substitute father

For him Willy Brandt’s grandfather is a substitute father. Willy Brandt does not learn the name of his biological father, the bookkeeper John Möller from Hamburg, until after the Second World War.
Brandt says about his mother on the day of her burial (August 8, 1969): ”My mother was a very simple, straightforward and conscientious woman with a firm will and a joyful heart. Along the way she gave me decency, a sense of duty and charity. Countless mothers have done and do this each day. I honor the many when I talk about the one.”
Brandt describes his grandfather as a ”simple, conscientious man and good story teller”. To his grandfather socialism is more than a political program: ”For him it was a kind of religion.”
Ill and in despair, Ludwig Frahm, born in 1875, takes his own life in 1934, a year after the national socialist seizure of power and the forced exile of his grandson.