title: Atlanta (season 3)

text: In August 2019, FX confirmed that the season would consist of eight episodes. In January 2020, FX upped the episode order to ten episodes.


title: Atlanta (season 3)

text: Before production started, Stephen Glover said that the season would focus on more female-centric stories, "I think we have some cool ideas in season three that'll put some more women on screen. There's a very specific perspective from the Atlanta woman that I think we're gonna explore in season three."


title: Atlanta (season 3)

text: Regarding about setting the season in Europe, Donald Glover said "It's our point of view; it's not really about the place. Although in Season 4, it makes a very heavy resurgence, as far as the actual place. Atlanta is a state of mind. Europe solidified how we felt while writing Season 3. Director Hiro Murai calls it our maximum season."


title: Atlanta (season 3)

text: In 2020, Donald Glover drew attention when he claimed that the third and fourth season "are going to be some of the best television ever made. "Sopranos" only ones who can touch us." When questioned about the statement, Glover said "I'm not backing down from that shit. I'm holding my nuts out on that shit. I just want audiences to know this shit is good. It's high quality shit."


title: Atlanta (season 3)

text: Part of the season is divided on anthology episodes, consisting of "Three Slaps", "The Big Payback", "Trini 2 De Bone", and "Rich Wigga, Poor Wigga". Executive producer Stefani Robinson explained the decision, "it just sort of felt like the natural progression of what we wanted to try creatively. Donald has done such a good job of making us feel like the show can really be whatever we want it to be in terms of creativity. He's referred to it a couple of times as a playground or at least this is how it feels. You don't have to be shackled to this idea of making a more traditional sitcom or comedy structure. This is something very different."


title: Atlanta (season 3)

text: In January 2019, Zazie Beetz stated that filming for the season would be delayed due to the cast's schedule. In August 2019, FX confirmed that the season would start filming on spring 2020, filming back-to-back with the fourth season. However, production was shut down amidst the COVID-19 pandemic. Production was set to resume in April 2021, with the series planning to film in Europe. Donald Glover confirmed that production on the season started on April 2, 2021. In August 2021, FX confirmed that the season wrapped filming.


title: Atlanta (season 3)

text: In February 2019, Chairman of FX, John Landgraf, confirmed that the season would be delayed and that it would miss eligibility for the 71st Primetime Emmy Awards. In January 2020, Landgraf said that the season would air in January 2021, with the fourth season airing later that year. However, due to production pausing due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Landgraf said the season would not be ready for its intended January 2021 premiere date, later signaling that the season would premiere in 2022. In December 2021, FX finally announced that the season would premiere on March 24, 2022.


title: Atlanta (season 3)

text: In October 2021, a teaser trailer for the season was released. A new trailer debuted in December 2021. The first two episodes premiered at the 2022 South by Southwest on March 19, 2022.


title: Atlanta (season 3)

text: Based upon the first two episodes given to critics, the third season has received critical acclaim. The season has a score of 91 out of 100 on Metacritic, based on 21 critics, indicating "universal acclaim". On Rotten Tomatoes, it has an approval rating of 97%, based on 121 reviews, with an average rating of 8.8/10. The site's critical consensus reads, ""Atlanta takes" Paper Boi and his entourage out of Georgia, but this inspired third season proves that the more things change, the more they stay weird."


title: Atlanta (season 3)

text: Daniel Fienberg of "The Hollywood Reporter" gave it a highly positive review and wrote, "no other show on TV is doing the thing that "Atlanta" does, with its doses of humor, surrealism, horror, travelogue and hip-hop as genre-blending starting points for an uncomfortable exploration of racial identity in America." Liz Shannon Miller of "Consequence" wrote that the series "remains as ethereal and shocking and fascinating as ever" and "in just the first two episodes of Season 3, the creative team delivers at least a half-dozen moments you'll never forget. "Atlanta" is a gift."


title: Girolamo Savonarola

text: Girolamo Savonarola, OP (, , ; 21 September 1452 – 23 May 1498) or Jerome Savonarola was an Italian Dominican friar from Ferrara and preacher active in Renaissance Florence. He was known for his prophecies of civic glory, the destruction of secular art and culture, and his calls for Christian renewal. He denounced clerical corruption, despotic rule, and the exploitation of the poor.


title: Girolamo Savonarola

text: In September 1494, when Charles VIII of France invaded Italy and threatened Florence, such prophecies seemed on the verge of fulfilment. While Savonarola intervened with the French king, the Florentines expelled the ruling Medicis and, at the friar's urging, established a "popular" republic. Declaring that Florence would be the New Jerusalem, the world centre of Christianity and "richer, more powerful, more glorious than ever", he instituted an extreme puritanical campaign, enlisting the active help of Florentine youth.


title: Girolamo Savonarola

text: In 1495 when Florence refused to join Pope Alexander VI's Holy League against the French, the Vatican summoned Savonarola to Rome. He disobeyed and further defied the pope by preaching under a ban, highlighting his campaign for reform with processions, bonfires of the vanities, and pious theatricals. In retaliation, the pope excommunicated him in May 1497 and threatened to place Florence under an interdict. A trial by fire proposed by a rival Florentine preacher in April 1498 to test Savonarola's divine mandate turned into a fiasco, and popular opinion turned against him. Savonarola and two of his supporting friars were imprisoned. On 23 May 1498, Church and civil authorities condemned, hanged, and burned the three friars in the main square of Florence.


title: Girolamo Savonarola

text: Savonarola's devotees, the Piagnoni, kept his cause of republican freedom and religious reform alive well into the following century, although the Medici—restored to power in 1512 with the help of the papacy—eventually broke the movement. Some Protestants, including Martin Luther himself, consider Savonarola to be a vital precursor to the Reformation.


title: Girolamo Savonarola

text: Savonarola was born on 21 September 1452 in Ferrara to Niccolò di Michele and Elena. His father, Niccolò, was born in Ferrara to a family originally from Padua; his mother, Elena, claimed a lineage from the Bonacossi family of Mantua. She and Niccolò had seven children, of whom Girolamo was third. His grandfather, Michele Savonarola, a noted and successful physician and polymath, oversaw Girolamo's education. The family amassed a great deal of wealth from Michele's medical practice.


title: Girolamo Savonarola

text: After his grandfather's death in 1468 Savonarola may have attended the public school run by Battista Guarino, son of Guarino da Verona, where he would have received his introduction to the classics as well as to the poetry and writings of Petrarch, father of Renaissance humanism. Earning an arts degree at the University of Ferrara, he prepared to enter medical school, following in his grandfather's footsteps. At some point, however, he abandoned his career intentions.


title: Girolamo Savonarola

text: In his early poems he expresses his preoccupation with the state of the Church and of the world. He began to write poetry of an apocalyptic bent, notably "On the Ruin of the World" (1472) and "On the Ruin of the Church" (1475), in which he singled out the papal court at Rome for special obloquy. About the same time he seems to have been thinking about a life in religion. As he later told his biographer, a sermon he heard by a preacher in Faenza persuaded him to abandon the world. Most of his biographers reject or ignore the account of his younger brother and follower, Maurelio (later fra Mauro), that in his youth Girolamo had been spurned by a neighbour, Laudomia Strozzi, to whom he had proposed marriage. True or not, in a letter he wrote to his father when he left home to join the Dominican Order he hints at being troubled by desires of the flesh. There is also a story that on the eve of his departure he dreamed that he was cleansed of such thoughts by a shower of icy water, which prepared him for the ascetic life. In the unfinished treatise he left behind, later called "De contemptu Mundi" or "On Contempt for the World", he calls upon readers to fly from this world of adultery, sodomy, murder and envy.


title: Girolamo Savonarola

text: Savonarola studied Augustine and Thomas Aquinas. He also studied the scriptures and even memorized parts.


title: Girolamo Savonarola

text: On 25 April 1475 Girolamo Savonarola went to Bologna, where he knocked on the door of the Friary of San Domenico, of the Order of Friars Preacher, and asked to be admitted. As he told his father in his farewell letter, he wanted to become a knight of Christ.


title: Girolamo Savonarola

text: In the convent, Savonarola took the vow of obedience proper to his order, and after a year was ordained to the priesthood. He studied Scripture, logic, Aristotelian philosophy and Thomistic theology in the Dominican studium, practised preaching to his fellow friars, and engaged in disputations. He then matriculated in the theological faculty to prepare for an advanced degree. Even as he continued to write devotional works and to deepen his spiritual life, he was openly critical of what he perceived as the decline in convent austerity. In 1478 his studies were interrupted when he was sent to the Dominican priory of Santa Maria degli Angeli in Ferrara as assistant master of novices. The assignment might have been a normal, temporary break from the academic routine, but in Savonarola's case, it was a turning point. One explanation is that he had alienated certain of his superiors, particularly fra Vincenzo Bandelli, or Bandello, a professor at the studium and future master general of the Dominicans, who resented the young friar's opposition to modifying the Order's rules against the ownership of property. In 1482, instead of returning to Bologna to resume his studies, Savonarola was assigned as lector, or teacher, in the Convent of San Marco in Florence.


title: Girolamo Savonarola

text: In San Marco, fra Girolamo (Savonarola) taught logic to the novices, wrote instructional manuals on ethics, logic, philosophy and government, composed devotional works, and prepared his sermons for local congregations. As he recorded in his notes, his preaching was not altogether successful. Florentines were put off by his foreign-sounding Ferrarese speech, his strident voice and (especially to those who valued humanist rhetoric) his inelegant style.


title: Girolamo Savonarola

text: While waiting for a friend in the Convent of San Giorgio, he was studying Scripture when he suddenly conceived "about seven reasons" why the Church was about to be scourged and renewed. He broached these apocalyptic themes in San Gimignano, where he went as Lenten preacher in 1485 and again in 1486, but a year later, when he left San Marco for a new assignment, he had said nothing of his "San Giorgio revelations" in Florence.


title: Girolamo Savonarola

text: For the next several years Savonarola lived as an itinerant preacher with a message of repentance and reform in the cities and convents of north Italy. As his letters to his mother and his writings show, his confidence and sense of mission grew along with his widening reputation. In 1490, he was reassigned to San Marco. It seems that this was due to the initiative of the humanist philosopher-prince, Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, who had heard Savonarola in a formal disputation in Reggio Emilia and been impressed with his learning and piety. Pico was in trouble with the Church for some of his unorthodox philosophical ideas (the famous "900 theses") and was living under the protection of Lorenzo the Magnificent, the Medici "de facto" ruler of Florence. To have Savonarola beside him as a spiritual counsellor, he persuaded Lorenzo that the friar would bring prestige to the convent of San Marco and its Medici patrons. After some delay, apparently due to the interference of his former professor fra Vincenzo Bandelli, now Vicar General of the Order, Lorenzo succeeded in bringing Savonarola back to Florence, where he arrived in May or June of that year.


title: Girolamo Savonarola

text: Savonarola preached on the First Epistle of John and on the Book of Revelation, drawing such large crowds that he eventually moved to the cathedral. Without mentioning names, he made pointed allusions to tyrants who usurped the freedom of the people, and he excoriated their allies, the rich and powerful who neglected and exploited the poor. Complaining of the evil lives of a corrupt clergy, he now called for repentance and renewal before the arrival of a divine scourge. Scoffers dismissed him as an over-excited zealot and "preacher of the desperate" and sneered at his growing band of followers as "Piagnoni"—"Weepers" or "Wailers", an epithet they adopted. In 1492 Savonarola warned of "the Sword of the Lord over the earth quickly and soon" and envisioned terrible tribulations to Rome. Around 1493 (these sermons have not survived) he began to prophesy that a New Cyrus was coming over the mountains to begin the renewal of the Church.


title: Girolamo Savonarola

text: In September 1494 King Charles VIII of France crossed the Alps with a formidable army, throwing Italy into political chaos. Many viewed the arrival of King Charles as proof of Savonarola's gift of prophecy. Charles, however, advanced on Florence, sacking Tuscan strongholds and threatening to punish the city for refusing to support his expedition. As the populace took to the streets to expel Piero the Unfortunate, Lorenzo de' Medici's son and successor, Savonarola led a delegation to the camp of the French king in mid-November 1494. He pressed Charles to spare Florence and enjoined him to take up his divinely appointed role as the reformer of the Church. After a short, tense occupation of the city, and another intervention by fra Girolamo (as well as the promise of a huge subsidy), the French resumed their journey southward on 28 November 1494. Savonarola now declared that by answering his call to penitence, the Florentines had begun to build a new Ark of Noah which had saved them from the waters of the divine flood. Even more sensational was the message in his sermon of 10 December:


title: Girolamo Savonarola

text: I announce this good news to the city, that Florence will be more glorious, richer, more powerful than she has ever been; First, glorious in the sight of God as well as of men: and you, O Florence will be the reformation of all Italy, and from here the renewal will begin and spread everywhere, because this is the navel of Italy. Your counsels will reform all by the light and grace that God will give you. Second, O Florence, you will have innumerable riches, and God will multiply all things for you. Third, you will spread your empire, and thus you will have power temporal and spiritual.


title: Girolamo Savonarola

text: This astounding guarantee may have been an allusion to the traditional patriotic myth of Florence as the new Rome, which Savonarola would have encountered in his readings in Florentine history. In any case, it encompassed both temporal power and spiritual leadership.


title: Girolamo Savonarola

text: With Savonarola's advice and support (as a non-citizen and cleric he was ineligible to hold office), a Savonarolan political "party", dubbed "the Frateschi", took shape and steered the friar's program through the councils. The oligarchs most compromised by their service to the Medici were barred from office. A new constitution enfranchised the artisan class, opened minor civic offices to selection by lot, and granted every citizen in good standing the right to a vote in a new parliament, the Consiglio Maggiore, or Great Council. At Savonarola's urging, the Frateschi government, after months of debate, passed a "Law of Appeal" to limit the longtime practice of using exile and capital punishment as factional weapons. Savonarola declared a new era of "universal peace". On 13 January 1495 he preached his great Renovation Sermon to a huge audience in the cathedral, recalling that he had begun prophesying in Florence four years earlier, although the divine light had come to him "more than fifteen, maybe twenty years ago". He now claimed that he had predicted the deaths of Lorenzo de' Medici and of Pope Innocent VIII in 1492 and the coming of the sword to Italy—the invasion of King Charles of France. As he had foreseen, God had chosen Florence, "the navel of Italy", as his favourite and he repeated: if the city continued to do penance and began the work of renewal it would have riches, glory and power.


title: Girolamo Savonarola

text: If the Florentines had any doubt that the promise of worldly power and glory had heavenly sanction, Savonarola emphasised this in a sermon of 1 April 1495, in which he described his mystical journey to the Virgin Mary in heaven. At the celestial throne Savonarola presents the Holy Mother a crown made by the Florentine people and presses her to reveal their future. Mary warns that the way will be hard both for the city and for him, but she assures him that God will fulfil his promises: Florence will be "more glorious, more powerful and richer than ever, extending its wings farther than anyone can imagine". She and her heavenly minions will protect the city against its enemies and support its alliance with the French. In the New Jerusalem that is Florence peace and unity will reign. Based on such visions, Savonarola promoted theocracy, and declared Christ the king of Florence. He saw sacred art as a tool to promote this worldview, and he was therefore only opposed to secular art, which he saw as worthless and potentially damaging.


title: Girolamo Savonarola

text: Buoyed by liberation and prophetic promise, the Florentines embraced Savonarola's campaign to rid the city of "vice". At his repeated insistence, new laws were passed against "sodomy" (which included male and female same-sex relations), adultery, public drunkenness, and other moral transgressions, while his lieutenant Fra Silvestro Maruffi organised boys and young men to patrol the streets to curb immodest dress and behaviour. For a time, Pope Alexander VI (1492–1503) tolerated friar Girolamo's strictures against the Church, but he was moved to anger when Florence declined to join his new Holy League against the French invader, and blamed it on Savonarola's pernicious influence. An exchange of letters between the pope and the friar ended in an impasse which Savonarola tried to break by sending the pope "a little book" recounting his prophetic career and describing some of his more dramatic visions. This was the Compendium of Revelations, a self-dramatization which was one of the farthest-reaching and most popular of his writings.


title: Girolamo Savonarola

text: The pope was not mollified. He summoned the friar to appear before him in Rome, and when Savonarola refused, pleading ill health and confessing that he was afraid of being attacked on the journey, Alexander banned him from further preaching. For some months Savonarola obeyed, but when he saw his influence slipping he defied the pope and resumed his sermons, which became more violent in tone. He not only attacked secret enemies at home whom he rightly suspected of being in league with the papal Curia, he condemned the conventional, or "tepid", Christians who were slow to respond to his calls. He dramatised his moral campaign with special Masses for the youth, processions, bonfires of the vanities and religious theatre in San Marco. He and his close friend, the humanist poet Girolamo Benivieni, composed lauds and other devotional songs for the Carnival processions of 1496, 1497 and 1498, replacing the bawdy Carnival songs of the era of Lorenzo de' Medici. These continued to be copied and performed after his death, along with songs composed by Piagnoni in his memory. A number of them have survived.


title: Girolamo Savonarola

text: Savonarola like the later reformers, desired a return to the "early apostolic simplicity". Many Protestants view Savonarola as a precursor to the reformation with respect to his views on "the doctrine of justification, his emphasis on individual faith, his emphasis on the authority of scripture and compassion for the poor". The writings of Savonarola spread widely to Germany and Switzerland, and due to Savonarola's life and death, many people started to see the papacy as corrupted and sought a new reform of the church. Many people saw him as a martyr, including Martin Luther, who was influenced by Savonarola's writings. Savonarola's beliefs on the doctrine of justification are similar in some respects to Martin Luther’s teachings, stating that we are not justified by ourselves. Savonarola perhaps even influenced John Calvin, but this is a matter of historical debate.


title: Girolamo Savonarola

text: Savonarola never abandoned the dogmas of the Roman Catholic Church; for example, Savonarola held to a belief in seven sacraments and that the Church of Rome is "the mother of all other churches and the pope its head." However his protests against papal corruption, reliance on the bible as the main guide link Savonarola with the later reformation. Savonarola himself held scripture as a very high authority, he himself stated: ”I preach the regeneration of the Church, taking the Scriptures as my sole guide.". It is untrue that God’s grace is obtained by pre-existing works of merit as though works and deserts were the cause of predestination. On the contrary, these are the result of predestination. Tell me, Peter; tell me, O Magdalene, wherefore are ye in paradise? Confess that not by your own merits have ye obtained salvation, but by the goodness of God " — Girolamo Savonarola".Other quotes from Savonarola such as "Not by their own deservings, O Lord, or by their own works have they been saved, lest any man should be able to boast, but because it seemed good in Thy sight." made Martin Luther say that even though the theology of Savonarola wasn't perfect, it was still an example of true Christian theology. Martin Luther later stated about Savonarola:Christ canonizes Savonarola through us even though popes and papists burst to pieces over it — Martin LutherSavonarola while revering the office of the papacy, nevertheless criticized the pope Alexander VI and his papal court. Savonarola even prophecied that Rome will come under judgement from God.the Pope may command me to do something that contravenes the law of Christian love or the Gospel. But, if he did so command, I would say to him, thou art no shepherd. Not the Roman Church, but thou errest


title: Girolamo Savonarola

text: Who are the fat kine of Bashan on the mountains of Samaria? I say they are the courtesans of Italy and Rome. Or, are there none? A thousand are too few for Rome, 10,000, 12,000, 14,000 are too few for Rome. Prepare thyself, O Rome, for great will be thy punishments - Girolamo SavonarolaCatholic sources, however, criticize the inclusion of Savonarola as a Protestant forerunner, because much of his theology still aligned with Rome. Despite inspiring some Protestant reformers, Savonarola also influenced some leaders of the Counter-Reformation.


title: Girolamo Savonarola

text: On 12 May 1497, Pope Alexander VI excommunicated Savonarola and threatened the Florentines with an interdict if they persisted in harbouring him. After describing the Church as a whore, Savonarola was excommunicated for heresy and sedition.


title: Girolamo Savonarola

text: On 18 March 1498, after much debate and steady pressure from a worried government, Savonarola withdrew from public preaching. Under the stress of excommunication, he composed his spiritual masterpiece, the "Triumph of the Cross", a celebration of the victory of the Cross over sin and death and an exploration of what it means to be a Christian. This he summed up in the theological virtue of "caritas", or love. In loving their neighbours, Christians return the love which they have received from their Creator and Savior. Savonarola hinted at performing miracles to prove his divine mission, but when a rival Franciscan preacher proposed to test that mission by walking through fire, he lost control of public discourse. Without consulting him, his confidant Fra Domenico da Pescia offered himself as his surrogate and Savonarola felt he could not afford to refuse. The first trial by fire in Florence in over four hundred years was set for 7 April. A crowd filled the central square, eager to see if God would intervene, and if so, on which side. The nervous contestants and their delegations delayed the start of the contest for hours. A sudden rain drenched the spectators and government officials cancelled the proceedings. The crowd disbanded angrily; the burden of proof had been on Savonarola, and he was blamed for the fiasco. A mob assaulted the convent of San Marco.


title: Girolamo Savonarola

text: Fra Girolamo, Fra Domenico, and Fra Silvestro Maruffi were arrested and imprisoned. Under torture Savonarola confessed to having invented his prophecies and visions, then recanted, then confessed again. In his prison cell in the tower of the government palace he composed meditations on Psalms 51 and 31. On the morning of 23 May 1498, the three friars were led out into the main square where, before a tribunal of high clerics and government officials, they were condemned as heretics and schismatics, and sentenced to die forthwith. Stripped of their Dominican garments in ritual degradation, they mounted the scaffold in their thin white shirts. Each on separate gallows, they were hanged, while fires were ignited below them to consume their bodies. To prevent devotees from searching for relics, their ashes were carted away and scattered in the Arno.


title: Girolamo Savonarola

text: Resisting censorship and exile, the friars of San Marco fostered a cult of "the three martyrs" and venerated Savonarola as a saint. They encouraged women in local convents and surrounding towns to find mystical inspiration in his example, and, by preserving many of his sermons and writings, they helped keep his political as well as his religious ideas alive. The return of the Medici in 1512 ended the Savonarola-inspired republic and intensified pressure against the movement, although both were briefly revived in 1527 when the Medici were once again forced out. In 1530 Pope Clement VII (Giulio de' Medici), with the help of soldiers of the Holy Roman Emperor, restored Medici rule, and Florence became a hereditary dukedom.


title: Girolamo Savonarola

text: Savonarola's contemporary Niccolò Machiavelli discusses the friar in Chapter VI of his book "The Prince", writing:


title: Girolamo Savonarola

text: Savonarolan religious ideas found a reception elsewhere. In Germany and Switzerland the early Protestant reformers, most notably Martin Luther himself, read some of the friar's writings and praised him as a martyr and forerunner whose ideas on faith and grace anticipated Luther's own doctrine of justification by faith alone. In France many of his works were translated and published and Savonarola came to be regarded as a precursor of evangelical, or Huguenot, reform though Savonarola himself had remained a believer in the dogmas of the Catholic church and even in his last major work had defended the institution of the papacy. Within the Dominican Order Savonarola was seen as a devotional figure ("the evolving image of a Counter-Reformation saintly prelate"), and in this benevolent guise his memory lived on. Philip Neri, founder of the Oratorians, a Florentine who had been educated by the San Marco Dominicans, also defended Savonarola's memory. In Wittenberg, the hometown of Martin Luther, a statue of Girolamo Savonarola was erected to honour him.


title: Girolamo Savonarola

text: In the mid-nineteenth century, the "New Piagnoni" found inspiration in the friar's writings and sermons for the Italian national awakening known as the Risorgimento. By emphasising his political activism over his puritanism and cultural conservatism they restored Savonarola's voice for radical political change. The venerable pre-Reformation icon ceded to the fiery Renaissance reformer. This somewhat anachronistic image, fortified by much new scholarship, informed the major new biography by Pasquale Villari, who regarded Savonarola's preaching against Medici despotism as the model for the Italian struggle for liberty and national unification. In Germany, the Catholic theologian and church historian Joseph Schnitzer edited and published contemporary sources which illuminated Savonarola's career. In 1924 he crowned his vast research with a comprehensive study of Savonarola's life and times in which he presented the friar as the last best hope of the Catholic Church before the catastrophe of the Protestant Reformation. In the Italian People's Party founded by Don Luigi Sturzo in 1919, Savonarola was revered as a champion of social justice, and after 1945 he was held up as a model of reformed Catholicism by leaders of the Christian Democratic Party. From this milieu, in 1952, came the third of the major Savonarola biographies, the "Vita di Girolamo Savonarola" by Roberto Ridolfi. For the next half century Ridolfi was the guardian of the friar's saintly memory as well as the dean of Savonarola research which he helped grow into a scholarly industry. Today, with most of Savonarola's treatises and sermons and many of the contemporary sources (chronicles, diaries, government documents and literary works) available in critical editions, scholars can provide fresh, better informed assessments of his character and his place in the Renaissance, the Reformation and modern European history. The present-day Church has considered his beatification.


title: Girolamo Savonarola

text: Almost thirty volumes of Savonarola's sermons and writings have so far been published in the "Edizione nazionale delle Opere di Girolamo Savonarola" (Rome, Angelo Belardetti, 1953 to the present). For editions of the 15th and 16th centuries see "Catalogo delle edizioni di Girolamo Savonarola (secc. xv–xvi)" ed. P. Scapecchi (Florence, 1998, ).


title: Demographics of Turkey

text: This article is about the demographic features of the population of Turkey, including population density, ethnicity, education level, health of the populace, economic status, religious affiliations and other aspects of the population.


title: Demographics of Turkey

text: As of December 31, 2021, the population of Turkey was 84.7 million with a growth rate of 0.55% per annum. Turks are the largest ethnic group, followed by Kurds.


title: Demographics of Turkey

text: The population is relatively young, with 22.4% falling in the 0–14 age bracket. As of 2021, the median age of the Turkish population is 33.1 years. According to OECD/World Bank population statistics, from 1990 to 2008 the population growth in Turkey was 16 million or 29%.


title: Demographics of Turkey

text: Birth statistics of Turkey from 2001 onward are from the Central Population Administrative System (MERNIS) database which is available on-line. Birth statistics are updated continually because MERNIS has dynamic structure.


title: Demographics of Turkey

text: In 2010 Turkey had a crude birth rate of 17.2 per 1000, in 2011 16.7, down from 20.3 in 2001. The total fertility rate (TFR) in 2010 was 2.05 children per woman, in 2011 2.02. The crude birth rate in 2010 ranged from 11.5 per 1,000 in West Marmara (TFR 1.52) (11,5;1.55 in 2011), similar to neighbouring Bulgaria, to 27.9 per 1,000 in Southeast Anatolia (TFR 3.53) (27.1;3,42 in 2011), similar to neighbouring Syria. Similarly, in 2012, the TFR ranged from 1.43 in Kırklareli, to 4.39 in Şanlıurfa. Death statistics from MERNIS are available as of 2009. Mortality data prior to 2009 are incomplete.


title: Demographics of Turkey

text: Total fertility rate by region in Turkey by Turkish General Census (GNS) and Turkish population and health research (TNSA).


title: Demographics of Turkey

text: Immigration to Turkey is the process by which people migrate to Turkey to reside in the country. After the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire and following Turkish War of Independence, an exodus by the large portion of Turkish (Turkic) and Muslim peoples from the Balkans (Balkan Turks, Albanians, Bosniaks, Pomaks), Caucasus (Abkhazians, Ajarians, Circassians, Chechens), Crimea (Crimean Tatar diaspora), and Crete (Cretan Turks) took refuge in present-day Turkey and moulded the country's fundamental features. Trends of immigration towards Turkey continue to this day, although the motives are more varied and are usually in line with the patterns of global immigration movements — Turkey, for example, receives many economic migrants from nearby countries such as Armenia, the Moldova, Georgia, Iran, and Azerbaijan, but also from Central Asia, Ukraine and Russia. Turkey's migrant crisis during the 2010s saw high numbers of people arriving in Turkey, particularly those fleeing the Syrian civil war.


title: Demographics of Turkey

text: In order to obtain Turkish citizenship there is a range of legal grounds, which can include: reunification with their family, marriage to a Turkish citizen, for the purchase of real estate worth $400,000 from a Turkish citizen or company. The minimum investment amount was increased in May 2022, previously it was enough to invest $250,000. Also the basis is to work in Turkey, training, business, medical treatment, refugee status.


title: Demographics of Turkey

text: No exact data is available concerning the different ethnic groups in Turkey. The last census data according to language date from 1965 and major changes may have occurred since then. However, it is clear that the Turkish are in the majority, while the largest minority groups are Kurds and Arabs. Smaller minorities are the Armenians, Greeks and others. All ethnic groups are discussed below.


title: Demographics of Turkey

text: The word Turk or Turkish also has a wider meaning in a historical context because, at times, especially in the past, it has been used to refer to all Muslim inhabitants of the Ottoman Empire irrespective of their ethnicity.


title: Demographics of Turkey

text: According to the 2016 edition of the CIA World Factbook, 70–75% of Turkey's population consists of ethnic Turks, with Kurds accounting for 19% and other minorities between 6 and 11%.


title: Demographics of Turkey

text: According to Milliyet, a 2008 report prepared for the National Security Council of Turkey by academics of three Turkish universities in eastern Anatolia suggested that there are approximately 55 million ethnic Turks, 9.6 million Kurds, 3 million Zazas, 2.5 million Circassians, 2 million Bosniaks, 500,000–1.3 million Albanians, 1,000,000 Georgians, 870,000 Arabs, 600,000 Pomaks, 80,000 Laz, 60,000 Armenians, 30,000 British, 25,000 Assyrians/Syriacs, 20,000 Jews, and 15,000 Greeks, 500 Yazidis living in Turkey.


title: Demographics of Turkey

text: According to a survey published in 2022 by Konda Research, Turks make up 77% of the population, while 19% self-identify as Kurd. Arabs (Syrian refugees excluded) make up 2%, and other ethnic groups are 2% of the population.


title: Demographics of Turkey

text: Since the immigration to the big cities in the west of Turkey, interethnic marriage has become more common. A recent study estimates that there are 2,708,000 marriages between Turks and Kurds.


title: Demographics of Turkey

text: According to a survey done in March 2020 by Area Araştırma, 20.4% of the total population of Turkey claim to be Kurdish (either Kurmanji speaking or Zazaki speaking).


title: Demographics of Turkey

text: Although numerous modern genetic studies have indicated that the present-day Turkish population is primarily descended from historical native Anatolian groups, the first Turkic-"speaking" people lived in a region extending from Central Asia to Siberia and were palpable after the 6th century BC. Seventh-century Chinese sources preserve the origins of the Turks stating that they were a branch of the Hsiung-nu (Huns) and living near the "West Sea", perhaps the Caspian Sea. Modern sources tends to indicate that the Turks' linguistic and cultural ancestors lived within the state of the Hsiung-nu in the Transbaikal area and that they later, during the fifth century, migrated to the southern Altay.


title: Demographics of Turkey

text: The word "Türk" was used only referring to Anatolian villagers back in the 19th century. The Ottoman elite identified themselves as specifically Ottomans, not usually as "any" Turks. In the late 19th century, as European ideas of nationalism were adopted by the Ottoman elite, and as it became clear that the Turkish-speakers of Anatolia were the most loyal supporters of Ottoman rule, the term "Türk" took on a much more positive connotation. During Ottoman times, the millet system defined communities on a religious basis, and a residue of this remains in that Turkish villagers will commonly consider as Turks only those who profess the Sunni faith, and will consider Turkish-speaking Jews, Christians, or even Alevis to be non-Turks. On the other hand, Kurdish-speaking or Arabic-speaking Sunnis of eastern Anatolia are sometimes considered to be Turks. The imprecision of the appellation "Türk" can also be seen with other ethnic names, such as "Kürt" (Kurd), which is often applied by western Anatolians to anyone east of Adana, even those who speak only Turkish. Thus, the category "Türk", like other ethnic categories popularly used in Turkey, does not have a uniform usage. In recent years, centrist Turkish politicians have attempted to redefine this category in a more multi-cultural way, emphasizing that a "Türk" is anyone who is a citizen of the Republic of Turkey. Currently, article 66 of the Turkish Constitution defines a ""Turk"" as anyone who is "bound to the Turkish state through the bond of citizenship".


title: Demographics of Turkey

text: The [[Kurdish people|Kurdish]] identity remains the strongest minority in modern Turkey. This is perhaps due to the mountainous terrain of the southeast of the country, where they mostly predominate and represent a majority. They inhabit all major towns and cities across eastern Turkey. However, no accurate up-to-date figures are available for the Kurdish population, since the Turkish government has outlawed ethnic or racial censuses. An estimate by the [[CIA World Factbook]] places their proportion of the population at approximately 19%. Another estimate, according to [[Ibrahim Sirkeci]], in his book "The Environment of Insecurity in Turkey and the Emigration of Turkish Kurds to Germany", based on the 1990 Turkish Census and 1993 Turkish Demographic Health Survey, is 17.8%. Other estimates include 15.7% of the population according to the newspaper "Milliyet", and 23% by Kurdologist David McDowall.


title: Demographics of Turkey

text: The Minority Rights Group report of 1985 by (Martin Short and Anthony McDermott) gave an estimate of 15% Kurds in the population of Turkey in 1980, i.e. 8,455,000 out of 44,500,000, with the preceding comment "Nothing, apart from the actual 'borders' of Kurdistan, generates as much heat in the Kurdish question as the estimate of the Kurdish population. Kurdish nationalists are tempted to exaggerate it, and governments of the region to understate it. In Turkey only those Kurds who do not speak Turkish are officially counted for census purposes as Kurds, yielding a very low figure." In "Turkey: A Country Study", a 1995 online publication of the U.S. Library of Congress, there is a whole chapter about Kurds in Turkey where it is stated that "Turkey's censuses do not list Kurds as a separate ethnic group. Consequently, there are no reliable data on their total numbers. In 1995 estimates of the number of Kurds in Turkey is about 8.5 million" out of 61.2 million, or 13% of the population at that time.


title: Demographics of Turkey

text: Kurdish national identity is far from being limited to the Kurmanji-language community, as many Kurds whose parents migrated towards Istanbul or other large non-Kurdish cities mostly speak Turkish, which is one of the languages used by the Kurdish nationalist publications.


title: Demographics of Turkey

text: The population of [[Arabs in Turkey]] varies according to different sources. [[Al Jazeera]] and [[the Washington Institute for Near East Policy]] estimates the Arab population before the [[Syrian Civil War]] in 2011 from 1,500,000 to more than 2,000,000, with recent [[Refugees of the Syrian Civil War|Syrian refugees]] 2,748,367, so Arabs in Turkey constituency now numbers anywhere from 4.5 to 5.1% of the population. Put another way, with nearly 4–5 million Arab inhabitants.


title: Demographics of Turkey

text: In a 2020 interview with [[Al Jazeera]], the prominent Turco-Arab politician [[Yasin Aktay]] estimated the number of Arabs in Turkey at nine million (or 10% of Turkey's population), half of them from other countries.


title: Demographics of Turkey

text: Zazas, are a people in eastern [[Anatolia]] who natively speak the [[Zaza language]]. Their heartland, the Dersim region, consists of [[Tunceli Province|Tunceli]], [[Bingöl Province|Bingöl]] provinces and parts of [[Elazığ Province|Elazığ]], [[Erzincan Province|Erzincan]] and [[Diyarbakır Province|Diyarbakır]] provinces. The exact number of Zazas is unknown, due to the absence of recent and extensive census data. The most recent official statistics concerning native language are available for the year 1965, where 147,707 (0.5%) chose Zaza as their native language in Turkey.


title: Demographics of Turkey

text: There are approximately 1 million people of Georgian ancestry in Turkey, according to the newspaper "[[Milliyet]]".


title: Demographics of Turkey

text: The Roma in Turkey descend from the times of the [[Byzantine Empire]]. According to some reports, there are about 500,000–700,000 Roma in Turkey. The neighborhood of [[Sulukule]], located in Western Istanbul, is the oldest Roma settlement in Europe.


title: Demographics of Turkey

text: Most Laz today live in Turkey, but the Laz minority group has no official status in Turkey. Their number today is estimated to be around 250,000 and 500,000. Only a minority are bilingual in Turkish and their native [[Laz language]] which belongs to the [[South Caucasian languages|South Caucasian group]]. The number of the Laz speakers is decreasing and is now limited chiefly to the [[Rize]] and [[Artvin]] areas. The historical term [[Lazistan]] — formerly referring to a narrow tract of land along the [[Black Sea]] inhabited by the Laz as well as by several other ethnic groups — has been banned from official use and replaced with "Doğu Karadeniz" (which includes [[Trabzon]]). During the [[Russo-Turkish War of 1877–1878]], the [[Muslim]] population of Russia near the war zones was subjected to ethnic cleansing; many Lazes living in [[Batumi|Batum]] fled to the Ottoman Empire, settling along the southern Black Sea coast to the east of [[Samsun]].


title: Demographics of Turkey

text: It is difficult to determine how many ethnic [[Azeris]] currently reside in Turkey, as ethnicity is a rather fluid concept in Turkey, especially amongst Turkic-speaking and Caucasian groups who have been more readily and easily assimilated into mainstream Turkish culture. Up to 300,000 of Azeris who reside in Turkey are citizens of [[Azerbaijan]]. In the [[Eastern Anatolia Region]], Azeris are sometimes referred to as "acem" (see [[Ajam]]) or "tat". They currently are the largest ethnic group in the city of [[Iğdır]] and second largest ethnic group in [[Kars Province|Kars]].


title: Demographics of Turkey

text: Since linguistically the two are so similar, the safest way to count or estimate the number of Azeris from the Turks in Turkey is to note the fact that Azeris are practically all [[Shia]] Muslims while their Turkish and Kurdish neighbors are [[Sunni]] Muslims.


title: Demographics of Turkey

text: Towards the end of the [[Russo-Circassian War]] (1763–1864), many [[Circassians]] fled their homelands in the [[North Caucasus]] and settled in the Ottoman Empire. Most ethnic Circassians have fully assimilated into Turkish culture, making it difficult to trace, count, or even estimate their ethnic presence.


title: Demographics of Turkey

text: Armenians in Turkey are indigenous to Anatolia & Armenian highlands well over 3000 years, an estimated population of 40,000 (1995) to 70,000. Most are concentrated around [[Istanbul]]. The [[Armenians]] support their own newspapers and schools. The majority belong to the [[Armenian Apostolic]] faith, with smaller numbers of [[Armenian Catholic Church|Armenian Catholics]] and [[Armenian Evangelical Church|Armenian Evangelicals]]. Their original population during the dying days of the Ottoman Empire was counted to be 1.2–1.8 million. The majority of Armenians had lived in the Ottoman-controlled portion of the [[Armenian Highlands]], the modern day [[Eastern Anatolia Region]], until 1.5 million were killed and the rest deported during the [[Armenian genocide]] between 1915 and 1923.


title: Demographics of Turkey

text: An estimated 40,000–50,000 [[Assyrian/Syriac people|Assyrians/Syriacs]] live in Turkey, with about 17,000 in [[Istanbul]] and the other 23–33,000 scattered in [[Southeastern Anatolia Region|southeast Turkey]] primarily in [[Turabdin]], [[Diyarbakir]], [[Adiyaman]], and [[Harput]] respectively. They belong to the [[Syriac Orthodox Church]], [[Syriac Catholic Church]], and [[Chaldean Catholic Church]].


title: Demographics of Turkey

text: Some [[Mhallami]], a Muslim ethnic group who usually are described as Arabs, have [[Assyrian/Syriac people|Assyrian/Syriac]] ancestry. They live in the area between [[Mardin]] and [[Midyat]], called in [[Syriac language|Syriac]] "I Mhalmayto" (ܗܝ ܡܚܠܡܝܬܐ).


title: Demographics of Turkey

text: Towards the end of the [[Caucasian War]] (1817–1864), many [[Chechens]] fled their homelands in the [[North Caucasus]] and settled in the Ottoman Empire. Chechens number from tens or hundreds of thousands.


title: Demographics of Turkey

text: The Greeks constitute a population of [[Greeks|Greek]] and [[Greek language|Greek]]-speaking [[Eastern Orthodox Church|Eastern Orthodox]] [[Christianity|Christians]] who mostly live in [[Istanbul]], including its district [[Princes' Islands]], as well as on the two islands of the western entrance to the [[Dardanelles]]: [[Imbros]] and [[Tenedos]] ( and "Bozcaada"), and historically also in western Asia Minor (centred on Izmir/Smyrni), the Pontic Alps (centred on Trebzon and Sumelia, see [[Pontic Greeks]]), and central Anatolia (Cappadocia) and northeastern Anatolia and the [[South Caucasus]] region (Erzinjan, Erzerum, Kars, and Ardahan, see [[Caucasus Greeks]]). The Istanbul Greeks are the remnants of the estimated 200,000 Greeks permitted under the provisions of the [[Treaty of Lausanne (1923)]] to remain in Turkey following the [[Population exchange between Greece and Turkey|1923 population exchange]], which involved the forcible resettlement of approximately 1.5 million Greeks from [[Anatolia]] and [[East Thrace]] and of half a million [[Turkish people|Turks]] from all of Greece except for [[Western Thrace]]. After years of persecution (e.g. the [[Varlık Vergisi]] (1942–1944) and the [[Istanbul Pogrom]] of 1955), [[emigration]] of [[ethnic Greeks]] from the Istanbul region greatly accelerated, reducing the 120,000-strong Greek minority to about 7,000 by 1978. The 2008 figures released by the [[Ministry of Foreign Affairs (Turkey)|Turkish Foreign Ministry]] places the current number of Turkish citizens of Greek descent at the 2,000–3,000 mark. According to Milliyet there are 15,000 Greeks in Turkey, while according to [[Human Rights Watch]] the Greek population in Turkey was estimated at 2,500 in 2006.


title: Demographics of Turkey

text: There are no official statistics of people's religious beliefs nor is it asked in the census. According to the government, 99.8% of the Turkish population is [[Islam|Muslim]], mostly [[Sunni]], some 8 million are [[Alevi]]s. The remaining 0.2% is other - mostly Christians and Jews. However, these are based on the existing religion information written on every citizen's national id card, that is automatically passed on from the parents to every newborn, and do not necessarily represent individual choice. Religious records can be changed or even blanked on the request of citizen, by filing an e-government application since May 2020, using a valid [[electronic signature]] to sign the electronic application. Any change in religion records additionally results in a new ID card being issued. Any change in religion record also leaves a permanent trail in the [[census]] record, however, record of change of religion is not accessible except for the citizen in question, next-of-kins of the citizen in question, the citizenship administration and courts.


title: Demographics of Turkey

text: In a poll conducted by [[Sabancı University]] in 2006, 98.3% of Turks revealed they were Muslim. A [[Eurobarometer]] Poll in 2005 reported that in a poll 98% of Turkish citizens answered that "they believe there is a God", while 1% responded that "they do not believe there is any sort of spirit, God, or life force". In a [[Pew Research Center]] survey, 53% of Turkey's Muslims said that "religion is very important in their lives". Based on the Gallup Poll 2006–08, Turkey was defined as "More religious", in which over 63 percent of people believe religion is important. According to the [[Turkish Economic and Social Studies Foundation]], 62% of women wear the headscarf or [[hijab]] in Turkey.


title: Demographics of Turkey

text: A poll conducted by Eurobarometer and KONDA and some other research institutes in 2013 showed that around 0.5% of the population had no religion. Another poll conducted by the same institutions in 2018 showed that 3% of those interviewed had no religion.


title: Demographics of Turkey

text: According to [[Ipsos]] survey, in 2016 [[Islam]] was the major religion in Turkey comprising 82% of the total population, followed by religiously unaffiliated people, comprising 13% of the population, and [[Christianity|Christians]], forming 0.2%.


title: Demographics of Turkey

text: The vast majority of the present-day Turkish people are [[Muslim]] and the most popular sect is the [[Hanafite]] school of [[Sunni Islam]], which was officially espoused by the [[Ottoman Empire]]; according to the KONDA Research and Consultancy survey carried out throughout Turkey on 2007:


title: Demographics of Turkey

text: Modern Turkey was founded by [[Mustafa Kemal Atatürk]] as [[Secularism in Turkey|secular]] ("Laiklik", Turkish adaptation of [[Secularism in France|French "Laïcité"]]), i.e. without a [[state religion]], or separate ethnic divisions/ identities. The concept of "minorities" has only been accepted by the Republic of Turkey as defined by the [[Treaty of Lausanne (1923)]] and thence strictly limited to Greeks, Jews and Armenians, only on religious matters, excluding from the scope of the concept the ethnic identities of these minorities as of others such as the Kurds who make up 15% of the country; others include Assyrians/Syriacs of various Christian denominations, Alevis and all the others.


title: Demographics of Turkey

text: There are many reports from sources such as ([[Human Rights Watch]], [[European Parliament]], [[European Commission]], national parliaments in EU member states, [[Amnesty International]] etc.) on persistent yet declining discrimination.


title: Demographics of Turkey

text: According to figures released by the Foreign Ministry in December 2008, there are 89,000 Turkish citizens designated as belonging to a minority, two thirds of Armenian descent.


title: Paz Vega

text: María de la Paz Campos Trigos (born 2 January 1976), known professionally as Paz Vega (), is a Spanish actress.


title: Paz Vega

text: She became popular for her performance in comedy television series "7 vidas". Her film credits include "Sex and Lucia" (2001), "Spanglish" (2004), "10 Items or Less" (2006), "All Roads Lead to Rome" (2015), "Acts of Vengeance" (2017), and "" (2019). She played the role of Catalina Creel in the 2019 television series "Cuna de lobos".


title: Paz Vega

text: Vega was born in Seville, Andalusia, Spain, in 1976 to a housewife mother and a father who was a former bullfighter. Vega's younger sister has performed as a flamenco dancer. Vega has described her family as "traditional" and Catholic. She took her stage name from her grandmother. Vega decided to become an actress after attending a performance of Federico García Lorca's play, "La casa de Bernarda Alba", when she was 16.


title: Paz Vega

text: After completing compulsory education at 16, Vega was accepted at the Centro Andaluz de Teatro stage school. She studied there for two years and took another two years studying journalism. She next moved to Madrid to seek her future.


title: Paz Vega

text: Vega made her television debut in the Spanish TV series, "Menudo es mi padre", which starred rumba singer El Fary. She appeared in two other series in 1997—"Más que amigos" and teen drama "Compañeros".


title: Paz Vega

text: In 1999, she made her film debut in "Zapping". The same year, she also had a minor role in the David Menkes movie "I Will Survive" (), alongside Emma Suárez, and Juan Diego Botto.


title: Paz Vega

text: Vega found success in 1999's TV series "7 Vidas". The series was billed as a Spanish "Friends" and became one of the country's best-loved domestic sitcoms. Vega played Laura, a perky Andalusian girl who had come to stay with David, who had recently come out of a coma. The series was broadcast on Telecinco and finished on 12 April 2006, albeit without Vega.


title: Paz Vega

text: In 2001, she starred in Julio Médem's film "Sex and Lucia", which brought her to the attention of a larger audience. However, she received prominent exposure, particularly to American audiences, when she appeared in the 2004 James L. Brooks American film "Spanglish" opposite Adam Sandler. In 2006, she co-starred with American actor Morgan Freeman in the independent film "10 Items or Less", directed by Brad Silberling. In 2008, she co-starred with Gabriel Macht, Samuel L. Jackson, and Scarlett Johansson in "The Spirit". In 2011, Vega had a role in Michele Placido's film "Vallanzasca –The Angels of Evil".


title: Paz Vega

text: Vega also works as a model; she is signed to 1/One Management in New York City. In May 2011, Vega replaced Penélope Cruz as the face for L'Oreal Spain.


title: Paz Vega

text: In 2019, Vega appeared in Televisa to portray the lead character Catalina Creel in the miniseries "Cuna de Lobos", based on the 1986 original telenovela of the same title. The same year, she portrayed an independent Mexican reporter in "Rambo: Last Blood", in which she co-starred with Sylvester Stallone.


title: Paz Vega

text: Vega and her Venezuelan husband, Orson Salazar, had their first child, a son, in May 2007. Their second child, a daughter, was born in July 2009. Their third child, another son, was born in August 2010. They married in 2002.


title: Willy Brandt

text: Willy Brandt (; born Herbert Ernst Karl Frahm; 18 December 1913 – 8 October 1992) was a German politician and statesman who was leader of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) from 1964 to 1987 and served as the chancellor of West Germany from 1969 to 1974. He was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1971 for his efforts to strengthen cooperation in western Europe through the EEC and to achieve reconciliation between West Germany and the countries of Eastern Europe. He was the first Social Democrat chancellor since 1930.


title: Willy Brandt

text: Fleeing to Norway and then Sweden during the Nazi regime and working as a left-wing journalist, he took the name Willy Brandt as a pseudonym to avoid detection by Nazi agents, and then formally adopted the name in 1948. Brandt was originally considered one of the leaders of the right wing of the SPD, and earned initial fame as Governing Mayor of West Berlin. He served as the foreign minister and as the vice-chancellor in Kurt Georg Kiesinger's cabinet, and became chancellor in 1969.


title: Willy Brandt

text: As chancellor, he maintained West Germany's close alignment with the United States and focused on strengthening European integration in western Europe, while launching the new policy of "Ostpolitik" aimed at improving relations with Eastern Europe. Brandt was controversial on both the right wing, for his "Ostpolitik", and on the left wing, for his support of American policies, including the Vietnam War, and right-wing authoritarian regimes. The Brandt Report became a recognised measure for describing the general North-South divide in world economics and politics between an affluent North and a poor South. Brandt was also known for his fierce anti-communist policies at the domestic level, culminating in the "Radikalenerlass" (Anti-Radical Decree) in 1972.


title: Willy Brandt

text: In 1970, while visiting a memorial to the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising crushed by the Germans, Brandt unexpectedly knelt and meditated in silence, a moment remembered as the Kniefall von Warschau.


title: Willy Brandt

text: Brandt resigned as chancellor in 1974, after Günter Guillaume, one of his closest aides, was exposed as an agent of the Stasi, the East German secret service.


title: Willy Brandt

text: Willy Brandt was born Herbert Ernst Karl Frahm in the Free City of Lübeck (German Empire) on 18 December 1913. His mother was Martha Frahm (1894–1969) a single parent, who worked as a cashier for a department store. His father was a teacher from Hamburg named John Heinrich Möller (1887–1958) whom Brandt never met. As his mother worked six days a week, he was mainly brought up by his mother's stepfather, Ludwig Frahm (1875–1935). He joined the "Socialist Youth" in 1929 and the Social Democratic Party (SPD) in 1930. He left the SPD to join the more left wing Socialist Workers Party (SAP), which was allied to the POUM in Spain and the Independent Labour Party in Britain.


title: Willy Brandt

text: After passing his "Abitur" in 1932 at "Johanneum zu Lübeck", he became an apprentice at the shipbroker and ship's agent F.H. Bertling. In 1933, using his connections with the port and its ships, he left Germany for Norway to escape Nazi persecution. It was at this time that he adopted the pseudonym Willy Brandt to avoid detection by Nazi agents. In 1934, he took part in the founding of the International Bureau of Revolutionary Youth Organizations, and was elected to its secretariat.


title: Willy Brandt

text: Brandt was in Germany from September to December 1936, disguised as a Norwegian student named Gunnar Gaasland. The real Gunnar Gaasland was married to Gertrud Meyer from Lübeck in a marriage of convenience to protect her from deportation. Meyer had joined Brandt in Norway in July 1933. In 1937, during the Spanish Civil War, Brandt worked in Spain as a journalist. In 1938, the German government revoked his citizenship, so he applied for Norwegian citizenship. In 1940, he was arrested in Norway by occupying German forces, but his real identity was not uncovered as he wore a Norwegian uniform. Upon his release, he escaped to neutral Sweden. In August 1940, he became a Norwegian citizen, receiving his passport from the Norwegian legation in Stockholm, where he lived until the end of the war. He lectured in Sweden on 1 December 1940 at Bommersvik College about problems experienced by the social democrats in Nazi Germany and the occupied countries at the start of the Second World War. In exile in Norway and Sweden, he learned Norwegian and Swedish. He spoke Norwegian fluently, and retained a close relationship with Norway.


title: Willy Brandt

text: In late 1946, Brandt returned to Berlin, working for the Norwegian government. In 1948, he re-joined the SPD and became a German citizen again, formally adopting the pseudonym Willy Brandt as his legal name. In 2021, it became known that Brandt served as a paid informant for the US Counterintelligence Corps from 1948 to 1952. He supplied reports on circumstances in the GDR, including the situation of East German authorities and industries, as well as Soviet troops.


title: Willy Brandt

text: Brandt was elected to the West German Bundestag (the federal parliament) in the 1949 West German federal election as a SPD delegate from West Berlin, serving there until 1957. Concurrently, he was elected as an SPD representative to the Abgeordnetenhaus (the state-level parliament) of West Berlin in the 1950 West Berlin state election, and served there through 1971. In the 1969 West German federal election he was again elected to the Bundestag, but as a delegate from North Rhine-Westphalia, and remained in the Bundestag as a delegate from that state until his death in 1992.


title: Willy Brandt

text: In 1950, Brandt, while a member of the Bundestag and the editor-in-chief of the "Berliner Stadtblatt", received a secret payment of about 170,000 Deutsche Mark from the U.S. government ().


title: Willy Brandt

text: From 3 October 1957 to 1966, Willy Brandt served as Governing Mayor of West Berlin, during a period of increasing tension in East-West relations that led to the construction of the Berlin Wall. In his first year as mayor of Berlin, he also served as the president of the Bundesrat in Bonn. He was an outspoken critic of Soviet repression of the 1956 Hungarian Uprising and of Nikita Khrushchev's 1958 proposal that Berlin receive the status of a "free city". He was supported by the influential publisher Axel Springer.


title: Willy Brandt

text: As mayor of West Berlin, Brandt accomplished much in the way of urban development. New hotels, office-blocks, and flats were constructed, while both Schloss Charlottenburg and the Reichstag building were restored. Sections of the "Stadtring" Bundesautobahn 100 inner city motorway were opened, while a major housing programme was carried out, with roughly 20,000 new dwellings built each year during his time in office.


title: Willy Brandt

text: At the start of 1961, U.S. President John F. Kennedy saw Brandt as a figure destined for high office in West Germany and was hoping he would replace Konrad Adenauer as chancellor following elections later that year. Kennedy made this preference clear by inviting Brandt, the West German opposition leader, to an official meeting at the White House a month before meeting with Adenauer, the country's leader. For the president, Brandt stood for Germany's future and for overcoming traditional Cold War thinking.


title: Willy Brandt

text: The diplomatic snub strained relations between Kennedy and Adenauer further during an especially tense time for Berlin. However, following the building of the Berlin Wall in August 1961, Brandt was disappointed and angry with Kennedy. Speaking in Berlin three days later, Brandt criticized Kennedy, asserting "Berlin expects more than words. It expects political action." He also wrote Kennedy a highly critical public letter in which he warned that the development was liable "to arouse doubts about the ability of the three [Allied] Powers to react and their determination" and he called the situation "a state of accomplished extortion". Kennedy was furious, but managed to defuse the tension by sending his vice president, Lyndon B. Johnson, to Berlin. In June 1963, Brandt figured prominently in the staging of Kennedy's triumphant visit to West Berlin.


title: Willy Brandt

text: Brandt became the chairman of the SPD in 1964, a post that he retained until 1987, longer than any other party chairman since the founding of the SPD by August Bebel. Brandt was the SPD candidate for the chancellorship in 1961, but he lost to Konrad Adenauer's conservative Christian Democratic Union of Germany (CDU). In 1965, Brandt ran again, but lost to the popular Ludwig Erhard. Erhard's government was short-lived, however, and in 1966 a grand coalition between the SPD and CDU was formed, with Brandt serving as foreign minister and as the 5th Vice-Chancellor of Germany.


title: Willy Brandt

text: In the 1969 elections, again with Brandt as the leading candidate, the SPD became stronger, and after three weeks of negotiations, the SPD formed a coalition government with the smaller Free Democratic Party of Germany (FDP). Brandt was elected chancellor.


title: Willy Brandt

text: As chancellor, Brandt developed his "(Neue) Ostpolitik" ("new eastern policy") by stages. He was active in creating a degree of rapprochement with East Germany, and also in improving relations with the Soviet Union, Poland, Czechoslovakia, and other Eastern Bloc (communist) countries.


title: Willy Brandt

text: Brandt introduced his Ostpolitik gradually starting in 1967 with the establishment of diplomatic relations with Romania and making a trade agreement with Czechoslovakia. In 1968 he restored diplomatic relations with Yugoslavia. However the August 1968, Kremlin-controlled invasion of Czechoslovakia by the Warsaw Pact was a profound disappointment. He condemned the invasion and put Ostpolitik on hold while he negotiated a coalition with the Free Democrats. In late 1969 he indicated his readiness to meet with East German leadership on the basis of equality, without preconditions. He also expressed an eagerness to meet with the USSR and Poland to resolve frontier questions that had remained unsettled since 1945. He met with the East German premier Willi Stoph in 1970.


title: Willy Brandt

text: Brandt made a six-point proposal that would involve two separate German states that respected each other's territorial integrity and settle disputes peacefully. They would cooperate as neighbors and the rights of the Four Powers in Berlin would be respected by both of them, and finally that the situation around Berlin would be improved. No agreements were reached at first but talks continued. In 1970 he signed a treaty with the Soviet Union which normalised relations and recognized existing national boundaries. The treaty with Poland in December 1970 accepted the current boundaries, which had long been in dispute. During a visit to a monument to the German occupation-era Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, he unexpectedly, and apparently spontaneously, knelt (Kniefall von Warschau), honoring the victims. This was met with a strong positive reaction worldwide, but was highly controversial in the German public at the time.


title: Willy Brandt

text: The Berlin question was settled in 1971 to West Germany's satisfaction. The crowning step came with the Basic Treaty with East Germany. The status quo was legitimized, relations were formalized on the basis of equality, and both Germanies joined the United Nations in 1973. Brandt became the first German chancellor to address the United Nations General Assembly.


title: Willy Brandt

text: "Time" magazine in the U.S. named Brandt as its Man of the Year for 1970, stating, "Willy Brandt is in effect seeking to end World War II by bringing about a fresh relationship between East and West. He is trying to accept the real situation in Europe, which has lasted for 25 years, but he is also trying to bring about a new reality in his bold approach to the Soviet Union and the East Bloc." President Richard Nixon also was pushing détente on behalf of the United States. The Nixon policies amounted to co-opting Brandt's Ostpolitik.


title: Willy Brandt

text: In 1971, Brandt received the Nobel Peace Prize for his work in improving relations with East Germany, Poland, and the Soviet Union. Brandt negotiated a peace treaty with Poland, and agreements on the boundaries between the two countries, signifying the official and long-delayed end of World War II. Brandt negotiated parallel treaties and agreements with Czechoslovakia.


title: Willy Brandt

text: In West Germany, Brandt's "Neue Ostpolitik" was extremely controversial, dividing the populace into two camps. One camp embraced all of the conservative parties, and most notably those West German residents and their families who had been driven west ("die Heimatvertriebenen") by Stalinist ethnic cleansing from Historical Eastern Germany, especially the part that was given to Poland as a consequence of the end of the war; western Czechoslovakia (the Sudetenland); and the rest of Eastern Europe, such as in Romania. These groups of displaced Germans and their descendants loudly voiced their opposition to Brandt's policy, calling it "illegal" and "high treason".


title: Willy Brandt

text: A different camp supported and encouraged Brandt's "Neue Ostpolitik" as aiming at "change through rapprochement" ("Wandel durch Annäherung"), encouraging change through a policy of engagement with the (communist) Eastern Bloc, rather than trying to isolate these countries diplomatically and commercially. Brandt's supporters claim that the policy did help to break down the Eastern Bloc's "siege mentality" and also helped to increase its awareness of the contradictions in its brand of socialism/communism, which – together with other events – eventually led to the downfall of Eastern European communism.


title: Willy Brandt

text: Brandt's predecessor as chancellor, Kurt Georg Kiesinger, had been a member of the Nazi party, and was a more old-fashioned conservative-liberal intellectual. Brandt, having fought the Nazis and having faced down communist Eastern Germany during several crises while he was the mayor of Berlin, became a controversial, but credible, figure in several different factions. As the Minister of Foreign Affairs in Kiesinger's grand coalition cabinet, Brandt helped to gain further international approval for Western Germany, and he laid the foundation stones for his future "Neue Ostpolitik". There was a wide public-opinion gap between Kiesinger and Brandt in the West German polls.


title: Willy Brandt

text: Both men had come to their own terms with the new baby boomer lifestyles. Kiesinger considered them to be "a shameful crowd of long-haired drop-outs who needed a bath and someone to discipline them". On the other hand, Brandt needed a while to get into contact with, and to earn credibility among, the "Ausserparlamentarische Opposition" (APO) ("the extra-parliamentary opposition"). The students questioned West German society in general, seeking social, legal, and political reforms. The unrest led to a renaissance of right-wing parties in some of the Bundeslands' (German states under the Bundesrepublik) Parliaments.


title: Willy Brandt

text: Brandt, however, represented a figure of change, and he followed a course of social, legal, and political reforms. In 1969, Brandt gained a small majority by forming a coalition with the FDP. In his first speech before the Bundestag as the chancellor, Brandt set forth his political course of reforms ending the speech with his famous words, "Wir wollen mehr Demokratie wagen" (literally: "Let's dare more democracy", or more figuratively, "We want to take a chance on more Democracy"). This speech made Brandt, as well as the Social Democratic Party, popular among most of the students and other young West German baby-boomers who dreamed of a country that would be more open and more colorful than the frugal and still somewhat-authoritarian Bundesrepublik that had been built after World War II. However, Brandt's "Neue Ostpolitik" lost him a large part of the German refugee voters from East Germany, who had been significantly pro-SPD in the postwar years.


title: Willy Brandt

text: Although Brandt is perhaps best known for his achievements in foreign policy, his government oversaw the implementation of a broad range of social reforms, and was known as a "Kanzler der inneren Reformen" ('Chancellor of domestic reform'). According to the historian David Childs, "Brandt was anxious that his government should be a reforming administration and a number of reforms were embarked upon". Within a few years, the education budget rose from 16 billion to 50 billion DM, while one out of every three DM spent by the new government was devoted to welfare purposes. As noted by the journalist and historian Marion Dönhoff,


title: Willy Brandt

text: "People were seized by a completely new feeling about life. A mania for large scale reforms spread like wildfire, affecting schools, universities, the administration, family legislation. In the autumn of 1970 Hans-Jürgen Wischnewski of the SPD declared, 'Every week more than three plans for reform come up for decision in cabinet and in the Assembly.'"


title: Willy Brandt

text: According to Helmut Schmidt, Willy Brandt's domestic reform programme had accomplished more than any previous programme for a comparable period. Levels of social expenditure were increased, with more funds allocated towards housing, transportation, schools, and communication, and substantial federal benefits were provided for farmers. Various measures were introduced to extend health care coverage, while federal aid to sports organisations was increased. A number of social reforms were instituted whilst the welfare state was significantly expanded (with total public spending on social programs nearly doubling between 1969 and 1975), with health, housing, and social welfare legislation bringing about welcome improvements, and by the end of the Brandt Chancellorship West Germany had one of the most advanced systems of welfare in the world.


title: Willy Brandt

text: Substantial increases were made in social security benefits such as injury and sickness benefits, pensions, unemployment benefits, housing allowances, basic subsistence aid allowances, and family allowances and living allowances. In the government's first budget, sickness benefits were increased by 9.3%, pensions for war widows by 25%, pensions for the war wounded by 16%, and retirement pensions by 5%. Numerically, pensions went up by 6.4% (1970), 5.5% (1971), 9.5% (1972), 11.4% (1973), and 11.2% (1974). Adjusted for changes in the annual price index, pensions went up in real terms by 3.1% (1970), 0.3% (1971), 3.9% (1972), 4.4% (1973), and 4.2% (1974). Between 1972 and 1974, the purchasing power of pensioners went up by 19%. In 1970, war pensions were increased by 16%. War victim's pensions went up by 5.5% in January 1971, and by 6.3% in January 1972. By 1972, war pensions for orphans and parents had gone up by around 40%, and for widows by around 50%. Between 1970 and 1972, the "Landabgaberente" (land transfer pension) went up by 55%. Between 1969 and 1974, the average real standard rate of income support rose (in 1991 prices) from around 300 DM to around 400 DM. Between 1970 and 1974, unemployment benefits rose from around 300 euros to around 400 euros per month, and unemployment assistance from just under 200 euros per month to just under 400 euros per month. In 2001 prices, the average standard social assistance benefit level rose from around 200 euros per month in 1969 to over 250 euros per month in 1974. During most of Brandt's years as chancellor, the majority of benefits increased as a percentage of average net earnings.


title: Willy Brandt

text: In 1970, seagoing pilots became retrospectively insurable, and gained full social security as members of the Non-Manual Workers Insurance Institute. That same year, a special regulation came into force for District Master Chimney Sweeps, making them fully insurable under the Craftsman's Insurance Scheme. An increase was made in tax-free allowances for children, which enabled 1,000,000 families to claim an allowance for the second child, compared to 300,000 families previously. The Second Modification and Supplementation Law (1970) increased the allowance for the third child from DM 50 to DM 60, raised the income-limit for the second child allowance from DM 7,800 to DM 13,200; subsequently increased to DM 15,000 by the third modification law (December 1971), DM 16,800 by the fourth modification law (November 1973), and to DM 18,360 by the fifth modification law (December 1973). A flexible retirement age after 62 years was introduced (1972) for invalids and disabled persons, and social assistance was extended to those who previously had to be helped by their relatives. From 1971, special subventions were provided to enable young farmers to quit farming "and facilitate their entry into the non-agricultural pension system by means of back payments".


title: Willy Brandt

text: The Third Modification Law (1974) extended individual entitlements to social assistance by means of higher-income limits compatible with receipt of benefits and lowered age limits for certain special benefits. Rehabilitation measures were also extended, child supplements were expressed as percentages of standard amounts and were thus indexed to their changes, and grandparents of recipients were exempted from potential liability to reimburse expenditure of social assistance carrier. The Third Social Welfare Amendment Act (1974) brought considerable improvements for the disabled, those in need of care, and older persons, and a new fund of 100 million marks for disabled children was established.


title: Willy Brandt

text: Allowances for retraining and advanced training and for refugees from East Germany were also increased, together with federal grants for sport. In addition, increases were made in the pensions of 2.5 million war victims. Following a sudden increase in the price of oil, a law was passed in December 1973 granting recipients of social assistance and housing allowances a single heating-oil allowance (a procedure repeated in the winter of 1979 during the Schmidt Administration). Improvements and automatic adjustments of maintenance allowances for participants in vocational training measures were also carried out, and increased allowances were provided for training and retraining, together with special allowances for refugees from East Germany.


title: Willy Brandt

text: There was determined, by statutory regulation issued in February 1970, the category of persons most seriously disabled "to whom, with regard to maintenance aid, an increased demand (50% of the appropriate rate) is being conceded, and, within the scope of relief in special living conditions: a higher rate of nursing aid". In 1971, the retirement age for miners was lowered to 50. An April 1972 law providing for "promotion of social aid services" aimed to remedy, through various beneficial measures (particularly in the field of national insurance and working conditions), the staff-shortage suffered by social establishments in their medico-social, educational and other work. A bill to harmonize re-education benefit and another bill relating to severely disabled persons became law in May and September 1972 respectively. In 1972, winter payments for construction workers were introduced.


title: Willy Brandt

text: To assist family planning and marriage and family guidance, the government allocated DM 2 232 000 in 1973 for the payment and for the basic and further training of staff. A special effort was also made in 1973 to organize the recreation of disabled persons, with a holiday guide for the disabled issued with the aid of the Federal Ministry of Family and Youth Affairs and Health in order to help them find suitable holiday accommodation for themselves and their families. From 1972 to 1973, the total amount of individual aids granted by Guarantee Fund for the integration of young immigrants increased from 17 million DM to 26 million DM. Under a law passed in April 1974, the protection hitherto granted to the victims of war or industrial accidents for the purpose of their occupational and social reintegration was extended to all disabled persons, whatever the cause of their disability, provided that their capacity to work had been reduced by at least 50%.


title: Willy Brandt

text: In the field of health care, various measures were introduced to improve the quality and availability of health care provision. Free hospital care was introduced for 9 million recipients of social relief, while a contributory medical service for 23 million panel patients was introduced. Pensioners were exempted from paying a 2% health insurance contribution, while improvements in health insurance provision were carried out, as characterised by an expanded sickness insurance scheme, with the inclusion of preventative treatment. The income limit for compulsory sickness insurance was indexed to changes in the wage level (1970) and the right to medical cancer screening for 23.5 million people was introduced. In January 1971, the reduction of sickness allowance in case of hospitalisation was discontinued. That same year, compulsory health insurance was extended to the self-employed. In 1970, the government included nonmedical psychotherapists and psychoanalysts in the national health insurance program.


title: Willy Brandt

text: Pupils, students and children in kindergartens were incorporated into the accident insurance scheme, which benefited 11 million children. Free medical checkups were introduced that same year, while the Farmers' Sickness Insurance Law (1972) introduced compulsory sickness insurance for independent farmers, family workers in agriculture, and pensioners under the farmers' pension scheme, medical benefits for all covered groups, and cash benefits for family workers under compulsory coverage for pension insurance. Participation in employer's health insurance was extended to four million employees. A Development Law of December 1970 made it possible for all employees voluntarily to become members of the statutory sickness insurance. The level of income for compulsory sickness insurance was indexed to 75% of the respective assessment level for pension insurance, while voluntarily insured employees were granted a claim to an allowance towards their sickness insurance from their employer. This law also introduced a new type of sickness insurance benefit, namely facilities for the early diagnosis of disease. Apart from the discretionary service of disease prevention which had existed since 1923, insured persons now had a right in certain circumstances to medical examinations aimed at the early diagnosis of disease. According to one study, this marked a change in the concept of sickness insurance: it now aimed at securing good health.


title: Willy Brandt

text: The Hospital Financing Law (1972) secured the supply of hospitals and reduced the cost of hospital care, "defined the financing of hospital investment as a public responsibility, single states to issue plans for hospital development, and the federal government to bear the cost of hospital investment covered in the plans, rates for hospital care thus based on running costs alone, hospitals to ensure that public subsidies together with insurance fund payments for patients cover total costs". The Benefit Improvement Law (1973) made entitlement to hospital care legally binding (entitlements already enjoyed in practice), abolished time limits for hospital care, introduced entitlement to household assistance under specific conditions, and also introduced entitlement to leave of absence from work and cash benefits in the event of a child's illness. In 1971, to encourage the growth of registered family holiday centres, the Federal Government granted subsidies for the building and appointing of 28 of these centres at a total cost of 8 million DM. Free preliminary investigations were introduced for 2.5 million children up until the age of 4 for the early detection and correction of developmental disorders, and health research was expanded. Federal grants were increased, especially for the Cancer Research Centre in Heidelberg, while a Federal Institute for Sport Science was set up, together with the Institute for Social Medicine and Epidemiology in Berlin. In addition, funding for new rehabilitation facilities was increased.


title: Willy Brandt

text: The Pension Reform Law (1972) guaranteed all retirees a minimum pension regardless of their contributions and institutionalized the norm that the standard pension (of average earners with forty years of contributions) should not fall below 50% of current gross earnings. The 1972 pension reforms improved eligibility conditions and benefits for nearly every subgroup of the West German population. The income replacement rate for employees who made full contributions was raised to 70% of average earnings. The reform also replaced 65 as the mandatory retirement age with a "retirement window" ranging between 63 and 65 for employees who had worked for at least thirty-five years. Employees who qualified as disabled and had worked for at least thirty-five years were extended a more generous retirement window, which ranged between the ages of 60 and 62. Women who had worked for at least fifteen years (ten of which had to be after the age of age 40) and the long-term unemployed were also granted the same retirement window as the disabled. In addition, there were no benefit reductions for employees who had decided to retire earlier than the age of 65. The legislation also changed the way in which pensions were calculated for low-income earners who had been covered for twenty-five or more years. If the pension benefit fell below a specified level, then such workers were allowed to substitute a wage figure of 75% of the average wage during this period, thus creating something like a minimum wage benefit. According to one study, the 1972 pension reform "enhanced" the reduction of poverty in old age.


title: Willy Brandt

text: Voluntary retirement at 63 with no deductions in the level of benefits was introduced, together with the index-linking of war victim's pensions to wage increases. Guaranteed minimum pension benefits for all West Germans were introduced, along with automatic pension increases for war widows (1970). Fixed minimum rates for women in receipt of very low pensions were also introduced, together with equal treatment for war widows. Improvements in pension provision were made for women and the self-employed, a new minimum pension for workers with at least twenty-five years' insurance was introduced, faster pension indexation was implemented, with the annual adjustment of pensions brought forward by six months, and the Seventh Modification Law (1973) linked the indexation of farmers' pensions to the indexation of the general pension insurance scheme.


title: Willy Brandt

text: A new pension for "severely handicapped" persons was introduced in 1972, along with occupational injury annuities and a special pension for long-standing insurant from the age of 63 and a pension due to "limited earning capacity" from the age of 62. In addition, a special pension benefit was introduced for workers aged 60 and above after unemployment. Under the Severely Handicapped Persons Act of April 1974, a seriously disabled person could retire early on an old age pension at the age of 62 years, provided that he "complied with the other provisions of the legislation on pension insurance".


title: Willy Brandt

text: In education, the Brandt Administration sought to widen educational opportunities for all West Germans. The government presided over an increase in the number of teachers, generous public stipends were introduced for students to cover their living costs, and West German universities were converted from elite schools into mass institutions. The school leaving age was raised to 16, and spending on research and education was increased by nearly 300% between 1970 and 1974. Working through a planning committee set up for the "joint task" of university development, the Federal Government started to make investment costs in 1971. Fees for higher or further education were abolished, while a considerable increase in the number of higher education institutions took place. A much needed school and college construction program was carried out, together with the introduction of postgraduate support for highly qualified graduates, providing them with the opportunity to earn their doctorates or undertake research studies. A law on individual promotion of vocational training came into force in October 1971, which provided for financial grants for attendance at further general or technical teaching establishments from the second year of studies at higher technical schools, academies and higher education establishments, training centres of second degree, or certain courses of television teaching. Grants were also made in certain cases for attendance at training centres located outside the Federal Republic.


title: Willy Brandt

text: The education budget was doubled from 3% to 6%, while an expansion of secondary education took place. The number of university students went up from 100,000 to 650,000, 30,000 more places were created in the schools, and an additional 1,000 million marks was allocated for new school buildings. In addition, the provision of scholarships was expanded, with the 1970 programme providing for, in the words of one observer, "5,000 new scholarships for graduates, and double that number were being awarded three years later". Grants were introduced for pupils from lower income groups to stay on at school, together with grants for those going into any kind of higher or further education. Increases were also made in educational allowances, as well as spending on science. In 1972, the government allocated 2.1 million DM in grants to promote marriage and family education. Under the Approbationsordnung (medical education profession act) of 1970, the subject of psychosomatic medicine and psychotherapy at German universities became a compulsory subject for medical students, and that same year education of clinical and biomedical engineers was introduced. The Brandt Administration also introduced enabling legislation for the introduction of comprehensives, but left it to the Lander "to introduce them at their discretion". While the more left-wing Lander "rapidly began to do so", other Lander found "all sorts of pretexts for delaying the scheme". By the mid-1980s, Berlin had 25 comprehensives while Bavaria only had 1, and in most Lander comprehensives were still viewed as "merely experimental".


title: Willy Brandt

text: In the field of housing, various measures were carried out to benefit householders, such as in improving the rights of tenants and increasing rental assistance. According to the Rent Subsidies Act (Wohngeldgesetz) of 1970, "low-income tenants and owners of accommodations are supported with rents and burdens subsidies". The determination of the income of families taken into consideration for housing allowances was simplified, and increased levels of protection and support for low-income tenants and householders were introduced which led to a drop in the number of eviction notices. By 1974, three times as much was paid out in rent subsidies as in 1969, and nearly one and a half million households received rental assistance. Increases were made in public housing subsidies, as characterised by a 36% increase in the social housing budget in 1970 and by the introduction of a programme for the construction of 200,000 public housing units (1971). From 1970 to 1971, an 18.1% increase in building permits for social housing units was made. Other reforms aimed at improving tenants' rights included protection against conversion of rental housing into condominiums, the prohibition of the misappropriation of living space, new regulation of the apartment broker system, and a fee scale for engineers and architects. In addition, the income limits for eligibility for social housing were raised and adapted in order of general income trends.


title: Willy Brandt

text: A loose form of rent regulation was introduced under the name of "Vergleichmieten" (comparable rents), together with the provision of "for family-friendly housing" freight or rent subsidies to owners of apartments or houses whose ceiling had been adapted to increased expenses or incomes (1970). In addition, a law for the creation of property for workers was passed, under which a married worker would normally keep up to 95% of his pay, and graded tax remission for married wage-earners applied up to a wage of 48,000 marks, which indicated the economic prosperity of West Germany at that time. The Town Planning Act (1971) encouraged the preservation of historical heritage and helped open up the way to the future of many German cities, while the Urban Renewal Act (1971) helped the states to restore their inner cities and to develop new neighbourhoods. In addition, Guidelines of December 1972 on the usage of federal funds in assisting social housing construction laid down that a certain standard needed to be observed when building homes for severely disabled persons.


title: Willy Brandt

text: The Second Housing Allowance Law of December 1970 simplified the administration of housing allowances and extended entitlements, increased the income limit to 9,600 DM per year plus 2,400 DM for each family member, raised the general deduction on income to determine reckonable income from 15% to 20%, allowance rates listed in tables replacing complicated calculation procedure based on "bearable rent burdens". The Housing Construction Modification Law (1971) increased the income-limit for access to low rent apartments under the social housing programme from 9,000 DM to 12,000 DM per annum plus 3,000 DM (instead of 2,400) for each family member. The law also introduced special subsidies to reduce the debt burden for builders not surpassing the regular income-limit by more than 40%. Under a 1973 law, the limits were increased to 1,000 DM plus 9,000 DM and 4,200 DM for additional family members. The Rent Improvement Law (1971) strengthened the position of tenants. Under this legislation, notice was to be ruled illegal "where appropriate substitute accommodation not available; landlords obliged to specify reasons for notice", whilst the Eviction Protection Law (1971) established tenant protection against rent rises and notice. The notice was only lawful if in the "justified interest of the landlord". Under this law, higher rents were not recognised as "justified interest". The Second Eviction Protection Law (1972) made the tenant protection introduced under the Eviction Protection Law of 1971 permanent. Under this new law, the notice was only lawful where the landlord proved justified personal interest in the apartment. In addition, rent increases were only lawful if not above normal comparable rents in the same area.


title: Willy Brandt

text: Directives on the housing of foreign workers came into force in April 1971. These directives imposed certain requirements for space, hygiene, safety, and amenities in the accommodation offered by employers. That same year, the Federal Government granted a sum of 17 million DM to the Länder for the improvement and modernization of housing built before 21 June 1948. In addition, according to a 1971 regulation of the Board of the Federal Labour Office, "construction of workers' hostels qualified for government financial support under certain conditions". The "German Council for town development", which was set up by virtue of Article 89 of a law to foster urban building, was partly aimed at planning a favourable environment for families (such as the provision of playgrounds). In 1971, the Federal Labour Office made available DM 425 million in the form of loans to provide 157 293 beds in 2 494 hostels. A year later, the Federal Government (Bund), the Lander and the Federal Labour Office promoted the construction of dwellings for migrant workers. They set aside 10 million DM for this purpose, which allowed the financing of 1650 family dwellings that year.


title: Willy Brandt

text: Development measures were begun in 1972 with federal financial aid granted to the Lander for improvement measures relating to towns and villages, and in the 1972 budget, DM 50 million was earmarked, i.e. a third of the total cost of some 300 schemes. A council for urban development was formed in May 1972 with the purpose of promoting future work and measures in the field of urban renovation. In 1973, the government provided assistance of DM 28 million for the modernisation of old dwellings. New rules were introduced regarding improvements in the law relating to rented property, and control of the rise in rents and protection against cancellation of leases also safeguarded the rights of migrant workers in the sphere of housing. A law of July 1973 fixed the fundamental and minimum requirements regarding workers' dwellings, mainly concerning space, ventilation and lighting, protection against damp, heat and noise, power and heating facilities and sanitary installations.


title: Willy Brandt

text: In regards to civil rights, the Brandt Administration introduced a broad range of socially liberal reforms aimed at making West Germany a more open society. Greater legal rights for women were introduced, as exemplified by the standardisation of pensions, divorce laws, regulations governing use of surnames, and the introduction of measures to bring more women into politics. The voting age was lowered from 21 to 18, the age of eligibility for political office was lowered to 21, and the age of majority was lowered to 18 in March 1974. The Third Law for the Liberalization of the Penal Code (1970) liberalised "the right to political demonstration", while equal rights were granted to illegitimate children that same year. A 1971 amendment to a federal civil service reform bill enabled fathers to apply for part-time civil service work. In 1971, corporal punishment was banned in schools, and that same year a new Highway Code was introduced. In 1973, a measure was introduced that facilitated the adoption of young children by reducing the minimum age for adoptive parents from 35 to 25.