Willy Brandt

Willy Brandt, born Herbert Frahm in Lübeck, joined the SPD in 1930 and fled the Nazis in 1933 to Norway and later Sweden, where he worked as a journalist. Returning to Germany, he became Governing Mayor of West Berlin during the building of the Wall, foreign minister in the 1966 Grand Coalition and in 1969 the first Social Democratic chancellor of the Federal Republic. He resigned in 1974 after an East German spy was discovered on his staff, taking responsibility for the affair, but led the SPD until 1987.

Supporters credit Brandt with reconciling West Germany with its eastern neighbors, laying groundwork for the later end of the Cold War, and broadening the social-liberal reform agenda at home. Conservative critics at the time argued that his eastern treaties accepted postwar borders and the East German state too readily. Others criticize the 1972 decree on radicals in public service, which barred some applicants for political reasons, and his government's handling of the Guillaume spy affair. In later years he remained an influential international voice through the North-South Commission, whose reports of 1980 and 1983 called for a new approach to global development.