Erich Honecker

Biography

Erich Honecker was born in 1912 in Neunkirchen in the Saar, the son of a coal miner and political activist. He joined the Young Communist League of Germany at 14, began training as a roofer, and was picked to study at the International Lenin School in Moscow; in 1930 he joined the Communist Party of Germany. After the Nazis came to power he worked underground, was arrested by the Gestapo in Berlin in December 1935 and in 1937 was sentenced to ten years in prison, most of which he served at Brandenburg-Görden.

After his release in 1945 he founded the Free German Youth, the youth organisation of the new Socialist Unity Party, in March 1946 and led it until 1955. In 1958 he became a full member of the Politburo responsible for military and security affairs, and in that role he organised the building of the Berlin Wall in August 1961 and supported the order to fire on people trying to cross the inner German border.

With Soviet backing he replaced Walter Ulbricht as party leader in May 1971, and in 1976 he also became chairman of the State Council, the head of state. His government pursued a programme of consumer socialism, normalised relations with West Germany, joined the United Nations and took part in the Helsinki conference; in 1987 he became the first East German head of state to visit West Germany. He rejected Gorbachev's reforms, and in October 1989, amid a deepening crisis, the Politburo removed him, weeks before the Wall fell.

After reunification he fled to Moscow and took refuge in the Chilean embassy, but in 1992 he was returned to Berlin to stand trial for killings at the border. The proceedings were dropped because he was terminally ill with liver cancer, and he joined his family in Chile, where he died in Santiago in May 1994.