Ernst Reuter and Willy Brandt

On January 1, 1948, Willy Brandt assumes the office of "delegate of the SPD party committee to the Allied Control Council". He is responsible for contacts between the party committee, which at the time is still located in Hannover, the Berlin SPD unit, and representatives of the Allied Control authorities. In the same year Brandt enters into his second marriage to the Norwegian Rut Hansen, who had accompanied him to Berlin as his secretary. Their first son, Peter Brandt, is born in October 1948.

Ernst Reuter and Willy Brandt © Willy-Brandt-Archiv

Willy Brandt becomes one of the closest confidants of West Berlin Lord Mayor Ernst Reuter. The two politicians work closely together. They see eye to eye that the greatest threats to the freedom of Europe lie in the expansionist foreign policy of the USSR and in communism. The pressures exerted by the Soviets against West Berlin reinforce Reuter and Brandt in their conviction that preservation of freedom in West Germany requires close collaboration with the Western protective powers. In this position, Brandt and Reuter stand in opposition to the policies of Kurt Schumacher. The Chairman of the SPD wants to avoid any step that would cast Germany's partition in concrete. Schumacher therefore categorically rejects the integration of the Federal Republic of Germany into the Western alliance system advocated by Federal Chancellor Konrad Adenauer.

In regard to the future orientation of the SPD, Brandt and Reuter advocate a course of reform, which the Party officially adopts at the end of the 1950s. They propose that the Party transform itself from a workers' party into a people's party, in order that members of the middle class (e.g. white-collar employees and teachers) might be enabled to vote for the Party's ticket.

During the Berlin Blockade 1948/49, Ernst Reuter becomes a symbol for the demand for self-determination in West Berlin. People want to preserve the basic democratic system, at least in their sector of the city. Brandt stands at Reuter's side and makes his own contribution to the fight for freedom in West Berlin as an orator and organizer of demonstrations.

In the late fall of 1949 Brandt resigns as the delegate in Berlin of the SPD Party Committee. Ernst Reuter offers him the post of Director of the Berlin Traffic Department. To Reuter's disappointment, Brandt declines. However, he is detailed as one of eight municipal delegates to the first German Bundestag (lower house of the Federal Parliament).

From 1947 to 1957 Brandt is a delegate from Berlin in the first and second German Bundestag. As a member of the "Committee for Berlin and for all-German Problems" he decisively represents the interests of the city. In order to ensure its freedom, Brandt wants to tie West Berlin more closely to the Federal Republic of Germany and he calls for the transfer of the parliament and government to the four-power city.

In December 1950 Willy Brandt is elected to the Berlin House of Delegates, where he remains a member until 1969. In 1955 to 1957 Willy Brandt heads the House as its President.

Ergebnisse der Bundestagswahl 1949
(Statistisches Bundesamt)