Willy Brandt:Chancellor, citizen of the world - Nobel Peace Prize winner

Resistance fighter, chancellor, party leader:Willy Brandt was one of the most important German politicians. On December 10, 1971, his merits were honored with the Nobel Peace Prize. A portrait of the Lübeck social democrat.

by Nils Zurawski

Governing Mayor of Berlin during the Berlin crisis, Chancellor with a tragic end, Nobel Peace Prize winner, resistance fighter in the Third Reich, exile, journalist, reporter at the Nuremberg Trials, recipient of numerous honors and medals, social democrat, visionary and citizen of the world - about Willy Brandt numerous biographies as well as scientific and journalistic appraisals and analyzes were written during his lifetime.

Pointing the way for the politics of the Federal Republic

Although Brandt's time as Federal Chancellor was overshadowed by the Guillaume espionage affair, his policies are still regarded as groundbreaking for the old Federal Republic, as it existed until 1990. The fact that he was able to experience reunification two years before his death in October 1992 is also indirectly due to his policy of "change through rapprochement", which he promoted as Federal Chancellor.

His political importance beyond his chancellorship is unreservedly recognized across party lines and abroad. This was not always the case in his long political career, because the son of the Hanseatic city of Lübeck repeatedly had to put up with abuse and insults from party friends and political opponents. As with many politicians of the time, especially social democratic ones, his political and personal life reflects the difficult and restless history of Germany in the 20th century.

Childhood and Exile

Willy Brandt was born on December 18, 1913 in Lübeck under the name Herbert Ernst Karl Frahm as an illegitimate child in a social democratic household. He didn't know his father. He grew up largely with his maternal grandfather. As a teenager he joined the socialist youth movement. At 16 he joined the SPD, but soon switched to the left-wing split of the SPD, the Socialist Workers' Party, because the SPD seemed too willing to compromise.

Shortly after the NSDAP seized power, he went into exile in Norway for political reasons - already under the name Willy Brandt, which he adopted with the help of forged papers. He survived the Third Reich in Norway and, after its conquest by the Germans, in Sweden. During this time he travels to Spain in 1937 to report on the civil war on the Republican side. His numerous trips to different European countries help him to keep in touch with social democratic exile groups. He also spent a year studying in Germany in 1936 - under the name of Gunnar Gaasland.

He earns his living in Norwegian-Swedish exile mainly as a journalist. Brandt's political activities establish many friendships that he can reconnect with after the war and that should earn him the reputation of a citizen of the world.

Return to Germany

Brandt's return to Germany in 1945 is a trial return. After almost 13 years in Scandinavian exile, he first came to Germany as a reporter on the Nuremberg war crimes trials for a Norwegian newspaper. From there he also makes contact with German social democracy and explores post-war Germany. His next stop is Berlin, this time as press attaché for the Norwegian foreign minister, his friend Halvard Lange. In 1947, Brandt decides to return to Germany entirely - as a German and not as a Norwegian. He is accompanied by Rut, his second wife whom he met in Norway.

A new name

When he was re-naturalized in Schleswig-Holstein, he registered under the name Willy Brandt - Herbert Frahm is history, but one that will often be used against him in the years to come. In the election campaign against Adenauer in 1961, the latter likes to refer to him as "Willy Brandt alias Herbert Frahm" and thus conjures up the impression of an unreliable man who would have betrayed his origins and probably also his country.

The SPD leadership quickly became aware of Willy Brandt, especially the then chairman Kurt Schumacher. This makes Brandt his representative in Berlin. In 1957, after the death of the Social Democrat Otto Suhr, he succeeded him as Governing Mayor of Berlin. Brandt gained international recognition as mayor during the Berlin crisis of 1958. During a visit to the USA in 1959, he was celebrated like no other German politician before him.

When he ran for chancellor in 1961, Brandt was still defeated by the CDU. Five years later he was already Foreign Minister in the Grand Coalition formed in 1966. In 1969 he replaced Kurt Georg Kiesinger as Federal Chancellor and became the first Social Democratic Chancellor in the still young Federal Republic.

Renewal and change

Brandt's desire for the political renewal of the SPD and for the change of social conditions in the Federal Republic is shaped by his experiences in Norwegian and Swedish exile. He is one of the proponents of the SPD's Godesberg program, which was intended to transform it into a people's party. Together with Herbert Wehner, he sets out to renew the SPD and make it capable of governing.

During this time, Wehner became both an important inner-party ally of Brandt and his greatest adversary. Wehner, known as a strict "party disciplinarian", repeatedly accuses Brandt of being just a salon socialist and of having fled the dust at the decisive moment - not only in relation to the different years experienced during the Nazi dictatorship, but also during Brandt's chancellorship.

As early as the 1960s, Brandt developed the political guidelines for dealing with the East together with Egon Bahr under the influence of the building of the Wall in 1961. The concepts of the "politics of small steps" and "change through rapprochement" emerge. As Federal Chancellor, he himself experienced the importance of this policy. In Erfurt in 1970, during a state visit to the GDR, he was celebrated frenetically by an enthusiastic crowd shouting "Willy, Willy". At the time, the GDR leadership saw this jubilation as an organizational glitch. However, this meeting and a return visit by Willi Stoph, then Prime Minister of the GDR, has far-reaching consequences for the international recognition of the GDR, not least because it is about its seat in the UN.

The Kneeling of Warsaw

Brandt finally arrived on the international stage with his kneeling in front of the memorial to the victims of the Jewish ghetto in Warsaw during a visit to Poland. This gesture came as a shock to everyone involved - nobody had foreseen it and it was not part of the planned program. The "Spiegel" reporter Hermann Schreiber wrote at the time with pathos and a tone of complete surprise:"Then he kneels there who doesn't need it, there for everyone who needs it but doesn't kneel there - because they don't dare or can't or can't dare. Then he admits his guilt [...] Then he kneels there for Germany".

Nobel Peace Prize for the policy of detente

The shock can probably only be explained by the mood in Germany in the 1970s - a time when people were still rather coy about clarifying their own past, if at all. The basic treaty with the GDR that came into force in 1973 is the result of the policies of Brandt and the other politicians of détente in the SPD.

Willy Brandt - the Nobel Prize winner

Category :Nobel Peace Prize
year :1971
Reasoning Committee :"...as head of the West German government and on behalf of the German people, he stretched out his hand to a policy of reconciliation between old enemy countries. In a spirit of goodwill, he made an excellent effort to create the conditions for peace in Europe."

For this policy of détente he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize on December 10, 1971 in Oslo. According to the committee, as "head of the West German government and on behalf of the German people" he "reached out his hand for a policy of reconciliation between old enemy countries".

In domestic politics he wants to dare more democracy and yet the Radical Decree passes the Bundestag under his government. It is probably an irony of history that a small part of the extra-parliamentary opposition became radicalized under the chancellor, who dedicated himself to change and opening up society, when the RAF challenged the German state and pushed it to its limits. By then, however, Brandt is no longer chancellor.

The Guillaume Affair

He fell over the GDR spy Günter Guillaume, who had been smuggled into his office and had become one of his closest advisors in the Chancellery. It is the tragic end of a chancellorship in which there had been disagreements for a long time and he himself seemed tired of his job. In May 1974, the successor to the visionary Brandt was Helmut Schmidt, who had long been regarded as the strongest man in the cabinet.

Statesman and citizen of the world

After leaving the Chancellor's office, Brandt by no means withdrew from the political scene, but continued to be very active. He remained chairman of the SPD until 1987, a post he had held since 1964. In this role, he repeatedly gets involved in current debates. In 1976 he was elected President of the Socialist International and shortly afterwards took over the chairmanship of the North-South Commission, of which Olof Palme was a member and which was convened at the instigation of World Bank President Robert McNamara. In these offices, the cosmopolitan Brandt pursues foreign and world politics, in which he uses and implements his contacts and experiences from the times before his chancellorship and the personal ideas of a world politics based on his emigration.

German-German border opening

He made one of his last major public appearances on November 10, 1989 on the balcony of Schöneberg's town hall, where, looking at the result of his life's work, he stated that "what belongs together grows together". His policy of rapprochement and change has undoubtedly also contributed to his being able to live through this moment.

After a serious illness, Willy Brandt died on October 8, 1992 in his home town of Unkel in Rhineland-Palatinate. More than 1,500 guests from Germany and abroad took part in the funeral service in the Berlin Reichstag on October 17. Brandt finds his final resting place in the forest cemetery in Berlin-Zehlendorf. In his hometown of Lübeck, the Willy Brandt House commemorates the great politician.

Willy Brandt House Berlin

The Willy-Brandt-Haus in Berlin-Kreuzberg has been the SPD party headquarters since 1999. In 1992, the party bought the corner property Wilhelmstraße/Stresemannstraße and had a new building built there. It was inaugurated in 1996 and given the name of the honorary chairman of the SPD. With the Willy Brandt House, the SPD, which had previously had its headquarters in Bonn and in exile during the Nazi regime, returned to Berlin. The party had its headquarters there from 1890 to 1933. The Willy-Brandt-Haus is not only the headquarters of the SPD, but also an open house that invites you to events, exhibitions and regular tours. A modern Brandt sculpture by the artist Rainer Fetting stands in the atrium.