It often takes more courage to change one's opinion than to keep it.

7 July 1972 - Helmut Schmidt (SPD) succeeds Schiller as Minister of Finance and Economics. In 1971 corporal punishment was banned in schools. Domestic policies


Political and social changes
West Germany in the late 1960s was shaken by student disturbances and a general "change of the times" that not all Germans were willing to accept or approve.

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. Of similar importance 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.