A social democrat who made reconciliation a politics of divided cities
After the Wall was built, he said: “The Wall must go, but until it goes, the city must live.”
Willy Brandt was a German social-democratic politician shaped by exile and resistance to the Nazi dictatorship. As Governing Mayor of West Berlin, he defended the city’s morale after the Wall was built and pressed the West to honor its responsibilities, helping popularize the name “Wall of Shame.” As chancellor, he pursued Ostpolitik and “change through rapprochement,” easing Cold War confrontation and earning the 1971 Nobel Peace Prize.
Activities and affiliations
Career Timeline
- 1933–1945Exile and resistance activist against the Nazi dictatorship
- 1948–1953SPD representative in Berlin
- 1957–1966Governing Mayor of West Berlin
- 1964–1987Chairman of the SPD
- 1966–1969Foreign Minister and Vice Chancellor
- 1969–1974Federal Chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany
- 1976–1992President of the Socialist International
Related historical events
Genuflection in Warsaw: The Symbol of Ostpolitik
On 7 December 1970, before signing the Treaty of Warsaw to normalize relations with Poland, Brandt laid a wreath at the monument to the victims of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. After adjusting the wreath's ribbon, he stepped back and, without warning, slowly knelt and remained silent for roughly thirty seconds. Neither his ministers nor the press had expected the gesture. Brandt later wrote in his memoirs: "At the abyss of German history and under the weight of millions of murdered people, I did what humans do when speech fails them."
The image became the emblem of Germany's bridge-building across the wounds of the Second World War. In West Germany at the time, reactions were divided: a Der Spiegel survey found 48 percent judged the genuflection excessive and only 41 percent appropriate, and it became entangled with the dispute over accepting the Oder–Neisse border line. Yet internationally the symbol endured, helping secure Brandt's selection as Time's Person of the Year for 1970 and his 1971 Nobel Peace Prize. In 2000 a square and monument in Warsaw were dedicated to the gesture.