Willy Brandt (1913-1992) was born Herbert Frahm in Lübeck. He was Mayor of West Berlin, Minister of Foreign Affairs in Kiesinger’s grand coalition cabinet and finally chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany from 1969 to 1974. He was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1971. Having emigrated to Norway after the Nazis seized power in 1933, he returned to Germany after the war. From 1949 he was actively engaged in the German parliament for the Social Democratic Party and aimed at appeasement and easing of tension between the western and eastern European states, especially Western and Eastern Germany. From the 1960s, German writers played a central role in Brandt’s political career, especially in campaigns for the Social Democratic Party. Among them was Günter Grass whose free-spiritedness and intruding manners always intrigued Brandt.