Willy Brandt

Willy Brandt married Anna Carlotta Thorkildsen in 1941 and the couple had a daughter named Ninja Brandt. They got divorced in 1948.

He married Rut Hansen in 1948 and had three sons: Peter, Lars and Matthias from the marriage. They got divorced in 1980 after 32 years of marriage.

His third marriage was to Brigitte Seebacher in 1983 and lasted till his death in 1992.

Willy Brandt was born as Herbert Ernst Carl Frahm on December 18, 1913 in Lubeck to an unwed mother, Martha Frahm, who worked as a cashier for a departmental store. He never met his father, John Moller.

Having lived a poverty-stricken childhood, he understood the necessity of bringing about drastic changes in the society and eventually became a member of the Socialist Youth (1929), the Socialist Democratic Party (1930) and the more left-wing Socialist Workers Party.

He passed his matriculation examination at the Johanneum zu Lübeck in 1932. In 1933, he fled to Norway to escape from being arrested by the gestapo (Official secret police of the Nazi Germany).

In Norway he adopted the pseudonym of Willey Brandt and ventured into journalism. In 1934, he helped in establishing the International Bureau of Revolutionary Youth Organisations return was elected to its secretariat.

In 1937, he reported as a journalist in the Spanish Civil War. Back home the German government revoked his citizenship in 1938 and he had to apply for a Norwegian citizenship. He became a Norwegian citizen in 1940; by this time he was well versed in Norwegian and Swedish languages.

In 1946, Willy Brandt returned to Berlin as a Norwegian government employee and two years later joined the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SDP). He also adopted the pseudonym “Willy Brandt” legally and became a German citizen again.

In 1957, he was elected as the Governing Mayor of Berlin (1957–66) and the president of the Bundesrat (legislative body representing the 16 federal states of Germany at national level) in Bonn.

He became the Chairman of the SDP in 1964 but lost the chancellorship election of 1961 to Konrad Adenauer and in 1965 to Ludwig Erhard. But Erhard's government proved to be unstable and short-lived.

In 1966, the SDP and Christian Democratic Union of Germany (CDU) formed a coalition government and Brandt was appointed as the Vice-Chancellor and the Foreign Minister.

In the 1969 chancellorship elections the SDP showed improved results and formed a coalition government with the Free Democratic Party of Germany (FDP). Brandt was the lead candidate before the elections and thus was elected as the Chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany.

Willy Brandt received much acclaim for his successful efforts in negotiating a peace treaty with Poland, parallel treaties and agreements with Czechoslovakia, and his policy of rapprochement with East Germany.