A long-time leader of West Germany's liberal party, the FDP, Hans-Dietrich Genscher (born 1927) was also his country's foreign minister beginning in 1974. While firm in his support of West Germany's ties to the United States and Western Europe, Genscher's tenure in office was also marked by persistent efforts to keep Ostpolitik and detente alive.

Hans-Dietrich Genscher was born March 21, 1927, to a middle-class family in the small Saxon town of Reideburg, Germany. In the last months of World War II he was drafted into the Wehrmacht (German army). After his release as a prisoner of war, Genscher studied law and economics at the Universities of Halle and Leipzig, graduating with a law degree in 1949. As the Stalinist regime in the German Democratic Republic (GDR) became increasingly oppressive in the early 1950s, Genscher became one of the thousands of refugees who moved to West Germany. In 1952 he settled in Bremen and...