COMMENT | The politicians who know no shame

COMMENT | In 1971, the Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to a person with three names. For the first 20 years of his life, the recipient was known as Herbert Ernst Karl Frahm, a son to a cashier mother. His fiery sense of justice did not match his abilities. After passing his final exam, he only managed to secure an apprenticeship at a shipbroker.

The job did not provide him much except for his life. The connections he fostered at the port and the ships later became his only escape from Hitler’s Nazi Germany. That was the beginning of a life that was full of hiding.

He needed to use a different name to hide from the Nazi, so he chose Willy Brandt. Later, when he returned to Germany for a few months, he took up another name, Gunnar Gaasland. This time, it was borrowed from a Norwegian student. Name-borrowing and identity-switching were more common in the Nazi days...