Willy Brandt was a social democratic politician and statesman in the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG). He was mayor of West Berlin (in 1957–66) when the German Democratic Republic (GDR) built the Berlin Wall (on 13 August 1961) and was the first social democratic Chancellor of the FRG, in 1969–74. During the Cold War Brandt’s Ostpolitik promoted détente and co-operation between the two German states and other Central and Eastern European Countries. His Ostpolitik was central to the process which culminated in the fall of the Berlin Wall, the end of the Cold War and the unification of Germany. When the Berlin Wall fell, Brandt—who was not otherwise a religious man—thanked God that he had been given the opportunity to witness the event. He addressed a crowd of East and West Berliners in front of the Berlin mayor’s office on 10 November 1989 and opened the first all-German parliamentary session in December 1990. He also led the Bundestag vote in 1991 in favour of moving the seat of parliament from Bonn to Berlin.
Brandt was born Herbert Ernst Karl Frahm on 18 December 1913 in Lübeck. Brandt, who never met his father, was brought up in a working-class, social democratic family by his grandfather. He was the only working-class boy at the prestigious Johanneum Gymnasium (grammar school) from which he obtained his Abitur in 1932. After school he worked briefly as a trainee in a shipping firm. Brandt joined the Socialist Worker Youth Movement (Sozialistische Arbeiterjugend) in 1929 and one year later he was encouraged to join the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) by his mentor, the SPD politician Julius Leber. He left the SPD in favour of the left-wing Socialist Worker Party (SAP—Sozialistische Arbeiterpartei) in 1931 and became the chairman of its youth movement. As a prominent socialist activist in Lübeck, Brandt was forced into exile in 1933 when the National Socialists came to power. Shortly after the collapse of the Weimar Republic, he fled to Norway via Denmark and assumed the name Willy Brandt for the first time. In Norway he studied history, worked as a journalist and was politically active in the exiled SAP. Brandt travelled to Berlin in 1936 to co-ordinate the SAP underground organization, and to Spain in 1937 as a journalist to report on the Spanish civil war. Brandt was stripped of his German citizenship in 1938. When Norway was occupied by German forces in 1940 Brandt was taken prisoner of war until he escaped to Sweden. There he worked as a journalist and was awarded Norwegian citizenship by the Norwegian government-in-exile. Brandt became active in the European social democratic movement in 1942 and rejoined the SPD. At the end of the war he returned to Germany, first to report on the Nuremberg war trials in 1945–46, and then as a press attaché for the Norwegian government in Berlin. He regained his German citizenship, but retained his exile name.
Brandt’s political career in the SPD took off slowly: as a returned exile he was treated with suspicion by some elements of the party. In his home town, Lübeck, there was support for him to become mayor but this move was blocked by the party headquarters in Hanover. Brandt’s attempts to become chairman of the Berlin party were blocked twice, as were his attempts to be elected onto the executive committee of the federal SPD. Brandt was a member of the Bundestag in 1949–57 and eventually became mayor of Berlin in 1957, following the death Ernst Reuter in 1953 and then that of his successor as mayor, Otto Suhr, in 1957. As mayor, Brandt became a popular and prominent politician both in Germany and—following the construction of the Berlin Wall—internationally. During his years as mayor of the divided city he drew up with SPD colleague Egon Bahr the first phases of his Ostpolitik. He developed a programme called ‘Wandel durch Annäherung’ (change through rapprochement) and agreed a deal in 1963 with the GDR allowing West Berliners to travel to the East over the Christmas period.
Brandt was the SPD’s Chancellor candidate against Konrad Adenauer in 1961 and against Ludwig Erhard in 1965. In both elections the SPD’s vote increased, although not sufficiently to grant it the status of largest party in the Bundestag. The SPD entered into a Grand Coalition with the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and the Christian Social Union (CSU) in 1966 under Kurt Georg Kiesinger and, as Vice-Chancellor and foreign minister, Brandt worked to improve the FRG’s relations with Eastern European states. From 1964 he was leader of the SPD.
In 1969 Brandt became the first social democratic Chancellor of the FRG following the formation of a coalition between the SPD and the liberal Free Democratic Party (FDP). During his five years in office, Brandt significantly developed his Ostpolitik. He visited Erfurt in the GDR and received a visit from the GDR’s Prime Minister, Willi Stoph, in 1970. In August 1970 he signed the Treaty of Moscow and in December the Treaty of Warsaw. These aimed to improve relations between the FRG, the Soviet Union and Poland; the states agreed to respect the existing national borders and to seek peaceful solutions to conflict. In Poland in December 1970, at the site of the Warsaw Ghetto, Brandt made a gesture which made a lasting impression in the international community: he fell to his knees, expressing an apology for the crimes of Nazi Germany. Brandt was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1971 for his Ostpolitik and policy of détente. As Chancellor, Brandt worked domestically to strengthen democracy in Germany: his campaign slogan had been ‘Mehr Demokratie Wagen’ (Dare more democracy). His government passed a series of reforms to legalize divorce, improve the rights of women, reduce discrimination against homosexuals, and reduce the age of voting. It also expanded democratic rights in the workplace through institutions of co-determination.
Brandt’s politics were considered controversial among the opposition CDU/CSU. The right wing in Germany considered him a traitor for having left Germany during the war and for accepting the sovereignty of the GDR and thus the division of Germany in his Ostpolitik. The opposition sought to defeat Brandt’s government in 1972 through a constructive vote of no confidence. This attempt narrowly failed: the CDU/CSU needed 249 votes but won just 247. Allegedly Brandt was saved by the GDR ‘buying’ two votes in the Bundestag to keep him in power. Brandt’s status in Germany grew and the SPD’s campaign slogan for the 1972 election was simply ‘Wählt Willy Brandt’ (Vote for Willy Brandt). The SPD managed to gain the status of the largest party in the Bundestag and formed another coalition with the liberal FDP. In 1973 Brandt travelled to Israel and was the first German Chancellor to address the United Nations in New York.
By 1974 Brandt’s politics had been overtaken by a series of health problems and personal scandals. Brandt was prone to depression and would withdraw from the political scene, leaving others to deal with the detail of politics. He was hospitalized for an operation on his throat and the tabloid press also made big news of Brandt’s love affairs. However, his downfall came when it was revealed that his personal assistant, Günter Guillaume, was a spy for the GDR. Brandt resigned as Chancellor on 6 May 1974 and was replaced by SPD politician Helmut Schmidt. Following his resignation Brandt (re)turned to the international political scene. He was president of the Socialist International in 1976–92 and campaigned on issues of international development and peace. He was a member of the European Parliament in 1979–83. He remained leader of the SPD until 1987 and a member of the Bundestag until 1992. Willy Brandt died on 8 October 1992 in Unkel. He had been married three times and had four children, one from his first marriage and three from his second.
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