Willy Brandt

Willy Brandt, born Herbert Ernst Karl Frahm on December 18, 1913, led the Social Democratic Party of Germany from 1964 to 1987 and served as Chancellor of West Germany from October 22, 1969, to May 7, 1974. As chancellor he launched Ostpolitik, a new eastern policy aimed at improving relations with East Germany, the Soviet Union and Poland, signing the Treaty of Moscow and the Treaty of Warsaw in 1970 and reaching the Basic Treaty with East Germany in 1972; in 1970 he made the widely remembered spontaneous gesture of kneeling at a memorial to the Warsaw Ghetto, an act remembered as the Kniefall von Warschau. He was awarded the 1971 Nobel Peace Prize for strengthening cooperation in Western Europe through the European Economic Community and for reconciliation between West Germany and Eastern Europe, and resigned in May 1974 after one of his closest aides, Gunter Guillaume, was exposed as an East German Stasi agent. He died on October 8, 1992, at the age of 78.