Berlin, May 23 (Reuters): Former IMF head Horst Koehler was elected Germany’s ninth post-war President by a special federal assembly today in a ballot marred by a row over a Nazi-era judge who sentenced World War II deserters to death.

Koehler, who quit as managing director of the International Monetary Fund in March to run for the largely ceremonial office, won narrowly with 604 votes from the 1,204-member assembly.

Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder’s candidate Gesine Schwan, who got 589 votes and at least seven from Koehler’s side, was beaten in what the opposition hopes will be a harbinger for ousting the Social Democrat-Greens government in a 2006 election.

The vote was tarnished by controversy over the participation of Christian Democrat delegate Hans Filbinger, a Third Reich naval judge who ordered the 1945 execution of a German sailor who tried to flee from German-occupied Norway.