Erich Honecker

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Erich Honecker

Erich Honecker (August 25, 1912 - May 29, 1994) was a German Communist who led the German Democratic Republic (Deutsche Demokratische Republik, DDR) from 1971 until 1989. After German re-unification, he was tried for high treason by Germany, but was released due to ill health.

Honecker was born in Neunkirchen, in the Saar, as the son of a politically militant coal miner. He joined the youth section (Jugendverband) of the Communist Party of Germany (Kommunistische Partei Deutschlands, KPD) in 1926 and joined the KPD itself in 1929. That year he was sent to Moscow to study at the International Lenin School. He returned to Germany in 1931 and was arrested in 1935 after the Nazis had come to power (Machtübernahme). In 1937 he was sentenced to ten years for Communist activities and remained in captivity until the end of World War II.

At the end of the war, Honecker resumed activity in the party under leader Walter Ulbricht. In 1946, Honecker was one of the first members of the Socialist Unity Party of Germany (Sozialistische Einheitspartei Deutschlands, SED), made up of the old KPD and the Social Democrats of eastern Germany. Following a sweeping victory in the October 1946 elections, he took his place amongst the SED leadership in the short-lived parliament. The German Democratic Republic was proclaimed on October 7, 1949 with the adoption of a new constitution. In a political system similar to that of the Soviet Union, he was a candidate member for the secretariat of the Central Committee in 1950 and full member in 1958.

In 1961 Honecker was in charge of the building of the Berlin Wall. In 1971, he initiated a political power struggle that led, with Soviet support, to himself becoming the new leader, replacing Walter Ulbricht. During the 1980s, when Mikhail Gorbachev began his reforms, he remained a hard-line Communist. But popular protest led to his resignation on October 18, 1989, and he was replaced by his short-lived successor Egon Krenz.

From 1989 until 1993, Honecker avoided prosecution over Cold War crimes, specifically the 192 deaths of those trying to escape over the Berlin Wall. He initially remained in a Soviet military hospital near Berlin before leaving for Moscow. Following the collapse of the Soviet Union he was returned to Germany in 1992. But when he did come to trial in 1993 he was released due to ill-health and moved to Chile where he died of liver cancer on May 29, 1994.

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