The German statesman Willy Brandt (1913-1992) became the first Socialist chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany, or West Germany, in 1969.

Herbert Frahm, who later adopted the name Willy Brandt, was born in the North Sea port of Lübeck on Dec. 18, 1913, the illegitimate son of working-class parents. After a lonely and deprived childhood he found fellowship in the youth organizations of the Social Democratic party (SPD), the strongest bulwark of German democracy in the 1920s. He won a scholarship to a prestigious Lübeck gymnasium (secondary school), from which he graduated in 1932. He had joined a left-wing splinter group of the SPD strongly opposed to the rising tide of Nazi power. Thus, when Hitler came to power in 1933, he decided to change his name to Willy Brandt and flee from certain persecution. He therefore escaped the pursuit by secret police and the confinement in concentration...