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
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