The eleventh Congress, held 17 – 21 April 1986, unequivocally endorsed the SED and Honecker, whom it confirmed for another term as party head.

Honecker faced a growing crisis at home, with massive anti-government demonstrations in Leipzig and other East German cities.

File: BerlinWall01b. jpg | Mural on the Berlin Wall at the East Side Gallery featuring Leonid Brezhnev and Erich Honecker riding together in a Trabant ( Spring 2002 ).

Erich Honecker, watched by his mentor Walter Ulbricht at the 5th Party Congress, 1958

During his report at the seventh party congress in 1967, Erich Honecker had called for a return to an orthodox Socialist economic system, away from the recently instituted New Economic System.

Honecker was more specific about the SED's position toward the intelligentsia at the Fourth Plenum of the Central Committee, where he stated: " As long as one proceeds from the firm position of socialism, there can in my opinion be no taboos in the field of art and literature.

Following the riots in the GDR in October 1989, including those in East Berlin and Leipzig, on 18 October 1989, at a special Politbüro meeting, Honecker was forced to resign ; he was replaced by Egon Krenz.

Erich Honecker ( East Germany | GDR, left ) and Helmut Schmidt ( West Germany | FRG ) at the Conference on Security and Co-operation in Europe held in Helsinki in 1975

* The quest for Christa Wolf an interview with Hanns-Bruno Kammertöns and Stephan Lebert about private chats with Honecker, a German society in check mate, the influence of Goethe, the shortcomings of Brecht, and the lasting effects of Utopia at signandsight. com.

Other Communist countries with leaders in their 70s or 80s have included Albania ( First Secretary Enver Hoxha was 76 at death ), Czechoslovakia ( President Gustáv Husák was 76 at his resignation ), East Germany ( General Secretary and head of state Erich Honecker was 77 when forced out ), Hungary ( General Secretary János Kádár was 75 when forced out ), Laos ( President Nouhak Phoumsavanh was 83 at retirement ), North Korea ( President Kim Il-sung was 82 at death ), Romania ( General Secretary and President Nicolae Ceauşescu was 70 when he was killed ), Vietnam ( President Truong Chinh was 80 at retirement ), Yugoslavia ( President Josip Broz Tito was 87 at death ).

In June 1989 Interflug introduced the first Western-built aircraft in the form of three Airbus A310s as its director at the time, Dr. Klaus Henkes, successfully appealed to the then leader of the GDR, SED General Secretary Erich Honecker, to purchase Western aircraft in order to position Interflug as a modern airline.

* ' Early in the morning, Honecker arrives at his office and opens his window.

" Honecker works, and then at noon he heads to the window and says: " Good day, dear Sun!

On the occasion of a state visit in June 1972 by Erich Honecker, Fidel Castro renamed the island in honour of German Communist politician and activist Ernst Thälmann, the leader of the Communist Party of Germany ( KPD ) during much of the Weimar Republic, whom was imprisoned without trial after the rise of the Nazi Party, and after eleven years of solitary confinement was shot by order of Adolf Hitler at Buchenwald concentration camp.

She met her future husband, Erich Honecker, at FDJ meetings when he was the director of the Freie Deutsche Jugend.

Following popular protests against the GDR's Communist regime, the SED Politburo voted to remove Honecker on 18 October 1989, and Krenz was elected as the new General Secretary of the SED Central Committee.

" In 1974, Erich Honecker, as Chairman of the GDR's National Defence Council, ordered: " Firearms are to be ruthlessly used in the event of attempts to break through the border, and the comrades who have successfully used their firearms are to be commended.

Erich Honecker and guests of honor like Mikhail Gorbachev celebrate the 40th ( and last ) anniversary of the socialist regime of the German Democratic Republic on 7 October 1989.

On 19 July 2008, on the occasion of the 29th anniversary of the Sandinista revolution in Nicaragua, Margot Honecker received the order for cultural independence " Rubén Dario " from President Daniel Ortega.

In October 2009, Honecker celebrated the 60th anniversary of the founding of the GDR with former Chilean exiles who had sought asylum in East Germany.

Honecker was back in charge by September, and immediately had to deal with a new refugee problem.

In 1954, Wollweber became a delegate to the Volkskammer and a member of the SED ’ s Central Committee, but in 1956 his influence began to wane when he clashed with Walter Ulbricht and Erich Honecker on issues ranging from East Germany ’ s policies towards Poland to the estimate of the number of anti-Communist groups within the GDR.

Krenz had been approached several months earlier about ousting Honecker, but was reluctant to move against a man he called " my foster father and political teacher.

In October 1989, Schabowski, along with several other members of the Politburo, turned on longtime SED leader Erich Honecker and forced him to step down in favour of Egon Krenz.

Meeting of a WJC delegation led by Edgar Bronfman with GDR leader Erich Honecker, in East Berlin, October 1988During the mid-1980s, the World Jewish Congress also entered into diplomatic talks with several Central and Eastern European countries, notably Communist East Germany, whose leadership the WJC urged to recognize its obligations to Jewish victims of Nazi Germany.

It was the official car of DDR head of state Erich Honecker, who ordered several extended versions for official use.

At the end of the war, Honecker resumed activity in the party under leader Walter Ulbricht, and, in 1946, became one of the first members of the Socialist Unity Party of Germany ( Sozialistische Einheitspartei Deutschlands, SED ), which was formed by the merger of the KPD and the Social Democratic Party ( SPD ) in the Soviet occupation zone of Germany.

" Honecker called for even greater productivity in the next five years, and he sought to spur individual initiative and productivity by recommending a labor policy that would reward the most meritorious and productive members of society.

Another party with this name was formed in 1990 in East Berlin by members of the GDR leadership who were expelled from the PDS, including Erich Honecker.

Following the ousting of Erich Honecker in October 1989, Stoph and all 44 members of his cabinet resigned on 7 November in response to public pressure.

Several other members of the Politburo also resigned that day, including Margot Honecker, Erich Mielke, Kurt Hager, and Hans Tisch.

Reformist members of the East German Politbüro sought to rescue the situation by forcing the resignation of the hardline Party chairman Erich Honecker, replacing him in October 1989 with the marginally less hardline Egon Krenz.

Related to the takeover of the council's chairmanship by Honecker is the fact that after 1977 the number of individuals who were simultaneously members of the council and of the SED's Central Committee Secretariat increased.

In 1987, under the chairmanship of Honecker, there were eight deputy chairmen and seventeen members.

In addition to Honecker, two of the deputy chairmen, Horst Sindermann and Willi Stoph, were members of the Politbüro of the SED ; Stoph was also chairman of the Council of Ministers, and Sindermann was president of the People's Chamber.

Despite the presence of non-SED members as deputy chairmen and members of the leadership group, SED control was guaranteed by the presence of Honecker, Stoph, Sindermann, and Egon Krenz, probably the four most powerful individuals in the country.

* 1912 – Erich Honecker, German politician ( d. 1994 )

In the late summer of 1984, the Soviet Union also prevented a visit to West Germany by East German leader Erich Honecker.

Unable to stop the growing civil unrest, Erich Honecker was forced to resign in October, and on 9 November, East German authorities unexpectedly allowed East German citizens to enter West Berlin and West Germany.

For example, in 1984, the Soviet Union prevented a visit to West Germany by East German leader Erich Honecker.

The grassroots democracy movement that forced the dismissal of East German head of state Erich Honecker in 1989 also empowered a younger generation of reform politicians in East Germany's ruling Socialist Unity Party who looked to Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev's glasnost and perestroika as their model for political change.

These developments greatly disturbed hardline communists such as the East German leader Erich Honecker, who condemned the end of the traditional " socialist unity " of the Soviet bloc and appealed to Moscow to rein in the Hungarians.

** Erich Honecker, East German leader ( d. 1994 )

Erich Honecker (; 25 August 1912 – 29 May 1994 ) was a German communist politician who led the German Democratic Republic as General Secretary of the Socialist Unity Party from 1971 until 1989, serving as Head of State as well after Willi Stoph's relinquishment of that post in 1976.

Following the SED victory in the October 1946 elections, Honecker took his place amongst the SED leadership in the first postwar East German parliament, the German People's Congress ( Deutscher Volkskongress ).

Honecker and the East German government refused to implement similar reforms in the GDR, with Honecker reportedly telling Gorbachev: " We have done our perestroika, we have nothing to restructure ".

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.

( 2008 ) The people's state: East German society from Hitler to Honecker.

* Honecker im Internet ( in German )

Honecker reiterated earlier positions on the relationship between the two German states, stressing that they were two sovereign states that had developed along different lines since World War II, and that their differences had to be respected by both sides as they continued efforts toward peaceful coexistence despite membership in antagonistic alliances.

However, after a final round of talks with Gorbachev, Honecker signed a hard-line communiqué that openly attacked the policies of the West German government.

Brandt's successor Helmut Schmidt with East German party leader Erich Honecker, Döllnsee 1981.

Chancellor of Federal Republic of Germany ( West Germany ) Helmut Schmidt, Chairman of the Council of State of the German Democratic Republic ( East Germany ) Erich Honecker, U. S. president Gerald Ford and Austrian chancellor Bruno Kreisky

# Erich Honecker Chairman of the Council of State of the German Democratic Republic