Prize for a German Peacemaker

IN the midst of a heated debate about West Germany's budget one afternoon last week, Bundestag President Kai-Uwe von Hassel suddenly clanged his hand bell and the packed parliament fell silent. A moment later, its members broke into thunderous applause, and deputies on both sides of the aisle rose in a standing ovation. Von Hassel had just announced that Chancellor Willy Brandt was the winner of the 1971 Nobel Peace Prize. Greatly moved, Brandt told the Bundestag that he would do everything "to make myself worthy of this honor."

Brandt, 57, is only the third head of government to win the world's highest humanitarian award.* The five-member Nobel Committee of the Norwegian Parliament, which selects the recipient, cited his efforts on behalf of the 1968 nuclear nonproliferation treaty, his signing of nonaggression treaties with Poland and the Soviet Union last year, and his moves toward easing tensions in divided Berlin. "Chancellor Brandt," said the committee's citation, "has stretched his hand forward in a policy of reconciliation between old enemies. He has made an outstanding effort to establish conditions for peace in Europe."

The award did not come as a total surprise to the former West Berlin mayor who became West Germany's first Social Democratic Chancellor in 1969. As rumors grew that he was a leading contender, Brandt privately urged that Jean Monnet, the French architect of the Common Market, be honored instead. Though relations between West Germany and Eastern Europe have greatly improved, Brandt regards his policy of reconciliation as only half begun, and he has a point. The Bundestag, where his party has only a slim majority, has not yet ratified the nonaggression pacts with Warsaw and Moscow. Franz Josef Strauss, a power in the opposition Bavarian Christian Social Union, urged only last week that Brandt abandon his Ostpolitik and "return things to where they were."

When Brandt accepts the award and its $87,000 cash dividend in Oslo on Dec. 10, the stage will be set for a thoroughly nostalgic scene. As a young journalist who had actively opposed Hitler, Brandt fled to Norway in 1933, became a citizen and later fought the Nazi invaders as a Norwegian major. He will deliver his acceptance speech in Norwegian--"My first language," as he is fond of saying. At his side will be his Norwegian-born wife, Rut.

* The other two were both U.S. Presidents: Theodore Roosevelt in 1906 for the Treaty of Portsmouth ending the Russo-Japanese War, and Woodrow Wilson in 1919 for helping to establish the League of Nations. Other statesmen have won, but not while in office.

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