 Brandt resigned from his position as chancellor on 6 May 1974, but he remained a member of the Bundestag and chairman of the Social Democrats through 1987.This espionage affair is widely considered to have been just the trigger for Brandt's resignation, not the fundamental cause.As Brandt himself later said, "I was exhausted, for reasons which had nothing to do with the affair [the Guillaume espionage scandal] going on at the time."