Erich Honecker (German: [ˈeːʁɪç ˈhɔnɛkɐ]; 25 August 1912 – 29 May 1994) was a German communist politician who, as the General Secretary of the Socialist Unity Party, led East Germany from 1971 until the weeks preceding the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. From 1976 onward he was also the country's official Head of State as Chairman of the State Council following Willi Stoph's relinquishment of the post.
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 during the Nazi era. Following World War II, he was freed and soon relaunched his political activity, founding the youth organisation the Free German Youth in 1946 and serving as the group's chairman until 1955. As the Security Secretary of the Party’s Central Committee in the new East German state, he was the prime organiser of the building of the Berlin Wall in 1961 and, in this function, bore responsibility for the "order to fire" along the Inner German border.
In 1971, he initiated a political power struggle that led, with Soviet support, to his replacing Walter Ulbricht as First Secretary of the Central Committee and as chairman of the state's National Defense Council. Under his command, the country adopted a programme of "consumer socialism" and moved toward 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 under the liberalising reforms of Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, Honecker refused all but cosmetic changes to the East German political system and was consequently forced to resign by his party in October 1989 and ousted from power as the regime sought to retain its power, thus ending Honecker's eighteen years at the helm of the soon-to-cease-to-exist state.
Following German reunification, he escaped to the Chilean Embassy in Moscow in 1991 but was extradited back to Germany a year later to stand trial for his role in the human rights abuse committed by the East German regime. However, the proceedings were abandoned due to illness and he was freed from custody to travel to join his family in exile in Chile, where he died in May 1994 from liver cancer.
Contents [show]
Childhood and youth[edit]
Honecker was born in Neunkirchen, in what is now Saarland, as the son of Wilhelm Honecker (1881–1969), a coal miner and political activist,[1] who had married Caroline Catharina Weidenhof (1883–1963) in 1905. The couple had six children together: Katharina (Käthe, 1906–1925), Wilhelm (Willi, 1907–1944), Frieda (1909–1974), Erich, Gertrud (1917–2010) and Karl-Robert (1923–1947). 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.
Honecker's childhood home in Wiebelskirchen
After World War I, the Territory of the Saar Basin was occupied by France. This change from the strict rule of Baron von Stumm to French military occupation provided the backdrop for what Wilhelm Honecker understood as proletarian exploitation, and introduced young Erich to communism.[1] After his tenth birthday in 1922, Erich Honecker became a member of the Spartacus League's children's group in Wiebelskirchen.[1] 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.[2]
Honecker did not find an apprenticeship immediately after leaving school, but instead worked for a farmer in Pomerania for almost two years.[3] 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 hand-picked him for a course of study there.[4] There, sharing a room with Anton Ackermann,[5] he studied under the cover name "Fritz Malter".[6]
Opposition to the Nazis and imprisonment[edit]
In 1930, aged 18, Honecker entered the KPD, the Communist Party of Germany.[7] His political mentor was Otto Niebergall, who later represented the KPD in the Bundestag. 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 were only possible within Germany 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.[3]
He 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, relocating firstly to Paris.[3]
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 the KPD official Herbert Wehner – later to become an SPD member - 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".[7][8]
Honecker spent the majority of his incarceration in the Brandenburg-Görden Prison, where he also carried out tasks as a handyman.[3] In early 1945 he was moved to the Barnimstrasse Women’s Prison in Berlin due to good behaviour and, as a trained roofer, in order to be put to work repairing the bomb-damaged building.[9] 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 hand himself back in and the 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.[10] His "escape" from prison and his relationships during his captivity later led to him experiencing difficulties within the Socialist Unity Party, as well as straining his relations with his former inmates. In later interviews and his personal memoirs, Honecker therefore falsified many of the details of his life during this period.[11][12] Further evidence has also come to light that during his imprisonment Honecker offered the Gestapo information on fellow imprisoned communists, claimed he had renounced communism "for good" and even volunteered to serve the war effort as a member of the German army.[13]
Post-war return to politics[edit]
Honecker founded the Free German Youth group in 1946
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.[14] 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 it jeopardising the other (communist) inmates.[10][15]
In 1946 he became the co-founder of the Free German Youth (FDJ), 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 socialistic single party government, Honecker determinedly resumed his political career and the following year was nominated as a candidate for the Politburo of the SED’s Central Committee.[14] 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.[14]
Honecker, watched by his mentor Walter Ulbricht, at the 5th Party Congress in 1958
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 dispose Ulbricht in favour of Rudolf Herrnstadt.[16] 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.[7] During this period he witnessed the 20th Congress of the Soviet Communist Party in person, where its First Secretary Nikita Khrushchev denounced Joseph Stalin.[8]
After returning to East Germany in 1958 Honecker became a fully-fledged member of the Politburo, taking over responsibility for military and security issues.[17] 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.[18]
Leadership of East Germany[edit]
Erich Honecker, 1976
While Ulbricht had replaced the state’s planned 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 to in fact be the "unity of economic and social politics", essentially through which living standards (with increased consumer goods) would be raised in exchange for political loyalty.[19][20] 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.[17] Honecker played up the thawing East-West German relationship as Ulbricht's strategy, in order to win the support of the Soviet leadership under Leonid Brezhnev.[17] With this secured, Honecker was appointed First Secretary (later titled General Secretary) of the Central Committee on 3 May 1971 after the Soviet leadership forced Ulbricht to step aside "for health reasons".[17][21]
After also succeeding Ulbricht as Chairman of the National Defense Council in 1971,[22] Honecker was eventually also elected Chairman of the State Council on 29 October 1976.[23] 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.[24] 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. 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".[25] His policies were initially marked by a liberalisation toward culture and art, though this was less about the replacement of Ulbricht by Honecker and more for propaganda purposes. 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.[26] During his time in office around 125 East German citizens were killed while trying to reach the West.[27]
Honecker on the world stage at the 1975 CSCE summit in Helsinki.
Although Honecker remained loyal to the Soviet Union by renouncing the objective of a unified Germany and adopting the "defensive" position of ideological Abgrenzung (demarcation), he signed the Basic Treaty between East and West Germany in 1972 which sought to normalise relations between the nations. 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.[28] These acts of diplomacy were considered Honecker’s greatest successes in foreign politics.
He received additional high-profile personal recognitions including an honorary doctorate by Tokyo’s Nihon University in 1981 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.[18] This trip had originally been planned in 1983, but was initially blocked by the Soviet leadership which mistrusted the special East-West German relationship.[29]
Illness, downfall and resignation[edit]
In the late 1980s, Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev introduced glasnost and perestroika, reforms to liberalise communism. Frictions between him and Honecker had grown over these policies and numerous additional issues from 1985 onward.[30] East Germany refused to implement similar reforms, with Honecker reportedly telling Gorbachev: "We have done our perestroika, we have nothing to restructure".[31][32] Gorbachev grew to dislike Honecker, and by 1988 was lumping Honecker, along with Bulgaria's Todor Zhivkov, Czechoslovakia's Gustáv Husák and Romania's Nicolae Ceaușescu as a "Gang of Four" — a group of inflexible hardliners unwilling to make necessary reforms.[33] Honecker felt betrayed by Gorbachev in his German policy and ensured that official texts of the Soviet Union, especially those concerning perestroika, could no longer be published or sold in East Germany.[34]
Protests against the lack of reforms by the Honecker-led regime grew during 1989.
At the Warsaw Pact summit on 7–8 July 1989 in Bucharest, the Soviet Union reaffirmed its shift from the Brezhnev Doctrine of the limited sovereignty of its member states, and announced "freedom of choice".[35][36] The Bucharest statement prescribed that its nations henceforth developed their "own political line, strategy and tactics without external intervention".[37] This called into question the Soviet guarantee of existence for the communist states in Europe. Already in May 1989 Hungary had begun dismantling its border with Austria, creating the first gap in the so-called Iron Curtain, through which several thousand East Germans quickly fled in hopes of reaching West Germany by way of Austria.[38] Per a 1969 treaty, the Hungarian government should have forced the East Germans back home. However, after a week, the Hungarians relented and let the refugees pass into Austria, telling their outraged East German counterparts that international treaties on refugees took precedence.[33]
At the time Honecker was sidelined through illness, leaving his colleagues unable to act decisively. He had been taken ill with biliary colic during the Warsaw Pact summit and flown home to Berlin.[33][37] After an initial health stabilisation, he underwent surgery on 18 August 1989 to remove his inflamed gallbladder and, due to a perforation, part of his colon.[39][40] According to the urologist Peter Althaus, the surgeons left a suspected carcinogenic nodule in Honecker’s right kidney due to his weak condition, and also failed to inform the patient of the suspected cancer;[41] other sources say the tumour was simply undetected. As a result of this operation, Honecker was away from his office until late September 1989.[42][43]
Back in office, Honecker had to contend with the rising number and strength of demonstrations across East Germany that had first been sparked by reports in the West German media of fraudulent results in local elections in May 1989;[33][44] the same results he had labelled a "convincing reflection" of the populace's faith in his leadership.[45] He also had to deal with a new refugee problem. Several thousand East Germans tried to go to West Germany by way of Czechoslovakia, only to have that government bar them from passing. Several thousand of them headed straight for the West German embassy in Prague and demanded safe passage to West Germany. With some reluctance, Honecker allowed them to go—but forced them to go back through East Germany on sealed trains and stripped them of their East German citizenship. Several members of the SED Politbüro realized this was a serious blunder and made plans to get rid of him.[33]
As unrest visibly grew, large numbers began fleeing the country through the West German embassies in Prague and Budapest and over the borders of the "socialist brother" states.[46][47] Each month saw tens of thousands more exit.[48][49] On 3 October 1989 East Germany closed its borders to its eastern neighbours and prevented visa-free travel to Czechoslovakia;[50] a day later these measures were also extended to travel to Bulgaria and Romania. East Germany was now not only behind the Iron Curtain to the West, but also cordoned off to most other Eastern bloc states.[51]
Honecker leads East Germany's 40th anniversary celebration, just weeks before being forced to resign. Gorbachev is at his right(left of Honecker)
On 6–7 October 1989 the national celebrations of the 40th anniversary of the East German state took place with Gorbachev in attendance.[52] During the event, several hundred members of the Free German Youth began chanting, "Gorby, help us! Gorby, save us!".[53] In a private conversation between the two leaders Honecker praised the success of the nation, but Gorbachev knew that, in reality, it faced bankruptcy;[33][54] East Germany had already accepted billion of dollars in loans from West Germany during the decade as it sought to stabilise its economy.[55] Attempting to make Honecker accept a need for reforms, Gorbachev warned "life punishes those who come too late", yet Honecker maintained that "we will solve our problems ourselves with socialist means".[53] Protests outside the reception at the Palace of the Republic led to hundreds of arrests.[53]
As the reform movement spread throughout Central and Eastern Europe, mass demonstrations against the East German government erupted, most prominently in Leipzig—the first of several demonstrations which took place on Monday night across the country. In response, an elite paratroop unit was dispatched to Leipzig—almost certainly on Honecker's orders, since he was commander-in-chief of the army. A bloodbath was only averted when local party officials themselves ordered the troops to pull back. In the following week, Honecker faced a torrent of criticism. This gave his Politburo comrades the impulse they needed to replace him.[33]
After a crisis meeting of the Politburo on 10–11 October 1989, Honecker's planned state visit to Denmark was cancelled and, despite his resistance, at the insistence of the regime's number-two man, Egon Krenz, a public statement was issued that called for "suggestions for attractive socialism".[56] Over the following days Krenz worked to secure himself the support of the military and the Stasi and arranged a meeting between Gorbachev and Politburo member Harry Tisch, who was in Moscow, to inform the Kremlin about the now-planned removal of Honecker;[57] Gorbachev reportedly wished them good luck.[58]
Egon Krenz introduces himself to a congress as Honecker's replacement as General Secretary.
The sitting of the SED Central Committee planned for the end of November 1989 was pulled forward a week, with the most urgent item on the agenda now being the composition of the Politburo. Krenz and Mielke attempted by telephone on the night of 16 October to win other Politburo members over to remove Honecker. At the beginning of the session on 17 October, Honecker asked his routine question of “Are there any suggestions for the agenda?”[59] Stoph replied, "Please, General Secretary, Erich, I propose that a new item be placed on the agenda. It is the release of Erich Honecker as General Secretary and the election of Egon Krenz in his place."[33] Honecker reportedly calmly responded: "Well, then I open the debate".[60]
All those present then spoke, in turn, but none in favour of Honecker.[60] Günter Schabowski even extended the dismissal of Honecker to also include his posts in the State Council and as Chairman of the National Defence Council while childhood friend Günter Mittag moved away from Honecker.[59] Mielke supposedly blamed Honecker for almost all the country’s current ills and threatened to publish compromising information that he possessed, if Honecker refused to resign.[61] After three hours the Politburo voted to remove Honecker.[60][62] In accordance with longstanding practice, Honecker voted for his own removal.[33] Publicly, the decision was announced that: "the Central Committee has obliged the request of Erich Honecker to release him from the post of General Secretary, from the Office of State Council Chairman and the post of Chairman of the National Defence Council due to health reasons".[63] Krenz was unanimously voted in his successor as General Secretary.[64][65]
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 during the Nazi era. Following World War II, he was freed and soon relaunched his political activity, founding the youth organisation the Free German Youth in 1946 and serving as the group's chairman until 1955. As the Security Secretary of the Party’s Central Committee in the new East German state, he was the prime organiser of the building of the Berlin Wall in 1961 and, in this function, bore responsibility for the "order to fire" along the Inner German border.
In 1971, he initiated a political power struggle that led, with Soviet support, to his replacing Walter Ulbricht as First Secretary of the Central Committee and as chairman of the state's National Defense Council. Under his command, the country adopted a programme of "consumer socialism" and moved toward 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 under the liberalising reforms of Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, Honecker refused all but cosmetic changes to the East German political system and was consequently forced to resign by his party in October 1989 and ousted from power as the regime sought to retain its power, thus ending Honecker's eighteen years at the helm of the soon-to-cease-to-exist state.
Following German reunification, he escaped to the Chilean Embassy in Moscow in 1991 but was extradited back to Germany a year later to stand trial for his role in the human rights abuse committed by the East German regime. However, the proceedings were abandoned due to illness and he was freed from custody to travel to join his family in exile in Chile, where he died in May 1994 from liver cancer.
Contents [show]
Childhood and youth[edit]
Honecker was born in Neunkirchen, in what is now Saarland, as the son of Wilhelm Honecker (1881–1969), a coal miner and political activist,[1] who had married Caroline Catharina Weidenhof (1883–1963) in 1905. The couple had six children together: Katharina (Käthe, 1906–1925), Wilhelm (Willi, 1907–1944), Frieda (1909–1974), Erich, Gertrud (1917–2010) and Karl-Robert (1923–1947). 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.
Honecker's childhood home in Wiebelskirchen
After World War I, the Territory of the Saar Basin was occupied by France. This change from the strict rule of Baron von Stumm to French military occupation provided the backdrop for what Wilhelm Honecker understood as proletarian exploitation, and introduced young Erich to communism.[1] After his tenth birthday in 1922, Erich Honecker became a member of the Spartacus League's children's group in Wiebelskirchen.[1] 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.[2]
Honecker did not find an apprenticeship immediately after leaving school, but instead worked for a farmer in Pomerania for almost two years.[3] 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 hand-picked him for a course of study there.[4] There, sharing a room with Anton Ackermann,[5] he studied under the cover name "Fritz Malter".[6]
Opposition to the Nazis and imprisonment[edit]
In 1930, aged 18, Honecker entered the KPD, the Communist Party of Germany.[7] His political mentor was Otto Niebergall, who later represented the KPD in the Bundestag. 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 were only possible within Germany 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.[3]
He 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, relocating firstly to Paris.[3]
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 the KPD official Herbert Wehner – later to become an SPD member - 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".[7][8]
Honecker spent the majority of his incarceration in the Brandenburg-Görden Prison, where he also carried out tasks as a handyman.[3] In early 1945 he was moved to the Barnimstrasse Women’s Prison in Berlin due to good behaviour and, as a trained roofer, in order to be put to work repairing the bomb-damaged building.[9] 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 hand himself back in and the 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.[10] His "escape" from prison and his relationships during his captivity later led to him experiencing difficulties within the Socialist Unity Party, as well as straining his relations with his former inmates. In later interviews and his personal memoirs, Honecker therefore falsified many of the details of his life during this period.[11][12] Further evidence has also come to light that during his imprisonment Honecker offered the Gestapo information on fellow imprisoned communists, claimed he had renounced communism "for good" and even volunteered to serve the war effort as a member of the German army.[13]
Post-war return to politics[edit]
Honecker founded the Free German Youth group in 1946
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.[14] 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 it jeopardising the other (communist) inmates.[10][15]
In 1946 he became the co-founder of the Free German Youth (FDJ), 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 socialistic single party government, Honecker determinedly resumed his political career and the following year was nominated as a candidate for the Politburo of the SED’s Central Committee.[14] 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.[14]
Honecker, watched by his mentor Walter Ulbricht, at the 5th Party Congress in 1958
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 dispose Ulbricht in favour of Rudolf Herrnstadt.[16] 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.[7] During this period he witnessed the 20th Congress of the Soviet Communist Party in person, where its First Secretary Nikita Khrushchev denounced Joseph Stalin.[8]
After returning to East Germany in 1958 Honecker became a fully-fledged member of the Politburo, taking over responsibility for military and security issues.[17] 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.[18]
Leadership of East Germany[edit]
Erich Honecker, 1976
While Ulbricht had replaced the state’s planned 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 to in fact be the "unity of economic and social politics", essentially through which living standards (with increased consumer goods) would be raised in exchange for political loyalty.[19][20] 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.[17] Honecker played up the thawing East-West German relationship as Ulbricht's strategy, in order to win the support of the Soviet leadership under Leonid Brezhnev.[17] With this secured, Honecker was appointed First Secretary (later titled General Secretary) of the Central Committee on 3 May 1971 after the Soviet leadership forced Ulbricht to step aside "for health reasons".[17][21]
After also succeeding Ulbricht as Chairman of the National Defense Council in 1971,[22] Honecker was eventually also elected Chairman of the State Council on 29 October 1976.[23] 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.[24] 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. 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".[25] His policies were initially marked by a liberalisation toward culture and art, though this was less about the replacement of Ulbricht by Honecker and more for propaganda purposes. 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.[26] During his time in office around 125 East German citizens were killed while trying to reach the West.[27]
Honecker on the world stage at the 1975 CSCE summit in Helsinki.
Although Honecker remained loyal to the Soviet Union by renouncing the objective of a unified Germany and adopting the "defensive" position of ideological Abgrenzung (demarcation), he signed the Basic Treaty between East and West Germany in 1972 which sought to normalise relations between the nations. 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.[28] These acts of diplomacy were considered Honecker’s greatest successes in foreign politics.
He received additional high-profile personal recognitions including an honorary doctorate by Tokyo’s Nihon University in 1981 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.[18] This trip had originally been planned in 1983, but was initially blocked by the Soviet leadership which mistrusted the special East-West German relationship.[29]
Illness, downfall and resignation[edit]
In the late 1980s, Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev introduced glasnost and perestroika, reforms to liberalise communism. Frictions between him and Honecker had grown over these policies and numerous additional issues from 1985 onward.[30] East Germany refused to implement similar reforms, with Honecker reportedly telling Gorbachev: "We have done our perestroika, we have nothing to restructure".[31][32] Gorbachev grew to dislike Honecker, and by 1988 was lumping Honecker, along with Bulgaria's Todor Zhivkov, Czechoslovakia's Gustáv Husák and Romania's Nicolae Ceaușescu as a "Gang of Four" — a group of inflexible hardliners unwilling to make necessary reforms.[33] Honecker felt betrayed by Gorbachev in his German policy and ensured that official texts of the Soviet Union, especially those concerning perestroika, could no longer be published or sold in East Germany.[34]
Protests against the lack of reforms by the Honecker-led regime grew during 1989.
At the Warsaw Pact summit on 7–8 July 1989 in Bucharest, the Soviet Union reaffirmed its shift from the Brezhnev Doctrine of the limited sovereignty of its member states, and announced "freedom of choice".[35][36] The Bucharest statement prescribed that its nations henceforth developed their "own political line, strategy and tactics without external intervention".[37] This called into question the Soviet guarantee of existence for the communist states in Europe. Already in May 1989 Hungary had begun dismantling its border with Austria, creating the first gap in the so-called Iron Curtain, through which several thousand East Germans quickly fled in hopes of reaching West Germany by way of Austria.[38] Per a 1969 treaty, the Hungarian government should have forced the East Germans back home. However, after a week, the Hungarians relented and let the refugees pass into Austria, telling their outraged East German counterparts that international treaties on refugees took precedence.[33]
At the time Honecker was sidelined through illness, leaving his colleagues unable to act decisively. He had been taken ill with biliary colic during the Warsaw Pact summit and flown home to Berlin.[33][37] After an initial health stabilisation, he underwent surgery on 18 August 1989 to remove his inflamed gallbladder and, due to a perforation, part of his colon.[39][40] According to the urologist Peter Althaus, the surgeons left a suspected carcinogenic nodule in Honecker’s right kidney due to his weak condition, and also failed to inform the patient of the suspected cancer;[41] other sources say the tumour was simply undetected. As a result of this operation, Honecker was away from his office until late September 1989.[42][43]
Back in office, Honecker had to contend with the rising number and strength of demonstrations across East Germany that had first been sparked by reports in the West German media of fraudulent results in local elections in May 1989;[33][44] the same results he had labelled a "convincing reflection" of the populace's faith in his leadership.[45] He also had to deal with a new refugee problem. Several thousand East Germans tried to go to West Germany by way of Czechoslovakia, only to have that government bar them from passing. Several thousand of them headed straight for the West German embassy in Prague and demanded safe passage to West Germany. With some reluctance, Honecker allowed them to go—but forced them to go back through East Germany on sealed trains and stripped them of their East German citizenship. Several members of the SED Politbüro realized this was a serious blunder and made plans to get rid of him.[33]
As unrest visibly grew, large numbers began fleeing the country through the West German embassies in Prague and Budapest and over the borders of the "socialist brother" states.[46][47] Each month saw tens of thousands more exit.[48][49] On 3 October 1989 East Germany closed its borders to its eastern neighbours and prevented visa-free travel to Czechoslovakia;[50] a day later these measures were also extended to travel to Bulgaria and Romania. East Germany was now not only behind the Iron Curtain to the West, but also cordoned off to most other Eastern bloc states.[51]
Honecker leads East Germany's 40th anniversary celebration, just weeks before being forced to resign. Gorbachev is at his right(left of Honecker)
On 6–7 October 1989 the national celebrations of the 40th anniversary of the East German state took place with Gorbachev in attendance.[52] During the event, several hundred members of the Free German Youth began chanting, "Gorby, help us! Gorby, save us!".[53] In a private conversation between the two leaders Honecker praised the success of the nation, but Gorbachev knew that, in reality, it faced bankruptcy;[33][54] East Germany had already accepted billion of dollars in loans from West Germany during the decade as it sought to stabilise its economy.[55] Attempting to make Honecker accept a need for reforms, Gorbachev warned "life punishes those who come too late", yet Honecker maintained that "we will solve our problems ourselves with socialist means".[53] Protests outside the reception at the Palace of the Republic led to hundreds of arrests.[53]
As the reform movement spread throughout Central and Eastern Europe, mass demonstrations against the East German government erupted, most prominently in Leipzig—the first of several demonstrations which took place on Monday night across the country. In response, an elite paratroop unit was dispatched to Leipzig—almost certainly on Honecker's orders, since he was commander-in-chief of the army. A bloodbath was only averted when local party officials themselves ordered the troops to pull back. In the following week, Honecker faced a torrent of criticism. This gave his Politburo comrades the impulse they needed to replace him.[33]
After a crisis meeting of the Politburo on 10–11 October 1989, Honecker's planned state visit to Denmark was cancelled and, despite his resistance, at the insistence of the regime's number-two man, Egon Krenz, a public statement was issued that called for "suggestions for attractive socialism".[56] Over the following days Krenz worked to secure himself the support of the military and the Stasi and arranged a meeting between Gorbachev and Politburo member Harry Tisch, who was in Moscow, to inform the Kremlin about the now-planned removal of Honecker;[57] Gorbachev reportedly wished them good luck.[58]
Egon Krenz introduces himself to a congress as Honecker's replacement as General Secretary.
The sitting of the SED Central Committee planned for the end of November 1989 was pulled forward a week, with the most urgent item on the agenda now being the composition of the Politburo. Krenz and Mielke attempted by telephone on the night of 16 October to win other Politburo members over to remove Honecker. At the beginning of the session on 17 October, Honecker asked his routine question of “Are there any suggestions for the agenda?”[59] Stoph replied, "Please, General Secretary, Erich, I propose that a new item be placed on the agenda. It is the release of Erich Honecker as General Secretary and the election of Egon Krenz in his place."[33] Honecker reportedly calmly responded: "Well, then I open the debate".[60]
All those present then spoke, in turn, but none in favour of Honecker.[60] Günter Schabowski even extended the dismissal of Honecker to also include his posts in the State Council and as Chairman of the National Defence Council while childhood friend Günter Mittag moved away from Honecker.[59] Mielke supposedly blamed Honecker for almost all the country’s current ills and threatened to publish compromising information that he possessed, if Honecker refused to resign.[61] After three hours the Politburo voted to remove Honecker.[60][62] In accordance with longstanding practice, Honecker voted for his own removal.[33] Publicly, the decision was announced that: "the Central Committee has obliged the request of Erich Honecker to release him from the post of General Secretary, from the Office of State Council Chairman and the post of Chairman of the National Defence Council due to health reasons".[63] Krenz was unanimously voted in his successor as General Secretary.[64][65]
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