The Legacy of a "Good German"

To thousands of people in the West, Willy Brandt has been one of the truly heroic figures of the postwar world. He is still remembered by many as the fighting mayor of West Berlin. More important, though, he was a statesman-realist who was determined to confront and conquer Germany's shameful past, a Europe-minded visionary who preached unity for the Continent, and the Nobel Peace-prizewinning architect of Ostpolitik. Konrad Adenauer cemented West Germany's ties with the West, and Ludwig Erhard fashioned the economic miracle that has made the Deutsche Mark the world's most powerful currency. But it was Brandt who made peace with a hostile and suspicious East by convincing Moscow and its allies that Germans were willing to accept the fact that they had lost World War II.

Nowhere was this reality more dramatically symbolized than during Brandt's visit to Warsaw in December 1970. There he paid his respects to the memory of the 500,000 Jews from the Warsaw ghetto who were killed by German soldiers during the war. At the simple granite memorial, Brandt fell to his knees in a heartfelt act of atonement and prayer. He often said: "No people can escape from their history."

But it was not the past that concerned Brandt so much as the future. He was thoroughly committed to the dream of European unity. At the 1969 Hague meeting of the Common Market, he forcefully advocated Britain's admission to the EEC. He spoke eloquently about his belief that Europe could achieve economic integration by 1980; yet he hesitated to use Bonn's economic muscle as a political weapon, reasoning that it could revive memories of the "same old bad Germans."

Brandt himself earned a reputation as a "good German." The illegitimate son of a Luebeck shopgirl, he joined the Socialist youth organization in 1931, and was forced to leave Germany after Hitler came to power. He first came to world attention as mayor of West Berlin between 1957 and 1966. During the recurring Berlin crises, including East Germany's erection of the Wall in 1961, Brandt was the symbol of his city's determination to remain free.

Brandt established an image abroad for himself as a man of fairness and integrity, which did much to restore a sense of pride to the West German nation. In both East and West he made Germany salonfahig (socially acceptable). No longer did young German tourists in France or Holland have to pretend that they were Swedes, and no longer did the governments of Eastern Europe blame all their problems on the "revanchist West Germans." During the 1972 national election, which he won handily, Brandt chose a slogan that would have been unthinkable only a few years earlier: GERMANS! YOU CAN BE PROUD OF YOUR COUNTRY.

Paradoxically, Brandt has always seemed a greater man to the rest of the world than he did to his own people. Many Germans saw him not as a world statesman but as an erratic politician who was subject to spasms of lethargy and drink-fueled melancholy, who talked aimlessly of quitting after suffering electoral setbacks. Germans who preferred their leaders to be stark (strong) were bothered by his indecision and inability to keep his political house in order.

The Chancellor usually responded to such criticisms by shrugging his imposing shoulders and saying: "It is too late to remake Willy Brandt." By resigning suddenly last week--rather than finding a scapegoat for the spy scandal --Brandt showed that he still has no intention of remaking himself.

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