 34 when he first challenged Gerhard Schroeder, who would later become Chancellor, for the premiership of Lower Saxony, where politics and business notoriously go hand in hand.

It took him two tries but he eventually wrested control of the state in 2003 from Sigmar Gabriel, Mr Schroeder’s crown prince and the current leader of Germany’s Social Democrats.

Ms Merkel chose him as her candidate for President when Horst Koehler abruptly resigned from the office over remarks that appeared to justify the use of German military power to protect the country’s overseas economic interests.

But his election was messy, requiring three rounds of voting before a special parliamentary body until he could secure the necessary majority.

This time around Ms Merkel will seek a consensus candidate agreed by all the major parties.