Willy Brandt

by Barbara Marshall

Willy Brandt rose from humble beginnings as the illegitimate son of a nineteen-year-old sales assistant to the position of being the first Social Democratic Chancellor of West Germany (1969-74). He was the most charismatic German leader since Hitler. His life reflects 20th-century German history from the Weimar Republic. Nazi Germany, the rise of the Federal Republic from a defeated nation to a leading position in Europe and the world after the Second World War to the emergence of a new Germany as a result of unification with the GDR. He was Mayor of Berlin when the Wall was built (1961) and as Chancellor he initiated Ostpolitik, which established links with the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe and indirectly contributed to the fall of the Iron Curtain. As Chairman of the North-South Commission he drew the world's attention to the plight of the Third World. He won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1991.