biography
| name: |
Brandt, Willy
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| |
originally Karl Herbert Frahm
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pronunciation:
[brant]
| sex:
| male
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| lived:
| (1913–92)
|
| biography:
| West German statesman and chancellor (1969–74), born in Lübeck, N Germany. He joined the Social Democrats at 17 and, as a fervent anti-Nazi, fled to Norway (1933), where he changed his name. In 1940 he went to Sweden, working as a journalist in support of the German and Norwegian resistance movements. In 1945 he returned to Germany, and was a member of the Bundestag (1949–57). A pro-Western, anti-Communist leader, he became Mayor of West Berlin (1957–66), achieving international renown during the Berlin Wall crisis (1961). In 1966 he led his party into a coalition government with the Christian Democrats under Kiesinger's chancellorship and, as foreign minister, instituted a policy of reconciliation between East and West Europe (Ostpolitik). He was elected chancellor in 1969, and was awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace in 1971, but was forced to resign the chancellorship following the discovery that a close aide had been an East German spy. He headed an influential international commission (the Brandt Commission) on economic development (1977–83). |
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