Willy Brandt is grateful at the age of 76 that he lived to see the fall of the Berlin wall. The inhumane border between East and West Germany has fallen. For Willy Brandt one of his most important goals has been realized.

©William Mikkelsen

Within Germany and abroad it is recognized that it was Brandt's East and German policies, to which he committed himself as Foreign Minister and Federal Chancellor, that opened the road to détente in Europe. In the "common house of Europe" (Gorbachev) an atmosphere has been created which enabled the democratic breakthrough in the East Block countries. These changes are also preconditions for the fall of the wall.

German unity is revealed as within grasping distance. It requires only the concurrence of the four victorious powers of the Second World War. Willy Brandt is confident that the US, the USSR, Great Britain, and France will give their consent, because "no matter how great a nation's guilt, it cannot be expunged by an unending division" (Brandt).

The concurrence of the Soviet Union is less certain. It suffered the most, after Poland, from the war that was unleashed by Hitler Germany. Willy Brandt develops a friendly relationship to General Secretary Gorbachev. In an exchange of letters the two statesmen elaborate the political path to German unity. Brandt and Gorbachev agree that a reunited Germany must not endanger the security of the USSR or peace and stability in Europe.

During the process of unification Willy Brandt becomes the symbol for human integration throughout Germany. Willy Brandt elicits the attitude among citizens of the DDR that the desired unification involves more than annexation (Anschluß) by the Federal Republic. Brandt demands that people from both parts of Germany shall occupy equal positions in the reunited German State. Germans from either side (hüben wie drüben) should exchange experiences and draw benefits therefrom.

In the DDR the SPD, which was forced in 1946 to join with the KPD (Communist Party of Germany) to form the SED (Socialist Unity Party of Germany), is reestablished using for the time being the abbreviation SDP. Willy Brandt addresses the major constituent meetings of the SPD in East Germany and sets forth his basic thoughts about the process of German unification. On February 24, 1990, the first Party Conference of the SDP in the DDR elects Willy Brandt as Honorary Chairman.

In March 1990 the first free elections for parliament (the Volkskammer) take place in the DDR. The Alliance for Germany under the leadership of the CDU emerges victorious. The Alliance calls for a rapid entry of the DDR into the Federal Republic under Article 23 of the Basic Law and for the immediate introduction in East Germany of the social market economy. Against this, the SPD calls first for the drafting by representatives of West and East Germany of a constitution as the basis for unification.

Willy Brandt is disappointed in the poor showing of the SPD in the DDR parliamentary elections. According to Brandt, the SPD itself is partially responsible. The Party, as Brandt elaborates at a session of the Party leaders, was late in setting the timetable for unification of the two German states. The Alliance, on the other hand, without haggling over details called for the rapid formation of a unified state and an economic and currency union with the Federal Republic. Brandt suspected that a factor in the Alliance victory lay in the DDR voter's feeling that to "conform to Bonn" - i.e. to vote for Federal Chancellor Helmut Kohl's CDU party - would hasten receipt of the urgently needed "money from Bonn".

This also has an effect on the outcome of the first Bundestag election in reunified Germany in December 1990: Since 1982 when the Party was forced into opposition it gets the worst result in an federal election.