Erich Ernst Paul Honecker (German: [ˈeːʁɪç ˈhɔnɛkɐ]; 25 August 1912 – 29 May 1994) was a German communist politician who led the German Democratic Republic (East Germany) 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 (SED) 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 normalizing relations with West Germany and also becoming a full member of the UN, in what is considered one of his greatest political successes.

Return to Erich Honecker Autograph Profile