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That was one of the themes of his unsuccessful 1965 campaign for the chancellorship. "There will never be any real peace until we come to a settlement with our Eastern neighbors," Brandt said. In late 1966, when the grand Coalition of Christian Democrats and Social Democrats was organized as an emergency measure to rescue West Germany from its first economic crisis, Brandt became Vice Chancellor and Foreign Minister. He and Bahr began filing away thoughtful position papers for the future, and many of their ideas found their way into Brandt's 1968 book, A Peace Policy for Europe. "The recognition is growing that the nations of Europe must and will not simply come to terms with being permanently divided by the conflict between East and West," Brandt wrote. "Even fundamental differences of political conviction and of social structure need not hold back the states of Europe . . . from working together in areas of common interest for the consolidation of an enduring peace."
Brandt's accession to power in October 1969 coincided with significant changes in West Germany's social order. The Chancellor's own family was in the vanguard. His two older sons, Peter, 22, and Lars, 19, with their mod styles and anti-Establishment rhetoric, are typical of West Germany's rebellious youth. Now a student at West Berlin's Free University, Peter was arrested twice for participation in demonstrations and was fined $40 and $68. Brandt shrugs off his sons' escapades. "Anyone who has not been a radical for a while before he is 20," he muses, "will never make a good Social Democrat." Since Brandt has become Chancellor, father and sons have concluded a truce: they do not discuss one another's politics in public.
Rut Brandt, Willy's Norwegian wife, encourages her sons to live their own lives. As for herself, Rut asserts: "I refuse to allow myself to be placed in a cage." Rather than move downtown to the official Chancellor's residence on the grounds of the elegant Palais Schaumburg, Rut insisted on remaining in the comfortable 14-room house on Bonn's residential Venusberg that they occupied when Brandt was Foreign Minister. She can shop in the neighborhood without anybody's taking notice; Matthias, 9, the youngest son, can stay in the same public school, and Lars, who attends Bonn University, attracts less attention with his hippie threads and budding goatee than he would on the fenced-off grounds of the Chancellery.
AMPUTATED COUNTRY. As the younger Brandts indicate, youth in West Germany is breaking through the rigid Teutonic barriers of age and seniority. The head of West Germany's largest shipyard is 36; the president of West Berlin's Free University is 32. In the universities, students are demanding—and getting—a say not only in the selection of curriculum and research subjects but also in the actual management and hiring and firing of staff. On West Germany's leading newspapers, magazines and television networks, journalists are demanding the right to determine how their work is used and protect it from twisting by editors. Even judges, historically the most conservative element in German society, have overwhelmingly demanded and won the right to publish dissenting