Willy Brandt (1913 - 1992) was a German politician who served as Governing Mayor of West Berlin, foreign minister, and Chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany from 1969 to 1974. [1] A Social Democrat who had spent the Nazi years in exile, he is chiefly remembered for Ostpolitik, the opening toward East Germany, Poland and the Soviet Union that earned him the Nobel Peace Prize in 1971. [2] He led the Social Democratic Party for more than two decades.
Early life and exile
He was born Herbert Ernst Karl Frahm on 18 December 1913 in Sankt Lorenz, a district of Lübeck, and raised by his mother and grandfather in working-class circumstances. [1] He joined the socialist youth movement as a teenager and became a journalist.
After the Nazi seizure of power in 1933 he fled to Norway, adopting the cover name Willy Brandt, which he kept for the rest of his life. He studied at the University of Oslo, worked as a correspondent, and reported from Spain during the Civil War. Stripped of his German citizenship, he took Norwegian nationality, and when Germany invaded Norway in 1940 he escaped to Sweden, continuing anti-Nazi work from Stockholm. [2]
Berlin politics
Brandt returned to Germany after the war and regained German citizenship in 1948. He was elected to the Bundestag in 1949 and became a leading figure in Berlin's Social Democratic organisation. [1] From 1957 to 1966 he served as Governing Mayor of West Berlin, holding that office during the 1958 Berlin ultimatum and the building of the Berlin Wall in 1961, which made him internationally known as a symbol of West Berlin's resistance to Soviet pressure.
Chancellor and Ostpolitik
He became chairman of the Social Democratic Party in 1964 and served as foreign minister and vice-chancellor in the grand coalition from 1966. In 1969 he formed a coalition with the Free Democrats and became the first Social Democratic chancellor of the Federal Republic. [3]
His government pursued Ostpolitik, negotiating treaties with the Soviet Union and Poland in 1970 that accepted the postwar borders, and the Basic Treaty of 1972 regulating relations with East Germany. This opened the way to both German states joining the United Nations in 1973. [2] During a visit to Warsaw in December 1970 Brandt knelt unannounced at the memorial to the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, a gesture of penitence that became one of the defining images of postwar German politics.
He was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1971 and named Time Person of the Year in 1970. Domestically his government expanded social provision, education and civil rights, campaigning under the slogan of daring more democracy. [1]
Resignation and later years
Brandt resigned as chancellor in May 1974 after it emerged that Günter Guillaume, one of his close aides, was an East German intelligence agent. [3] He remained chairman of the SPD until 1987 and served as president of the Socialist International, extending his work on North-South relations as chair of the Independent Commission on International Development Issues, whose 1980 Brandt Report argued for large transfers of resources to the developing world.
He lived to see the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and supported German reunification. Brandt died in Unkel on 8 October 1992. [1]
Legacy
Brandt is regarded as one of the central figures of postwar European politics, credited with restoring German moral standing abroad and with laying groundwork for the détente that preceded the end of the Cold War. [2] Berlin's principal Social Democratic headquarters and the city's airport both carry his name. [3]
