Willy Brandt – Stations in his political life
Anti-Nazi, exile in Scandinavia, Governing Mayor, Foreign Minister, Federal Chancellor, Nobel Peace Prize laureate, SPD chairman and President of the Socialist International. The most important dates in Willy Brandt’s life and career:
| 18 December 1913 | Birth in Lübeck |
| 1930 | Joining the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) |
| 1931 | Change to the Socialist Workers‘ Party of Germany (SAPD) |
| 1932 | University entrance diploma from Lübeck’s Johanneum Reform Secondary School |
| 1933–1945 | Resistance against the Nazi regime |
| 1933–1940 | Exile in Norway; establishment of an SAPD base of operations in Oslo and participation in the Norwegian workers’ movement |
| 1936 | Disguised stay in Berlin |
| 1937 | Observer in the Spanish Civil War |
| 1938 | Deprivation of German citizenship by Nazi authorities |
| 1940 | Short term prisoner of war, escape to Sweden and acquisition of Norwegian citizenship |
| 1940–1945 | Exile in Sweden; journalist and secretary of the “International Group of Democratic Socialists” (“Little International”) in Stockholm |
| 1944 | Re-entry into the SPD |
| 1945/1946 | Press reporter at the Allied Trial of the major war criminals of the “Third Reich” in Nuremberg |
| 1947 | Press attaché at the Norwegian Military Mission in Berlin |
| 1948 | Representative of the SPD party executive committee at Allied Headquarters in Berlin and repatriation in Germany |
| 1949–1957 | Berlin representative in the German Bundestag in Bonn |
| 1955–1957 | President of Berlin’s House of Representatives |
| 1957–1966 | Governing Mayor of Berlin |
| 1961/1965 | SPD’s Chancellor candidate |
| 1964–1987 | Chairman of the SPD |
| 1966–1969 | Foreign Minister and Vice Chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany in the Grand Coalition of CDU/CSU and SPD in Bonn |
| 21 October 1969– 6 May 1974 |
Chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany in the social-liberal coalition of SPD and FDP in Bonn |
| 1969–1992 | Member of the German Bundestag |
| 7 December 1970 | Genuflection at the Ghetto Memorial in Warsaw |
| 1971 | Nobel Peace Prize Laureate |
| 1976–1992 | President of the Socialist International |
| 1977–1984 | Chairman of the North-South Commission |
| 1979–1983 | Member of the European Parliament |
| 1987–1992 | Honorary chairman of the SPD |
| 8 October 1992 | Death in Unkel near Bonn |