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Singing Diversion. As Berlin rose, so did the fortunes of Willy Brandt. He became successively a member of the Socialist Party executive in Berlin, a deputy in the West Berlin parliament and, finally, its presiding officer. But all along he was dogged by the dislike of the oldline pols in "The Barracks" (Socialist headquarters in Bonn), who headed off his election to the national party executive. For a while, after the death of his sponsor, Mayor Reuter, he seemed stuck in the party's second echelon.
The turning point came on a restless day in November 1956, when some 75,000 young West Berliners assembled to protest Soviet intervention in Hungary. Impatient with the inanities spoken to them by a series of Socialist orators, the crowd began to shout, "To the Brandenburg Gate!"—the great arch on the boundary between East and West Berlin. All that averted a bloody clash with Soviet occupation forces in East Berlin was the quickwitted intervention of Willy Brandt. He shrewdly urged them to march on a memorial to the victims of Communist tyranny in West Berlin, well out of the way, where he got them to sing the national anthem and eventually quieted them. A year later, still riding on the city's gratitude that he won that day, Willy was elected mayor.
Today when Willy Brandt passes, many a West German politician declares confidently: "There goes the future Chancellor of Germany." If Willy can ever realize his dream of modernizing the Socialist Party's policies, they may prove right.
The one reservation Willy's friends have about his future is the fear that he is driving himself too hard. Despite a longstanding resolve to spend at least an hour a day with sons Peter, 11, and Lars, 7, he now sees little of his family. A reluctant riser who must be handled like nitroglycerine until he has had his morning coffee and a few cigarettes, Willy leaves home at 8:30, works through in his office in Berlin's Schoneberger Rat-haus until 6 or 7 p.m. (To his wife's complaints over his habit of lunching at his desk, Willy says: "A good thing I have no time for much eating ... I eat noth ing and keep getting fatter.") And since the Berlin crisis began, his speaking engagements, his personal meetings with foreign dignitaries and visiting newsmen have often kept him away from home until midnight.
Inside the Grinder. Some of Willy's late evenings are by his own choice; once he settles down with good company and schnapps, he hates to go home. But essentially, the crowded life he leads is inseparable from being mayor of Berlin —a job that, says one of his friends, "is a little like trying to operate a meat grinder from the inside."