Ostpolitik= Brandt's desire to build more positive relations with the GDR coincided with a growing receptiveness in the USSR for East-West co-operation (detente)
He took the name Willy Brandt when he was forced to flee to Norway in 1932 to escape the Gestapo
1940- moved to Sweden and joined the German resistance movement
He returned to Berlin in 1945 and became mayor from 1957 until 1966
Between 1966 and 1987 he was chairman of the SPD
As Federal Chancellor from 1969 he is most remembered for his Ostpolitik towards Eastern Europe
What period was Brandt chancellor for?
1969-74
What party did Brandt represent?
SPD
Had a coalition with the SPD+FDP
Successes:
Had the common touch, hating empty rhetoric and ideological posing while Adenauer was aloof, arrogant and filled with his own self-importance
Successes:
Education: school leaving age raised to sixteen and 1979 Educational Support Law provided grants to students from poorer families for continuing higher education- established the fundamental principle that all students, whatever their background, had a legal right to adequate financial support
What year was the Educational Support Law?
1971
Successes:
Social housing budget increased by just over one-third
Successes:
Spending was a significantly increased on a range of welfare benefits- pensions rose by about 5%, sickness benefits by nearly 10%
Successes:
Modernising agenda= voting age lowered to 18 years of age, and censorship and laws against homosexuality and abortion were released
Failure- Guillame affair:
Guillame and his wife were East Berliners who came to the FRG as 'refugees'.
Joined the SPD and got a job in the chancellery in 1970.
He passed crucial documents to East Berlin and collected information while holidaying with Brandt in the summer of 1973
Sentences to 13 years in prison for espionage
Released to East Germany in 1981 in a spy exchange, where he was treated as a hero, worked as a spy trainer and published an autobiography
Evaluation:
He had promised 'risk more democracy', reform and expand education, reduce the voting age, improve the welfare state, reform family and criminal law and extend workers' rights- all of this he achieved
Evaluation:
At a time of global economic difficulties, FRG's economic performance was much better than most other industrial nations
Evaluation:
Policy of Ostpolitik and his government's economic record gave the best ever election results in 1972
Evaluation:
He styled himself as 'chancellor of domestic reform', he has been criticised for making Ostpolitik his primary focus
Evaluation:
Some have described his chancellorship as a 'shambles'- stumbling from one crisis to another with limited direction, others see Brandt as representative of a new Germany and of a new German, symbolising the transition of Germany into a new, liberal era