Erich Honecker
Erich Ernst Paul Honecker was a German communist politician who led the German Democratic Republic from 1971 until shortly before the fall of the Berlin Wall in November 1989. He held the posts of General Secretary of the Socialist Unity Party of Germany and Chairman of the National Defence Council; in 1976, he replaced Willi Stoph as Chairman of the State Council, the official head of state. As the leader of East Germany, Honecker was viewed as a dictator. During his leadership, the country had close ties to the Soviet Union, which maintained a large army in the country.
Honecker's political career began in the 1930s when he became an official of the Communist Party of Germany, a position for which he was imprisoned by the Nazis. Following World War II, he was freed by the Soviet army and relaunched his political activities, founding the SED's youth organisation, the Free German Youth, in 1946 and serving as the group's chairman until 1955. As the Security Secretary of the SED Central Committee, he was the prime organiser of the building of the Berlin Wall in 1961 and, in this function, bore administrative responsibility for the "order to fire" along the Wall and the larger inner German border.
In 1970, Honecker initiated a political power struggle that led, with support of Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev, to him replacing Walter Ulbricht as General Secretary of the SED and chairman of the National Defence Council. Under his command, the country adopted a programme of "consumer socialism" and moved towards the international community by normalising relations with West Germany and also becoming a full member of the UN, in what is considered one of his greatest political successes. As Cold War tensions eased in the late 1980s with the advent of perestroika and glasnost—the liberal reforms introduced by Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev—Honecker refused all but cosmetic changes to the East German political system. He cited the consistent hardliner attitudes of Kim Il Sung, Fidel Castro and Nicolae Ceaușescu whose respective governments of North Korea, Cuba and Romania had been critical of reforms. Honecker was forced to resign by the SED Politburo in October 1989 in a bid to improve the government's image in the eyes of the public; the effort was unsuccessful, and the regime would collapse entirely the following month.
Following German reunification in 1990, Honecker sought asylum in the Chilean embassy in Moscow, but was extradited back to Germany in 1992, after the fall of the Soviet Union, to stand trial for his role in the human rights abuses committed by the East German government. However, the proceedings were abandoned, as Honecker was suffering from terminal liver cancer. He was freed from custody to join his family in exile in Chile, where he died in May 1994.
Childhood and youth
Honecker was born into a deeply Protestant family in Neunkirchen, in what is now Saarland, to Wilhelm Honecker, a coal miner and political activist, and his wife Caroline Catharine Weidenhof. The couple, married in 1905, had six children. Erich, their fourth child, was born on 25 August 1912 during the period in which the family resided on Max-Braun-Straße, before later moving to Kuchenbergstraße 88 in the present-day Neunkirchen city district of Wiebelskirchen.After World War I, the Territory of the Saar Basin was occupied by France. This change from the strict rule of Ferdinand Eduard von Stumm to French military occupation provided the backdrop for what Wilhelm Honecker understood as proletarian exploitation, and introduced young Erich to communism. After his tenth birthday in 1922, Erich Honecker became a member of the Spartacus League's children's group in Wiebelskirchen. Aged 14 he entered the KJVD, the Young Communist League of Germany, for whom he later served the organisation's leader of Saarland from 1931.
Honecker did not find an apprenticeship immediately after leaving school, but instead worked for a farmer in Pomerania for almost two years. In 1928 he returned to Wiebelskirchen and began a traineeship as a roofer with his uncle, but quit to attend the International Lenin School in Moscow and Magnitogorsk after the KJVD handpicked him for a course of study there. There, sharing a room with Anton Ackermann, he studied under the cover name "Fritz Malter".
Opposition to the Nazis and imprisonment
In 1930, aged 18, Honecker entered the KPD, the Communist Party of Germany. His political mentor was Otto Niebergall, who later represented the KPD in the Reichstag. After returning from Moscow in 1931 following his studies at the International Lenin School, he became the leader of the KJVD in the Saar region. After the Nazi seizure of power in 1933, Communist activities within Germany were only possible undercover; the Saar region however still remained outside the German Reich under a League of Nations mandate. Honecker was arrested in Essen, Germany, but soon released. Following this, he fled to the Netherlands and from there oversaw KJVD's activities in Pfalz, Hesse and Baden-Württemberg.Honecker returned to the Saar in 1934 and worked alongside Johannes Hoffmann on the campaign against the region's re-incorporation into Germany. A referendum on the area's future in January 1935 however saw 90.73% vote in favour of reunifying with Germany. Like 4,000 to 8,000 others, Honecker then fled the region, initially relocating to Paris.
On 28 August 1935 he illegally travelled to Berlin under the alias "Marten Tjaden", with a printing press in his luggage. From there he worked closely together with KPD official Herbert Wehner in opposition/resistance to the Nazi state. On 4 December 1935 Honecker was detained by the Gestapo and until 1937 remanded in Berlin's Moabit detention centre. On 3 July 1937 he was sentenced to ten years imprisonment for the "preparation of high treason alongside the severe falsification of documents".
Honecker spent the majority of his incarceration in the Brandenburg-Görden Prison, where he also carried out tasks as a handyman. In early 1945, he was moved to the Barnimstrasse women's prison in Berlin due to good behaviour and to be put to work repairing the bomb-damaged building, as he was a skilled roofer. During an Allied bombing raid on 6 March 1945, he managed to escape and hid himself at the apartment of Lotte Grund, a female prison guard. After several days she persuaded him to turn himself in, and his escape was then covered up by the guard.
After the liberation of the prisons by advancing Soviet troops on 27 April 1945, Honecker remained in Berlin. His "escape" from prison and his relationships during his captivity later led to his experiencing difficulties within the Socialist Unity Party, as well as straining his relations with his former inmates. In later interviews and in his personal memoirs, Honecker falsified many of the details of his life during this period. Material from the East German State Security Service has been used to allege that, to be released from prison, Honecker offered the Gestapo evidence incriminating fellow imprisoned Communists, claimed he had renounced communism "for good", and was willing to serve in the German army.
Post-war return to politics
In May 1945 Honecker was "picked up" by chance in Berlin by Hans Mahle and taken to the Ulbricht Group, a collective of exiled German communists that had returned from the Soviet Union to Germany after the end of the Nazi regime. Through Waldemar Schmidt, Honecker befriended Walter Ulbricht, who had not been aware of him at that point. Honecker's future role in the group was still undecided until well into the summer months, as he had yet to face a party process. This ended in a reprimand due to his "undisciplined conduct" in fleeing from prison at the start of the year, an action which was debated upon, potentially jeopardising the other inmates.In 1946, Honecker became the co-founder of the Free German Youth, whose chairmanship he also undertook. After the formation of the SED, the Socialist Unity Party, in April 1946 through a merger of the KPD and SPD, Honecker swiftly became a leading party member and took his place in the party's Central Committee.
On 7 October 1949, the German Democratic Republic was formed with the adoption of a new constitution, establishing a political system similar to that of the Soviet Union. Within the state's socialist single party government, Honecker determinedly resumed his political career and the following year was named as a candidate member of the Politbüro of the SED's Central Committee. As President of the Free German Youth movement, he organised the inaugural "Deutschlandtreffen der Jugend" in East Berlin in May 1950 and the 3rd World Festival of Youth and Students in 1951, although the latter was beset with organisational problems.
During the internal party unrest following the suppressed uprising of June 1953, Honecker sided with First Secretary Walter Ulbricht, despite the majority of the Politburo attempting to depose Ulbricht in favour of Rudolf Herrnstadt. Honecker himself though faced questioning from party members about his inadequate qualifications for his position. On 27 May 1955 he handed the Presidency of the FDJ over to Karl Namokel, and departed for Moscow to study for two years at the School of the Soviet Communist Party at Ulbricht's request. During this period he witnessed the 20th Congress of the Soviet Communist Party in person, where its First Secretary Nikita Khrushchev denounced Joseph Stalin.
After returning to East Germany in 1958, Honecker became a fully-fledged member of the Politburo, taking over responsibility for military and security issues. As the Party Security Secretary he was the prime organiser of the building of the Berlin Wall in August 1961 and also a proponent of the "order to fire" along the Inner German border.
Leadership of East Germany
While Ulbricht had replaced the state's command economy with, firstly the "New Economic System", then the Economic System of Socialism, as he sought to improve the country's failing economy, Honecker declared the main task under his New System of Economic Socialism to in fact be the "unity of economic and social politics", essentially through which living standards would be raised in exchange for political loyalty. Tensions had already led to his once-mentor Ulbricht removing Honecker from the position of Second Secretary in July 1970, only for the Soviet leadership to swiftly reinstate him. Honecker played up the thawing East-West German relationship as Ulbricht's strategy, to win the support of the Soviet leadership under Leonid Brezhnev. With this secured, Honecker was appointed First Secretary of the Central Committee on 3 May 1971 after the Soviet leadership forced Ulbricht to step aside "for health reasons".After also succeeding Ulbricht as Chairman of the National Defence Council in 1971, Honecker was eventually also elected Chairman of the State Council on 29 October 1976. With this, Honecker reached the height of power within East Germany. From there on, he, along with Economic Secretary Günter Mittag and Minister of State Security Erich Mielke, made all key government decisions. Until 1989 the "little strategic clique" composed of these three men was unchallenged as the top level of East Germany's ruling class. Honecker's closest colleague was Joachim Herrmann, the SED's Agitation and Propaganda Secretary. Alongside him, Honecker held daily meetings concerning the party's media representation in which the layout of the party's own newspaper Neues Deutschland, as well as the sequencing of news items in the national news bulletin Aktuelle Kamera, were determined.
Under Honecker's leadership, East Germany adopted a programme of "consumer socialism", which resulted in a marked improvement in living standards already the highest among the Eastern bloc countries – though still far behind West Germany. More attention was placed on the availability of consumer goods, and the construction of new housing was accelerated, with Honecker promising to "settle the housing problem as an issue of social relevance". His policies were initially marked by a liberalisation toward culture and art. While 1973 brought the World Festival of Youth and Students to East Berlin, soon dissident artists such as Wolf Biermann were expelled and the Ministry for State Security raised its efforts to suppress political resistance. Honecker remained committed to the expansion of the Inner German border and the "order to fire" policy along it. During his time in the office around 125 East German citizens were killed while trying to reach the West.
After the Federal Republic had secured an agreement with the Soviet Union on cooperation and a policy of non-violence, it became possible to reach a similar agreement with the GDR. The Basic Treaty between East and West Germany in 1972 sought to normalise contacts between the two governments.
East Germany also participated in the Conference on Security and Co-operation in Europe held in Helsinki in 1975, which attempted to improve relations between the West and the Eastern Bloc, and became a full member of the United Nations. These acts of diplomacy were considered Honecker's greatest successes in foreign politics.
Honecker received additional high-profile personal recognitions including honorary doctorates of business administration from East Berlin's Humboldt University in 1976, Tokyo's Nihon University in 1981 and the London School of Economics in 1984 and the Olympic Order from the IOC in 1985. In September 1987, he became the first East German head of state to visit West Germany, where he was received with full state honours by West German Chancellor Helmut Kohl in an act that seemed to confirm West Germany's acceptance of East Germany's existence. During this trip he also journeyed to his birthplace in Saarland, where he held an emotional speech in which he spoke of a day when Germans would no longer be separated by borders. This trip had been planned twice before, including September 1984, but was initially blocked by the Soviet leadership which mistrusted the special East-West German relationship, particularly efforts to expand East Germany's limited independence in the realm of foreign policy.