He became Chancellor of West Germany on 16 May 1974, after Brandt's resignation in the wake of an espionage scandal.

In 1972, Chancellor Willy Brandt's coalition had lost its majority in the Bundestag, so that the opposition CDU / CSU tried to do a constructive vote of no confidence, thus electing Rainer Barzel as new chancellor.

In December 1972 Chancellor Willy Brandt made Vogel Minister for Regional Planning, Building, and Urban Development ; Brandt's successor, Helmut Schmidt, made him Minister of Justice in 1974.

The introduction of West German Chancellor Willy Brandt's Ostpolitik (" Eastern Policy ") at the end of the 1960s reduced tensions between the two German states.

The Social-liberal coalition of SPD and FDP had lost its majority after several Bundestag MPs ( like former FDP ministers Erich Mende and Heinz Starke or SPD partisan Herbert Hupka ) had left their party and become members of the CDU / CSU opposition to protest against Chancellor Willy Brandt's Neue Ostpolitik, especially against the de facto recognition of the Oder-Neisse line by the 1970 Treaty of Warsaw.

Robert Lochner claimed in his memoirs that Kennedy had asked him for a translation of " I am a Berliner ", and that they practiced the phrase in Brandt's office.

However, Brandt's Neue Ostpolitik lost him a large part of the German refugee voters from East Germany, who had been significantly pro-SPD in the postwar years.

According to Helmut Schmidt, Willy Brandt's domestic reform programme had accomplished more than any previous programme for a comparable period.

For the rest of his life, Brandt remained suspicious that his fellow Social Democrat ( and longtime rival ) Herbert Wehner had been scheming for Brandt's downfall.

They also criticized flaws like the unintentional publishing of the Bahr-Papier, a paper in which Brandt's right hand Egon Bahr had agreed with Soviet diplomat Valentin Falin on essential issues.

Konrad, who became after the war a deputy of the Bundestag from 1969 to 1980 as a member of Willy Brandt's SPD, had already been indicted by the Italian justice in 1967 and 1972, but the complaints had been classified

This espionage affair is widely considered to have been just the trigger for Brandt's resignation, not the fundamental cause.

Brandt's Cormorant have been observed foraging at depths of over 40 feet.

Eva Köhler was a member of the Social Democratic Party ( SPD ) from 1972 to 1990 ( as she advocated Willy Brandt's Ostpolitik ) and participated in local politics.

Brandt's Ostpolitik as well as his reformist domestic policies were popular with parts of the young generation and led his SPD party to its best-ever federal election result in late 1972.

Brandt's successor Helmut Schmidt with East German party leader Erich Honecker, Döllnsee 1981.

The Socialist party was created under the umbrella of Willy Brandt's SPD in Bad Münstereifel, Germany, on 19 April 1973.

However, Willy Brandt's Ostpolitik was a key factor in the détente of the 1970s.

Although anxious to relieve serious hardships for divided families and to reduce friction, Brandt's Ostpolitik was intent on holding to its concept of " two German states in one German nation.

In the SPD-FDP coalition, he helped shape Brandt's policy of deescalation with the communist East, commonly known as Ostpolitik, which was continued under Helmut Schmidt after Brandt's resignation in 1974.

The unhappy king was little more than the butt of his environment, but occasionally the king would put up a show of obstinacy and refuse to carry out Brandt's or Struensee's orders.

Brandt's most important legacy was Ostpolitik, a policy aimed at improving relations with East Germany ( then German Democratic Republic ), Poland, and the Soviet Union.

In West Germany, Brandt's Neue Ostpolitik was extremely controversial, dividing the populace into two camps: one camp, embracing all of the conservative parties and most notably the victims i. e. those German-speaking, West German residents and their subsequent families who were driven west (" die Heimatvertriebenen ") by Stalinist ethnic cleansing from Historical Eastern Germany, especially the part that was arbitrarily given to Poland by the Stalinists ; western Czechoslovakia ( the Sudetenland ); and the rest of Eastern Europe, such as in Romania.

On 23 February 1972, SPD deputy Herbert Hupka, who was also leader of the Bund der Vertriebenen, joined the CDU in disagreement with Brandt's reconciliatory efforts towards the east.

The " Willy-Wahl ", Brandt's landslide win was the beginning of the end ; and Brandt's role in government started to decline.

The spirit of reformist optimism was cut short by the 1973 oil crisis and the major public services strike 1974, which gave Germany's trade unions, led by Heinz Kluncker, a big wage increase but reduced Brandt's financial leeway for further reforms.

Around 1973, West German security organizations received information that one of Brandt's personal assistants, Günter Guillaume, was a spy for the East German intelligence services.

Brandt's public statement " Now grows together what belongs together ," was widely quoted in those days.

One of Brandt's last public appearances was in flying to Baghdad, Iraq, to free Western hostages held by Saddam Hussein, following the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait in 1990.

Brandt's new Ostpolitik was a policy of negotiating with the GDR government in order to improve the situation of Germans in GDR and involved supporting visits from one part of Germany to the other.

Though anxious to relieve serious hardships for divided families and to reduce friction, West Germany under Brandt's Ostpolitik was intent on holding to its concept of " two German states in one German nation.

After the SPD was able to form a government without the conservatives, in 1969, Strauss became one of the most vocal critics of Willy Brandt's Ostpolitik.

Guillaume and East German spymaster Markus Wolf have said that Willy Brandt's downfall was not intended, and that the affair is among the Stasi's biggest mistakes.

The theory was developed in part by Brandt's student Martin Eichler.

Educated at Westminster School, he was a director of William Brandt's insurance brokers and a director of National & Grindlays Bank Ltd.

" The next event was the Susquehannock Trail rally that saw the first place winner face " a stiff challenge " from Light and Brandt's SX / 4 that captured second less than a minute later.

Both Willy Brandt's Social Democrats, who gained 22 seats in the new parliament, and the Free Democrats, who picked up 23, will insist on that before they enter the government.

It came to be used in the debate of the NATO countries in response to Willy Brandt's attempts to normalize relations with East Germany, and the following widespread scepticism in Germany against NATO's Dual-Track Decision.

Under the Hallstein Doctrine, the FRG did not have any diplomatic relations with countries in Eastern Europe until the early 1970s, when Willy Brandt's Ostpolitik led to increased dialogue and treaties like the Treaty of Warsaw, where West Germany accepted the Oder-Neisse line as German-Polish border, and the Basic Treaty, where West and East Germany accepted each other as sovereign entities.

*** Species M. brandti — Turkish hamster, also called Brandt's hamster ; Azerbaijani hamster

In Brandt's first year as Mayor, he also served as the President of the Bundesrat in Bonn.

A different camp supported and encouraged Brandt's Neue Ostpolitik as aiming at " Wandel durch Annäherung " (" change through rapprochement "), encouraging change through a policy of engagement with the ( communist ) Eastern Bloc, rather than trying to isolate those countries diplomatically and commercially.

Brandt's supporters claim that the policy did help to break down the Eastern Bloc's " siege mentality ", and also helped to increase its awareness of the contradictions in its brand of Socialism / Communism, which – together with other events – eventually led to the downfall of Eastern European Communism and Stalinism.

Brandt's Ostpolitik led to a meltdown of the narrow majority Brandt's coalition enjoyed in the Bundestag.