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Willy Brandt

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Willy Brandt
4th Chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany
In office
October 21, 1969 – May 7, 1974
PresidentGustav Heinemann
Preceded byKurt Georg Kiesinger
Succeeded byHelmut Schmidt
9th President of the Bundesrat
In office
1957–1958
PresidentTheodor Heuss
Preceded byKurt Sieveking
Succeeded byWilhelm Kaisen
5th Vice-Chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany
In office
December 1, 1966 – October 21, 1969
Preceded byHans-Christoph Seebohm
Succeeded byWalter Scheel
4th Federal Minister of Foreign Affairs
In office
December 1, 1966 – October 20, 1969
Preceded byGerhard Schröder
Succeeded byWalter Scheel
4th Mayor of West Berlin
In office
1957–1966
Preceded byOtto Suhr
Succeeded byHeinrich Albertz
Personal details
Born(1913-12-18)December 18, 1913
DiedOctober 8, 1992(1992-10-08) (aged 78)
Political partySPD
OccupationWorker, Journalist, Lecturer, Activist

Willy Brandt, born Herbert Ernst Karl Frahm (December 18, 1913 - October 8, 1992), was a German politician, Chancellor of West Germany 1969 – 1974, and leader of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) 1964 – 1987.

His most important legacy is the Ostpolitik, a policy aimed at improving relations with East Germany, Poland, and the Soviet Union. This policy caused considerable controversy in West Germany, but won Brandt the Nobel Peace Prize in 1971.

Brandt was forced to resign as Chancellor in 1974 after it became known that one of his closest aides had been working for the East German secret service sometimes called the Stasi. This became one of the biggest political scandals in postwar West German history.

Early life, the war

Willy Brandt was born Herbert Ernst Karl Frahm in Lübeck, Germany to Martha Frahm, an unwed mother who worked as a cashier for a department store. His father was an accountant from Hamburg by the name of John Möller, whom Brandt never met. As his mother was working six days a week he was mainly brought up by his mother's stepfather Ludwig Frahm and his second wife Dora.

After passing his Abitur in 1932 at Johanneum zu Lübeck he became an apprentice at the shipbroker and ship's agent F.H. Bertling. He joined the "Socialist Youth" in 1929 and the Social Democratic Party (SPD) in 1930. He left the SPD to join the more left wing Socialist Workers Party (SAP), which was allied to the POUM in Spain and the ILP in Britain. In 1933, using his connections with the port and its ships from the time he had been apprentice, he left Germany for Norway on a ship to escape Nazi persecution. It was at this time that he adopted the pseudonym Willy Brandt to avoid detection by Nazi agents. In 1934, he took part in the founding of the International Bureau of Revolutionary Youth Organizations, and was elected to its Secretariat.

Brandt visited Germany from September to December 1936, disguised as a Norwegian student named Gunnar Gaasland. Gaasland was married to Gertrud Meyer from Lübeck who had joined Brandt to Norway in July 1933. In 1937, during the Civil War, he worked in Spain as a journalist. In 1938, the German government revoked his citizenship, so he applied for Norwegian citizenship. In 1940, he was arrested in Norway by occupying German forces, but he was not identified because he wore a Norwegian uniform. On his release, he escaped to neutral Sweden. In August 1940, he became a Norwegian citizen, receiving his passport from the Norwegian embassy in Stockholm, where he lived until the end of the war. Willy Brandt returned to Sweden to lecture on 1 December, 1940 at Bommersvik college about the problems experienced by the social democrats in Nazi Germany and the occupied countries at the start of World War II.

Mayor of West Berlin, Foreign Minister of West Germany

Brandt with President John F. Kennedy, March 1961.

In 1945 Brandt returned to Germany as a journalist for a Scandinavian newspaper reporting on the Nuremberg Trials. In late 1946, Brandt returned to Berlin, working for the Norwegian government.

In 1948, he joined the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) in Berlin. He became a German citizen again and formally adopted his pseudonym as his legal name.

Outspoken against the Soviet repression of the 1956 Hungarian Revolution and against Khrushchev's 1958 proposal that Berlin receive the status of a "free city", he was considered to belong to the right wing of his party, an assessment that would later change.

Brandt was supported by the powerful publisher Axel Springer. From October 3 1957 to 1966, he was Mayor of West Berlin, a particularly stressful time for the city with both the Berlin-Ultimatum (1958) and the construction of the Berlin Wall 1961. Brandt received increasing popularity well beyond Berlin.

During his first year as Governing Mayor he served as President of the Bundesrat.

Brandt became chairman of the SPD in 1964, a post he retained until 1987, longer than any other chairman in the history of his party after founder August Bebel.

Brandt was the SPD candidate for Chancellor in 1961, but lost to Konrad Adenauer's conservative CDU. In 1965, he ran again, and lost to the popular Ludwig Erhard. But Erhard's government was short-lived, and, in 1966, a grand coalition between the SPD and CDU was formed; Brandt became foreign minister and vice chancellor.

Chancellor of West Germany

After the elections of 1969, again with Brandt as lead candidate, the SPD became stronger and after three weeks of negotiation formed a coalition government with the smaller liberal Free Democratic Party of Germany (FDP). Brandt was elected Chancellor. He proposed more democracy and more democracies to solve certain problems.

Foreign policy

File:Willy Brandt Time.jpg
Brandt was named TIME magazine's Person of the Year for 1970.

As chancellor, Brandt gained more scope to develop his Ostpolitik. He was active in creating a degree of rapprochement with East Germany and in improving relations with the Soviet Union, Poland and other Eastern Bloc countries.

A seminal moment came in December 1970 with the famous Warschauer Kniefall in which Brandt, apparently spontaneously, knelt down at the monument to victims of Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. The uprising occurred during the military occupation of Poland and the monument is to those killed by German troops who suppressed the uprising and deported remaining ghetto residents to concentration camps.

Time (magazine) named Brandt Man of the Year for 1970 stating, "Willy Brandt is in effect seeking to end World War II by bringing about a fresh relationship between East and West. He is trying to accept the real situation in Europe, which has lasted for 25 years, but he is also trying to bring about a new reality in his bold approach to the Soviet Union and the East bloc."[1]

In 1971, Brandt received the Nobel Peace Prize for his work in improving relations with East Germany, Poland and the Soviet Union.

In West Germany, Brandt's Ostpolitik was extremely controversial, dividing the populace into two camps: one side, most notably the victims of Stalinist ethnic cleansing from Historical Eastern Germany and Eastern Europe, loudly voiced their opposition, calling the policy "illegal" and "high treason", while others applauded Brandt's move as aiming at "Wandel durch Annäherung" ("change through rapprochement", i.e., encouraging change through a policy of engagement rather than isolation). Supporters of Brandt claim his Ostpolitik did help to break down the Eastern Bloc's siege mentality and increase the awareness of the contradictions in their brand of Socialism, which – together with other events – eventually led to its downfall. The Ostpolitik was strongly opposed by the conservative parties and many social democrats as well.

Willy Brandt, Richard Nixon

Domestic policies

Political and social changes of the 1960s

West Germany in the late 1960s was shaken by student disturbances and a general 'change of the times' that not all Germans were willing to accept or approve. What had seemed a stable, peaceful nation, happy with its outcome of the "Wirtschaftswunder" ("economic miracle") faced the first economic turbulences. As well the German baby boomer generation wanted to come to terms with the deeply conservative, bourgeois, and demanding parent generation. The baby boomer students were the most outspoken, they accused their 'parental generation' of its Nazi past and even worse of being outdated and old-fashioned. Compared to their forebears, the 'skeptical generation', the 1968 generation was much more capricious, willing to embrace more extreme socialist ideology (Mao bibles), and public heroes (Ho Chi Minh, Che Guevara) while new and more promiscuous lifestyles came about. Students and young apprenticees could afford to stay away from home, left-wing was considered chic, as was taking part in US-style political demonstrations against US forces in Vietnam.

The Baby boomers

Brandt's predecessor, Kurt Georg Kiesinger, had been a member of the Nazi party and was an old fashioned German bourgeois and conservative intellectual. Brandt had fought the Nazis and had faced Eastern German communists during different crises in Berlin. As secretary of foreign affairs in Kiesingers Grand coalition cabinet, Brandt helped to gain further international approval for Western Germany and laid the cornerstones for the future Ostpolitik. There was a wide public opinion gap between Kiesinger and Brandt.

Kiesinger didn't come to terms with the new baby boomer lifestyles, he only registered "a shameful crowd of long-haired drop-outs who needed a bath and someone to discipline them". The students questioned the West German society in general seeking social, legal and political reforms, the unrest led as well to a renaissance of rightwing parties in some state's parliaments. Brandt however stood for a climate change and pursued a course of social, legal and political reforms. In 1969 he gained a narrow majority together with the FDP. In his first parliament speech as chancellor, Brandt claimed his political course of reforms ending the speech with his famous words, "Wir wollen mehr Demokratie wagen" (lit.: "Let's dare more democracy"). This made him, as well as the SPD, popular among most students and other young West German Baby boomers who dreamt of a country more open and more colorful than the frugal and still somewhat authoritarian state built after the war.

Crisis in 1972

The Nobel prize winning Ostpolitik of Brandt let to a domestic meltdown of the narrow majority Brandt's coalition enjoyed. In October 1972, FDP deputies Erich Mende, Heinz Starke and Siegfried Zoglmann had crossed the floor to CDU. On February 23, 1972, SPD deputy Herbert Hupka and leader of the Federation of Expellees, joined CDU in disagreement with Brandts reconciliatory efforts towards the east. On April 23, 1972 Wilhelm Helms (FDP) left his fraction and the FDP politicians Knud von Kühlmann-Stumm and Gerhard Kienbaum had declared that they would vote against Brandt and Brandt basically had lost his majority. On April 24, 1972 a vote of no confidence was proposed and it was voted three days later. Had this motion passed, Rainer Barzel would have replaced Brandt as Chancellor. To everyone's surprise, the motion failed: Rainer Barzel got only 247 votes of 260 ballots, for an absolute majority, 249 promised votes would have been necessary. There were also 10 votes against the motion and 3 invalid ballots. It was not revealed until much later that one or two members (possibly Julius Steiner, Ingeborg Geisendörfer or Leo Wagner) of the CDU/CSU had been paid off by the Stasi of East Germany to vote for Brandt.

Preliminaries of the second term

Though Brandt had remained Chancellor, he had lost his majority. Subsequent iniatives in parliament, most notably on the budget, failed. Because of this stalemate, the Bundestag was dissolved and new elections were called. During the 1972 campaign, many popular West German artists, intellectuals, writers, actors and professors supported Brandt and the SPD. Among them were Günter Grass, Walter Jens, and even the football (soccer) player Paul Breitner. Public endorsements of the SPD via advertisements and, more recently, internet pages have become a widespread phenomenon since then. Brandt's Ostpolitik as well as his reformist domestic policies were popular with parts of the young generation and led his SPD party to its best-ever federal election result in late 1972. The "Willy-Wahl", Brandts landslide win marked as well the start of decline of Brandts role in government.

Many of Brandt's reforms met the resistance of state governments (dominated by CDU/CSU). The spirit of reformist optimism was cut short by the 1973 oil crisis and the major public services strike 1974, which gained Germanies trade unions lead by Heinz Kluncker a big wage plus but reduced Brandts financial leeway for further reforms. Brandt was said to be more a dreamer than a manager and was personally haunted by depressions. To counter any notions about being sympathetic to Communism or soft on left-wing extremists, Brandt implemented tough legislation that barred "radicals" from public service ("Radikalenerlass").

The Guillaume affair and Brandt's resignation

Main article: Guillaume Affair

Around 1973, West German security organizations received information that one of Brandt's personal assistants, Günter Guillaume, was a spy for the East German state. Brandt was asked to continue work as usual, and he agreed, even taking a private vacation with Guillaume. Guillaume was arrested on April 24, 1974, and the West German government blamed Brandt for having a spy in his party. At the same time, some revelations about Brandt's private life (he had had some short-lived affairs) appeared in newspapers. Brandt contemplated suicide and even drafted a suicide note. He chose instead to accept responsibility for Guillaume, and resigned on May 7, 1974.

Guillaume had been a spy for East Germany, supervised by Markus Wolf, head of the Main Intelligence Administration of the East German Ministry for State Security. Wolf stated after the reunification that the resignation of Brandt had never been intended, and that the affair had been one of the biggest mistakes of the East German secret service. This was led 1957-1989 by Erich Mielke, an old follower of Stalin and Beria.

Brandt was succeeded as Chancellor by his fellow Social Democrat Helmut Schmidt. For the rest of his life, Brandt remained suspicious that the other fellow social democrat and longtime rival Herbert Wehner belonging to the first Troika had been scheming for his downfall, but evidence for this seems scant.

Later life

Statue of Willy Brandt in Willy Brandts Park, Stockholm 2007.

After his term as Chancellor, Brandt remained head of his party, the SPD, until 1987 and retained his seat in the Bundestag. Brandt was head of the Socialist International from 1976 to 1992, which he called a worldparty of peace, working to enlarge that organization beyond the borders of Europe. In 1977, he was appointed chair of the Independent Commission for International Developmental Issues, which produced a report, in 1980, calling for drastic changes in the world's attitude to development in the Third World. This became known as the Brandt Report.

In October 1979 he met the dissident Rudolf Bahro, who had written The Alternative, he and his supporters were attacked by the state security (Stasi)/Erich Mielke for that, the theoretical foundation of a left opposition to the ruling parties, promoting new and changed parties, what is now discussed as "change from within". Brandt had asked for Bahros release and welcomed his theories, the debate as interesting and fruitful for the own movement, party.

In late 1989, Brandt became one of the first leftist leaders in West Germany to publicly favour reunification over some sort of two-state federation. His public statement "Now grows together what belongs together" was much quoted in those days.

One of Brandt's last public appearances was flying to Baghdad, to free Western hostages held by Saddam Hussein, after the invasion of Kuwait in 1990. On November 9 1990 he landed with 174 freed hostages in New York.[2] He died of colon cancer at his home in Unkel, a town on the Rhine, and was given a state funeral. He was buried at the cemetery at Zehlendorf in Berlin.

Brandt was a member of the European Parliament from 1979 to 1983, and Honorary Chairman of the SPD from 1987 until his death in 1992. When the SPD moved its headquarters from Bonn back to Berlin in the mid-1990s, the new headquarters was named the "Willy Brandt Haus".

As a somewhat remarkable memorial, the private German language secondary school in Warsaw is named after Willy Brandt.

Family

From 1941 until 1948 Brandt was married to Anna Carlotta Thorkildsen (daughter of a Norwegian father and a German-American mother). They had a daughter, Nina (born 1940). After Brandt and Thorkildsen were divorced in 1946, he married the Norwegian Rut Hansen in 1948. Hansen and Brandt had three sons: Peter (born 1948), Lars (born 1951) and Matthias (born 1961). Today Peter is a historian, Lars is a painter and Matthias is an actor. After 32 years of marriage, Brandt was divorced from Rut in 1980 and from the day they were divorced they never met again. On December 9, 1983, Brandt married Brigitte Seebacher (born 1946). Rut Brandt died in Berlin on July 28, 2006.

Matthias as Günter Guillaume

In 2003, Matthias Brandt took the part of Guillaume in the film Im Schatten der Macht (lit.: In the Shadow of Power) by German filmmaker Oliver Storz. The film deals with the Guillaume-affair and Brandt's resignation. Matthias Brandt caused a minor controversy in Germany when it was publicized that he would take the part of the man who betrayed his father and made him resign in 1974. Earlier that year - when the Brandts and the Guillaumes took a vacation to Norway together - it was Matthias, then twelve years old, who was the first to discover that Guillaume and his wife 'were typing mysterious things on typewriters the whole night through'.

Lars writing about his father

In early 2006, Lars Brandt published a biography about his father called "Andenken" ("Remembrance"). The book has been the subject of some controversy. Some see it as a loving memory of a father-son-relationship. Others label the biography a ruthless statement of a son who still thinks he had never had a father who really loved him.

Brandt's first cabinet

Changes

Selected works

  • 1960 Mein Weg nach Berlin (My Path to Berlin), autobiography
  • 1966 Draußen. Schriften während der Emigration. (Outside: Writings during the Emigration) ISBN 3-8012-1094-4
  • 1968 Friedenspolitik in Europa (The Politics of Peace in Europe)
  • 1976 Begegnungen und Einsichten 1960-1975 (Encounters and Insights 1960-1975) ISBN 3-455-08979-8
  • 1982 Links und frei. Mein Weg 1930-1950 (Left and Free: My Path 1930-1950)
  • 1986 Der organisierte Wahnsinn (Organized Lunacy)
  • 1989 Erinnerungen (Memories) ISBN 3-549-07353-4

2002f, Berliner Ausgabe, Werkauswahl, ed. for Bundeskanzler Willy Brandt Stiftung by Helga Grebing, Gregor Schöllgen and Heinrich August Winkler, 10 volumes, Dietz Verlag, Bonn 2002f, Collected Writings, ISBN 3-8012-0305-0

Biographies

  • Template:De icon Lars Brandt, Andenken (ISBN 3-446-20710-4)
  • Template:De icon Peter Merseburger, Willy Brandt (ISBN 3-421-05328-6)
  • Barbara Marshall, Willy Brandt, A Political Biography (ISBN 0-312-16438-6)
  • Template:It icon Nestore di Meola, Willy Brandt raccontato da Klaus Lindenberg (ISBN 88-7284-712-5)

References

  1. ^ "Willy Brandt", Time Magazine, 4 Jan. 1971, online archive accessed 11 July 2007
  2. ^ "Mideast Tensions", The New York Times, 9 Nov. 1990, [1] accessed 03 January 2008
Preceded by Mayor of Berlin
1957-1966 		Succeeded by
Preceded by Chairman of the Social Democratic Party of Germany
1964-1987 		Succeeded by
Preceded by Minister of Foreign Affairs
1966-1969 		Succeeded by
Preceded by Chancellor of Germany
1969-1974 		Succeeded by
Preceded by President of the Socialist International
1976-1992 		Succeeded by
Preceded by Vice Chancellor of Germany
1966-1969 		Succeeded by

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