Federal Chancellor Willy Brandt: Light figure with dark sides

How to become a political idol? By giving a face and a voice to a movement at the right time, like Greta Thunberg. Or through decades of persistent work, such as Willy Brandt: For a whole generation, the former chancellor and longtime SPD leader, who died in 1992, is a leading figure to this day. In their deep crisis and desperate search for new leaders, older Social Democrats like to remind him. Because Brandt stood and stands not only for the most successful phase in the history of the SPD, but also for another, better, modern Germany. Also and especially abroad.

When Brandt was elected chancellor of the social-liberal coalition on October 21, 1969, the Federal Republic was in transition. The student movement and the extra-parliamentary opposition to the first grand coalition had broken the rigid conditions of Adenauer's post-war era; the economic crisis of 1967 shook the faith in a perennial recovery after reconstruction and economic miracle.

Now the country demanded change. Willy Brandt was to realize it with his new government alliance.

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He was born in Lübeck in 1913 as Herbert Frahm, illegitimate son of a saleswoman, was left socialist at a young age and adopted his code name in Norwegian exile. For a great political career, he brought everything: Brandt was a gifted orator, a man fisherman and heartthrob, he had charisma and deep political convictions.

Attacks on the "Fatherland traitor"

For some of them, who, like the writers Günter Grass and Walter Jens, campaigned for him, he was surrounded by a veritable political halo. For many millions of Germans were staunch Nazis or had adapted; In post-war Germany, some of them have again or still determined politics, economics and justice. Brandt, on the other hand, had gone into exile in 1933, on a fishing boat to Denmark and further north.

The Nazis deprived him of German citizenship in 1938, and after two years as a stateless refugee Norway inherited him. From there he coordinated the left resistance and wrote against the brown tyranny.

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After the war, as mayor of Berlin at the time of the Berlin Wall, he also embodied the will to assert himself against the communist threat from the East. And he was also a politician of a new type: the first chancellor candidate on the American model, a kind of German John F. Kennedy with the native Norwegian Rut Brandt at his side, which he had married in 1948. This modern couple sought the glitter of the public, quite unlike Konrad Adenauer, Ludwig Erhardt and Kurt-Georg Kiesinger with their wives in their shadow.

On the other hand, Brandt was always a political stimulus. Conservative to reactionary forces and the Springer press reviled him as a traitor; his time in exile was often used as a reason for personal attacks. Thus Adenauer spoke of him as "Brandt alias Frahm", also as an allusion to his non-marital birth.

"Dare more democracy"

In a similar, as today enormously polarized political climate, many in the CDU revolted that such a man repressed them from power. And they tried their best to put a quick end to his chancellorship.

Brandt, meanwhile, found support from the middle of society far into left-wing circles. "We want to risk more democracy," he announced on October 28, 1969 in the Bundestag. But his government wobbled from the beginning. In the Bundestag, the social-liberal coalition had only a slim majority of twelve seats, which quickly melted by defectors to the Union.

Herbert Wehner, faction leader and champion of the SPD, and Helmut Schmidt were against the swing to the FDP. They did not see the time yet ripe for a Social Democratic chancellor, the first since the Weimar period, and wanted to continue the coalition with the CDU / CSU. The FDP chairman Walter Scheel wrestled with strong national liberal forces under the leadership of his predecessor Erich Mende.

But Brandt had cleverly planned the change of government: as vice-chancellor under Altnazi Kiesinger, he had shown with Karl Schiller as economics minister and others that Social Democrats could govern. And together with Scheel he had Gustav Heinemann made Federal President, as heralds of the social liberal turn. As Foreign Minister, he also prepared for the Cold War's wedding together with his confidant Egon Bahr the policy of detente towards the GDR, the Soviet Union and the Eastern European states.

The prostration of Warsaw - the big gesture

It should - in addition to the internal reforms - become the hallmark and legacy of his reign: "Change through rapprochement". Brandt called the GDR no longer, like its predecessors, "Zone" and met in March 1970 as the first West German Chancellor with GDR Prime Minister Willi Stoph in Erfurt. People greeted him enthusiastically with "Willy, Willy" shouts.

Nine months later in 1970, he traveled to Warsaw to recognize the Oder-Neisse line between Poland and Germany. He used the sacred anger of the exiles. A photo went around the world: Willy Brandt in a long coat kneeling before the memorial for the victims of the uprising in the Jewish ghetto. This gesture of humility as a symbol of reconciliation made him from Chancellor to statesman. In 1971, Brandt received the Nobel Peace Prize for his policy of detente.

Willy Brandt's political heritage

The reconciler

With his Ostpolitik Willy Brandt wanted to relax the relationship with the states of the Warsaw Pact, to achieve by means of "change through rapprochement" concrete improvements for the people in the GDR. His confidant Egon Bahr negotiated contracts with Moscow, Warsaw, Prague and East Berlin. The Union, however, saw it as a recognition of the GDR. A transit agreement initially regulated access to and from West Berlin. In 1971, the Basic Treaty placed the relationship between the two German states on an international legal basis for the first time - with permanent representations in both capitals.

The reformer

Above all, "risking more democracy" meant more equal opportunities and more freedom for Brandt. The SPD / FDP government reformed the social and educational systems, criminal law, housing and urban planning and transport policy. For example, since 1971 the Federal Education Assistance Act (Bafög) has ensured that children from poorer families can also study. For women, the principle of equality of the Basic Law was for the first time specified by law. The abortion law was liberalized, the deadline solution introduced, and the Gay Paragraph 175 alleviated, which until then had criminalized same-sex relationships. In criminal law, the basic idea of ​​resocialization was introduced. Employees received more rights of participation. In Brandt's reign, however, also the radical decree fell, with occupational bans for actual or supposed enemies of the Constitution. He poisoned the domestic political climate and was only repealed much later.

The internationalist and peacemaker

Following his resignation, Brandt remained SPD chairman and became head of the Socialist International and the North-South Commission, which advocated a fairer world trade and a balance between the rich industrial nations and the Third World countries. In the dispute over the NATO retrofitting he became a leading figure in the peace movement and the opponent Helmut Schmidt. After the fall of the Wall Brandt announced: "Now grow together, what belongs together." He saw the German unification as many historians as a late success of his detente policy. However, he had called her a year earlier as a "life lie". Brandt campaigned energetically for the government relocation from Bonn to Berlin.

However, it took great effort to bring the eastern treaties with Moscow, East Berlin, Warsaw and Prague against fierce resistance from the opposition and concerns about Western partners through the Bundestag. The political battle led dramatically in an attempt to overthrow it by a constructive vote of no confidence - and ended with Brandt's success: his opponent Rainer Barzel of the CDU surprisingly lacked two votes; As it turned out later, the Stasi had bought it.

Brandt now gained tailwind. The number of party members grew and grew, to more than one million. In the new election in September 1972, the SPD with 45.8 percent of the vote for the first time strongest party, a result of which the Social Democrats can not even dream now. A brilliant personal triumph for Brandt and, in addition to the Nobel Peace Prize, a clear confirmation of his policy.

"Willy, we have to govern"

However, Willy Brandt also had other sides. In spite of all the splendor and admiration, he remained basically a lonely, sensitive person, shaped by the experiences of exile. As his close companions described, he was sometimes surrounded by a great melancholy. Again and again he sank into depression, retired, lay in bed for days - unthinkable today. His Chancellery head Horst Ehmke then brought him back with a bottle of red wine and the legendary saying: "Willy, we have to govern."

Matthias Brandt, his youngest son and successful actor, later described in interviews what a depressed mood prevailed in the family home. With a father, who was practically never present for him and his brother Peter and who constantly cheated on her mother with other women.

At times, Brandt was a determined, skilled fighter. Then again he let things grind. Herbert Wehner, his anti-Party opponent, etched from Moscow: "The Lord loves to swim." And urged him in the Guillaume affair in 1974 to resign - just a disappointed Stasi spy brought him to case. Brandt looked worn down and sad; Helmut Schmidt became his successor.

In other ways, however, the Brandt era continued, in the Socialist International, as party leader until 1987, as a parliamentarian. He saw the fall of the wall ("Now grows together, what belongs together") and saw him, like many historians, as the late success of his policy of detente.

In the last years before his death on October 8, 1992, his second wife Brigitte Seebacher shielded him from close followers and seized his political legacy, much like the widow of Helmut Kohl. It was the last drama in a very moving and moving life.