7.2C Willy Brandt (SPD) 1969-74

    Cards (21)

    • 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