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Kompass

Thinkers and political figures

Photographic portrait of Willy Brandt.

Portrait: Bundesarchiv, via Wikimedia Commons (opens in a new tab) · Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Germany

Willy Brandt

Country
West Germany
Era
1913–1992
Tradition
Social democracy

Resistance exile who became chancellor and transformed West German foreign policy through Ostpolitik — opening relations with the East and kneeling at the Warsaw Ghetto memorial in an unscripted act of atonement.

01

Documented positions

Documented positions come from the sources listed. Similarity is this project’s inference from those positions, and is a much weaker claim.

  • Pursued Ostpolitik, normalising relations with the Soviet Union, Poland and East Germany
  • Recognised the Oder–Neisse line as Poland’s western border, abandoning German claims to lost territory
  • Knelt at the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising memorial in 1970 in an unplanned gesture of penance
  • Expanded the welfare state, raised pensions, and lowered the voting age to eighteen
  • Extended codetermination, giving workers representation on company supervisory boards
  • Chaired the Brandt Commission, arguing that rich countries had obligations of development to poor ones
  • Introduced the Radikalenerlass barring political radicals from public employment, which he later regretted
02

Where it sits on each dimension

Wealth and inequality

26

Evidence: Well documented

The state in the economy

34

Evidence: Well documented

Personal liberty

66

Evidence: Documented

Tradition and change

78

Evidence: Well documented

Nation and the world

18

Evidence: Well documented

Power and its limits

78

Evidence: Well documented

Dimensions left unscored, for want of evidence: Religion and the state, Environment and growth, Crime and punishment

Sources

  • Willy Brandt, My Life in Politics · 1992
  • Peter Merseburger, Willy Brandt: Visionär und Realist · DVA · 2002

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