  |
 |
 |
|
|
|
|
||||||||||||||||
|
|
Willy Brandt (1913-92)West German leader. Born Karl Herbert Frahm on 18 December 1913 in Lübeck, he joined the German Social Democratic party in 1930, but fled to Norway when Adolf Hitler came to power and began to eradicate all left-wing opponents. He became a Norwegian national in 1938, attended university and worked as a journalist using the surname Brandt. After the German invasion of Norway in 1940, he escaped to neutral Sweden and returned to Germany in 1945, rejoining his old party and taking up his original nationality. From 1949 to 1957, he was a member of the Bundestag (parliament). Elected mayor of Berlin in 1957, Brandt became an inspiration to the city's population during the difficult years after the building of the Berlin Wall in August 1961 split the city into a Communist East and a democratic West. As West Germany's foreign minister (1966-9), he devoted his energies to ending the division of the country through his policy of Ostpolitik. In 1969, he led the Social Democratic party to its first election victory. As chancellor, he introduced a new spirit of reconciliation to East-West relations, which helped reduce Cold War tensions. He was forced to resign in 1974 when his secretary was unmasked as an East German spy. Awarded the Nobel peace prize in 1971, he remained chairman of his party until 1987. He also chaired the Brandt Commission (1977-83), which produced the highly influential report North-South: A programme for survival on world poverty and inequality. He died on 8 October 1992, having witnessed the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and German reunification on 3 October 1990. |
|
