Who was Willy Brandt?
Herbert Frahm, later known as Willy Brandt, grew up in Lübeck and joined the SPD in 1930. When the Nazis took power in 1933 he fled to Norway and later Sweden, earning a living as a journalist. After returning he served as Governing Mayor of West Berlin while the Wall was built, and then as foreign minister in the 1966 Grand Coalition. He took the chancellorship in 1969. In 1974 an East German spy turned up among his staff, and Brandt resigned, taking the blame. He stayed on as head of the SPD until 1987.
Political views
- His Ostpolitik was a series of agreements with Moscow, Warsaw, East Berlin and Prague, intended to calm a divided Europe.Source: hdg.de
- Under the Basic Treaty of 1972, the two German states formally began dealing with each other.Source: hdg.de
- In 1970 he went down on his knees at the Warsaw Ghetto memorial, a gesture of atonement for what Germans had done.Source: hdg.de
- His government signed West Germany up to the Non-Proliferation Treaty on nuclear weapons, and it supported the Four Power Agreement over Berlin.Source: nobelprize.org
- He called a peace policy the true Realpolitik of the age and described war as the "ultima irratio".Source: nobelprize.org
- He chaired the Independent Commission on International Development Issues, which called on wealthy and poor nations to work together more.Source: hdg.de
- From 1976 to 1992 he led the Socialist International, where he promoted democratic socialism worldwide.Source: willy-brandt-biography.com
Legacy
His supporters say Brandt made peace between West Germany and its neighbors in the East, helped lay the ground for the Cold War's end and extended social-liberal reform at home. Conservatives of the day said the eastern treaties conceded the postwar borders, and the East German state, far too readily. Another complaint is the 1972 decree on radicals, which shut some applicants out of public jobs because of their politics, along with the way his government dealt with the Guillaume spy case. Later he remained an influential voice abroad through the North-South Commission, whose reports in 1980 and 1983 argued for a fresh approach to world development.
In their own words
“War is no longer the ultima ratio but rather the ultima irratio.”