Saturday, December 14, 2013

SPD result four days before Brandt's 100th birthday

The SPD membership decides to enter government with the CDU/CSU.

Over 77 per cent of the 470,000 members voted in the ballot of which 75 per cent voted for coalition.

The result is announced four days before the 100th birthday of the party's most honoured person, Willy Brandt, who was born in Lübeck on December 18, 1913.

Brandt was German Chancellor, recognised the GDR, made that famous kneeling gesture in Warsaw. He left Germany before the Nazis could kill him. For that many in post war Germany quietly considered him a traitor. In the 1970s many in in the Catholic Church, especially priests, were sceptical of Brandt and felt he was a 'silent Communist'.

His downfall. An affair and the Stasi.

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