Willi van Ooyen

He married in 1972, and moved to Frankfurt am Main where he studied history and education for a time at Johann Wolfgang Goethe University.

In organized politics, his first major position was Hessian leader of the Marxist German Peace Union (Deutsche Friedensunion, DFU) as managing director—a partial successor of the banned Communist Party of Germany — in 1976.

Andrea Ypsilanti, leader of the SPD, had promised several times during the electoral campaign not to work together with the new leftist party Die Linke (The Left).

A few weeks after election day, she was tempted to go for a SPD–Green coalition supported by The Left but under opposition from MP Dagmar Metzger (SPD) decided not to renege on her promise not to pursue such a venue.

[2] The communist government had showered praise upon the German Peace Union while it still existed, and heavily funded it during the van Ooyen years and earlier.