The West German politician Egon Bahr (born 1922) made significant contributions to the lessening of tensions between the German Democratic Republic and the Federal Republic of Germany, which eventually led to the crumbling of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and reunification a year later.

Egon Bahr is a typical representative of the generation of Social Democratic leaders who rose to prominence in West Germany in the years immediately following World War II. Like Willy Brandt, his long-time mentor and associate, Bahr was too young to have been active in the politics of the Weimar Republic.

Bahr was born on March 18, 1922, in the small Thuringian town of Treffurt. After obtaining his high school diploma (Abitur), he was immediately drafted first into the compulsory labor service in Nazi Germany and later into the Wehrmacht. He served in the German army from 1942 to 1944, when he was dismissed because of his Jewish heritage. (Under...