It was an emotional return to the country that had offered him refuge during the Nazi era and that is now celebrating him. Deeply moved, Willy Brandt accepted the Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo on December 10, 1971, from the hands of a former colleague of all people. Aase Lionæs, the chairwoman of the Nobel Prize Committee, had met Brandt during his time in exile in Norway (from 1933), they had been active together in the labor movement – and you can feel the old familiarity, but also the force of the moment in both of them when you are fifty Years later viewed the moving images from the award ceremony.
Only three Germans had received the Nobel Peace Prize before Brandt: Gustav Stresemann, who, as Foreign Minister in the Weimar Republic, sought a compromise with his European neighbors; the writer and historian Ludwig Quidde for his commitment to world peace; and the journalist, writer and pacifist Carl von Ossietzky, who died in 1938 as a result of his abuse in the concentration camp. For the honor of Ossietzky, who received the award in absentia in 1936, Willy Brandt had made a decisive contribution in Norway; the success of his campaign was a triumph of the peace movement and a blow against the Nazis.
For Brandt, the award for his Ostpolitik had a very personal dimension
The fact that Brandt now received the Nobel Prize as German Chancellor for his new Ostpolitik therefore also had a very personal dimension. For him a circle came full circle on December 10, 1971 in Oslo. Even later he was aware of the meaning: “To have helped to bring the German name, the concept of peace and the prospect of European freedom together is the real satisfaction of my life”, he wrote in 1989 in his “Memories”.
In the justification of the Nobel Prize Committee, it was said that Brandt, as “head of the West German government and on behalf of the German people, had reached out his hand to a policy of reconciliation between the old enemy countries”. As Foreign Minister and since 1969 as Federal Chancellor, he had already taken initiatives for political and military detente between Eastern and Western Europe. The committee explicitly mentioned the signing of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty in 1969 and the non-violence agreement with the Soviet Union. Nevertheless, at the time of the Nobel Prize award, Brandt was far from reaching his goal; the difficult ratification of the Eastern Treaty by the Bundestag only succeeded in May 1972. After all, Brandt’s policy of compromise, which his social-liberal coalition pursued, was anything but undisputed. While it was recognized internationally, it met with bitter criticism from the CDU and CSU and parts of the German public.
Brandt did not feel like a “winner” in Oslo in 1971. Rather, he spoke for all the persecuted and damned
It is against this background that Brandt’s speech to the Nobel Prize Committee must be understood – there is a feeling of relief, hope and pride in his words. Brandt knew his way around Norwegian history, he had a keen sense for the people who were listening to him, and a natural aversion to all empty phrases. That is why he quoted a sentence by the famous polar explorer and Nobel Peace Prize laureate from 1922, Fridtjof Nansen, who had campaigned for prisoners of war, refugees and the starving: “Hurry up to act before it is too late to repent”. One can relate this sentence to the peace policy of the Cold War, but it is just as easy to understand today. To encourage people to do the right thing in the pandemic and climate crisis.
In his speech, Willy Brandt also talked about the letters he received after the Nobel Prize decision became known, for example from a relative of Anne Frank, from prisons or a lady who had had a difficult life. “It reminded me of the story of the Indian boy who asks his father when they come out of the cinema: Do we never win?” Willy Brandt, the resistance fighter against Hitler who had been expatriated by the Nazis, by no means felt himself to be a “winner” in Oslo in 1971, as he said. In the country that once received him generously and now gave him one more presents, he spoke for all those who were persecuted and damned.
And the German Chancellor even allowed himself a little irony at the celebration in Oslo, at which his wife Rut Brandt, who came from Norway, was also in the audience: Alfred Nobel said when preparing his will that he would “like to help dreamers with his money, who find it difficult to assert themselves in life “. He, Willy Brandt, is not entitled to judge whether the Nobel Committee has made “the right choice” with him. Fifty years after the event, one can say: The awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize to Willy Brandt was a great stroke of luck, in every respect.